WORLD CIVILIZATION

Detailed explanation-1: -Tyrian purple is a pigment made from the mucus of several species of Murex snail. Production of Tyrian purple for use as a fabric dye began as early as 1200 BC by the Phoenicians, and was continued by the Greeks and Romans until 1453 AD, with the fall of Constantinople.

Detailed explanation-2: -Each snail produced only a few drops of the precious secretion, and as many as 250, 000 snails were required to produce one single tablespoon of dye!

Detailed explanation-3: -It took tens of thousands of desiccated hypobranchial glands, wrenched from the calcified coils of spiny murex sea snails before being dried and boiled, to colour even a single small swatch of fabric, whose fibres, long after staining, retained the stench of the invertebrate’s marine excretions.