A Closer Look at the Heart Symbol

So we all know the now-universal symbol of love, the "heart symbol":

The funny thing about this heart symbol is that, uh, does it really look like a heart? Like an anatomical human heart? It doesn't really, does it?

I guess it could, but for some reason it got adopted for this particular purpose. It's an image of love. No, the image of love.

Have you ever thought of the origins of the symbol?

The furthest back it seems to have appeared was on coins struck by the Roman Empire:

Holy shit! The Romans? Did they see this as a symbol of love?

Why would they put this image on a coin? Have I ever asked this many questions in a post before? 

Well, to the Romans, this was a very important thing. This is the seedpod for the silphium plant. And the silphium plant's seedpods did a wonderful thing for the Romans: they made an extremely effective contraceptive. The things looked like what we called a "heart shape", and they represented a highly effective contraceptive.

It was so important to the Romans that they put the image on their money. Also, it was so important that they actually fucked it to extinction. Literally.

But, the Romans were also a visual folk, and they likely, with their love of art and such, wouldn't have oriented this image like we do, as an un-curved inverted triangle. To them, how awesome, a contraceptive that looked just like a particular body part associated with the need for contraception:

Is it clear enough yet? To the Romans, the silphium seedpod looked just like a scrotum.

Our "heart shape" is really just a scrotal sack. Maybe knowing that helps with how we see the shape now: