An analysis of ancient cuneiform texts suggests people thought of emotions in a different way almost 3000 years ago, showing how culture influences our most intimate experiences
The inhabitants of Mesopotamia must have known grief, fear, love and awe – but they didn’t necessarily think about them in the same way we do. An analysis ofshows that these ancient people felt disgust in their shins, suffering in their armpits and sexual arousal in their ankles. The work reveals the important hold that culture and knowledge have over our understanding of our own feelings.
They found that ancient Mesopotamians associated some emotions with body parts in the same way we do. For instance, they linked pride to the heart. This hints at a shared biological basis for embodying certain emotions. Just as importantly, however, the Mesopotamians embodied many other emotions in ways that might seem strange to us. For instance, they felt pleasure in their liver, surprise in their kidneys and anger in their thighs and knees. This explains why an ancient Mesopotamian idiom meaning “to be happy” referred to the liver (– and also probably by an imperfect understanding of human anatomy. “For instance, the liver is prominent when you open up the body,” he says.
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