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Concept
Indigo
Summary
Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word indicum, meaning "Indian", as the dye was originally exported to Europe from India.
It is traditionally regarded as a color in the visible spectrum, as well as one of the seven colors of the rainbow: the color between blue and violet; however, sources differ as to its actual position in the electromagnetic spectrum.
The first known recorded use of indigo as a color name in English was in 1289.
Indigo dye#History
Indigofera tinctoria and related species were cultivated in East Asia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Peru in antiquity. The earliest direct evidence for the use of indigo dates to around 4000 BC and comes from Huaca Prieta, in contemporary Peru. Pliny the Elder mentions India as the source of the dye after which it was named. It was imported from there in small quantities via the Silk Road.
The Ancient Greek term for the dye was Ἰνδικὸν φάρμακον (indikon pharmakon, "Indian dye"), which, adopted to Latin as indicum (a second declension noun) or indico (oblique case) and via Portuguese, gave rise to the modern word indigo.
Spanish explorers discovered an American species of indigo and began to cultivate the product in Guatemala. The English and French subsequently began to encourage indigo cultivation in their colonies in the West Indies.
In North America, indigo was introduced by Eliza Lucas into colonial South Carolina, where it became the colony's second-most important cash crop (after rice). Before the Revolutionary War, indigo accounted for more than one-third of the value of exports from the American colonies.
Blue dye can be made from two different types of plants: the indigo plant, which produces the best results, and from the woad plant Isatis tinctoria, also known as pastel. For a long time, woad was the main source of blue dye in Europe.
Official source
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