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Another fun fact: one can reasonably guess a high order bit for the age of a country by the colours used in its flag. Before chemical dyes, blue and red were the only lightfast possibilities.

(hence the "orange" in https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Fl... )

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Ooh, I never tied that to flag colors, thats super cool. Indigos and I assume anthraquinone dyes for the reds. Though I think with some "younger" countries like India that have oranges on their flag, saffron/mangowood yellow and other orange colors have enough cultural significance that it doesnt seem out of the question for an empire in the region with the resources for war elephants to decide to use a saffron flag that they keep re-dying as needed

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