A Study Of The Impact Of Color Archetypes On The Development Of Human Cognition

In order to search for enough living space and get safe and peaceful living environment, humans constantly approach to nature and depend upon nature, so the natural world that are composed by different colors deeply impacts on human cognitive development towards the world and selfhood. Until nowadays, human cognitive development is still influenced by diverse color archetypes from not only visual effects and physical enjoyment, but also spiritual support and public images.Color archetypes, stored in human brain under collective unconscious, are a set of primitive psychological images which are some colors of natural objects coming from natural world. Color archetypes are dated back to the first perception towards the primitive world produced by hominids for millions of years. Diverse colorful objects repeatedly act on hominids' eyes and brains, which brings them primitive cognition to various colors and bestows new meanings of color archetypes with the changes of human cognition. Color archetypes experience different stages from the first cognition of the primitive and physical world to the birth of totems to the development of myths then to the propagation of religions.Based on Carl Jung's archetypal theory and his collective unconscious, this thesis puts up forward with its definition of color archetypes and analyzes their formation that dates back to millions of years ago with the biological and psychological evolution of human ancestors, according to their living condition and their primitive perception, and their attitude changes towards the colorful natural world with the improvement of human psychology and intelligence. Start from embodied experiences of the earliest human ancestors, color archetypes underwent the biological and physical stage which was based on their survival and the need of food and sex, the biological and spiritual stage that is based on the spiritual need and searching safety, as well as the cultural stage when human cognition got completely developed and language began to appear. Color archetypes are bestowed with different new significance and meanings which are formed in various human activities of totem warships, ritual, mythological creation and religious believes, when human beings have gradually improved their intelligence and changed attitudes their towards the colorful world.Chapter One in this thesis generally introduced the raise and development of the relative archetypal theory, and defined the definition and kinds of color archetypes, and analyzed the development of the earliest human cognition. Chapter Two analyzed the formation and development of biological color archetypes with the early human cognitive development in detail. Chapter Three further illustrated cultural color archetypes with human cognitive development when human language and culture were all got fast developed. Finally, this thesis came to the conclusion and pointed out its main findings and the significance of studying color archetypes with some further study suggestions.