Valentine's Day: Hearts, hearts everywhere!
On the eve of Valentine's Day, we offer our readers a selection of photos in which man-made "hearts" alternate with those created by nature itself.
1. The well-known symbol of the "heart" has symbolized love and tenderness since time immemorial.
2. The fact that the heart has always been considered the receptacle of the human soul and emotions does not cause the slightest doubt.
3. This is explicitly stated in many sacred books, and many scientists of antiquity wrote about it (for example, the great Roman physician Galen, who lived in the II century AD, believed that the liver is the receptacle of passions, the brain is the mind, and the heart is emotions).
4. But the history of the origin of the famous symbol is completely unclear. None of the hearts — neither human nor animal - is completely unlike this symbol.
5. If you try very hard, you can find such an angle of view, under which the human heart very vaguely resembles a "heart", but the spectacle is not pleasant, and the similarity is very conditional.
6. Some of those trying to explain the origin of the symbol, see in it a resemblance to beautiful female buttocks and mention the ancient Greek cult of Aphrodite Kallipigi, who even had a special temple.
7. Although such reasoning does not bring clarity at all. If it was not the heart that was depicted at all, but other beautiful parts of the body, then why is the symbol itself persistently called a "heart" by various peoples?
8. There are more plausible explanations — the symbol of the "heart" is very similar to an ivy leaf, which was very actively used as a decorative element in Hellenistic culture.
9. The ivy itself symbolized the god of wine Dionysus, in whose honor loving bacchanalia were arranged.
10. In a word, it is possible to conduct "scientific" discussions for a very long time and put forward versions one more improbable than the other.
11. But the fact remains that for hundreds of years the "heart" has symbolized both the heart itself (and not any other, even very beautiful, parts of the body) and love itself.
12. A heart often appears in ornaments with which a person decorates gifts for his friends and loved ones, and no less often a "heart" appears in completely natural, natural situations, which are also often associated with tenderness.
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