Here are some pretty amazing color photos from the turn of the here. These were from Albert Khan.

"In 1909, the millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn embarked on a project to create a color photographic record of the world and its people...
Using his huge fortune, Mr Kahn sent a group of photographers to more than fifty countries around the world.
The intrepid photographers took the earliest known color photographs in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Vietnam, Mongolia, Norway and Benin.
With the First World War and the beginnings of twentieth century globalization, it was a time of great change with old cultures on the brink of being changed forever."