Have you ever experienced a knot in your stomach or a flutter in your heart? These bodily sensations tied to emotions, known as embodied emotions, may be more universal than you realize. In fact, people have been describing similar physical reactions to emotions for over 3,000 years.
A recent study published in iScience explored the language of body parts and emotions used by people living in Mesopotamia between 934 and 612 BCE, a region that now includes Egypt, Iraq, and Türkiye. The researchers compared ancient descriptions on clay tablets and artifacts to modern associations between emotions and body parts, using bodily maps to highlight the similarities and differences.
“We see certain body areas that are still used in similar contexts today,” explains Juha Lahnakoski, the study’s lead author and a cognitive neuroscientist at Germany’s LVR Clinic Düsseldorf. For instance, the heart was frequently linked to positive emotions like love, pride, and happiness in both ancient and modern contexts. Similarly, the stomach was associated with sadness and distress.
However, not all ancient associations have survived into modern language. For example, the Neo-Assyrians believed anger originated in the legs, and they strongly connected happiness to the liver. “This association is largely lost in our current language, but it may not surprise those familiar with ancient cultures,” says Lahnakoski. “The liver was considered the seat of the soul in some ancient cultures, possibly due to its prominent size and appearance.”
Today, it’s challenging to trace the origins of emotional associations or how they spread across cultures through shared texts, religions, or practices. Yet, by examining a society thousands of years removed from our own, the researchers uncovered a surprising degree of continuity.
Embodied emotions feel “so natural the way we describe them now,” says Lahnakoski, but “we might overlook how our language and cultural environment shape the feelings we experience.” By looking to the past, we can better understand which emotional connections are deeply rooted and which, like happiness in the liver, have faded away.
Source link: https://www.sciencenews.org
