Friday 29 September 2023

Today Is...World Heart Day

Although i have never actually seen a real human heart, the ones i have seen in pictures are nothing like heart shaped.
There are a few theories how the heart shape got it's shape ranging from the shape of the female genitals to the shape of a mans testicles. It could have come from the shape of the tips of cupids arrows as painted by renaissance painters or just as easily have been based on the shape of a backside but i once heard the best explanation that i have always gone with, the shape made by two people kissing.
The chests pressed together, noses touching and the two people forming a perfect Valentine heart of space between them. Far better than the idea of an arse.
The heart shape was used by the Indus Valley civilisation although to them it was less about love and more about the fruit of a favourite plant and in ancient Japan, the heart symbol was based on a Wild Boars eyeball and was used to ward off evil spirits which isnt quite so romantic on a Valentines Card but in Europe in the Middle Ages artists began using a heart shape to mean love although not so much a heart as a pine cone which apparently was a thing to do back then.
In the early paintings a lover would offer a pine cone and the pine cone shape became the norm for depicting a lover giving his heart and influential later painters kept it and it become less the primary organ of your circulatory system and more the the symbol of love that we know today.

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