who came up with the shape of a heart

It's pretty funny when you think about it, because as someone who spends their whole life looking at actual hearts, the symbol we use today looks nothing like the real organ. The actual heart is more of a muscular, lumpy shape, definitely not the perfectly symmetrical one we draw on valentines cards. It’s wild how much we’ve collectively decided that the symbol represents love when biology tells a completely different story.

Most people think the shape actually comes from an ancient plant called silphium, which was used for all sorts of things back in the day. If you look at the seeds of that plant, they have that exact heart shape we all know. It’s kind of ironic that a seed used for medicine or even birth control in antiquity somehow turned into the universal sign for romance and passion over the centuries.

There is also a theory that it started as a bad drawing of a real heart by early artists who hadn't really seen one up close. They were trying to depict the organ based on descriptions from ancient philosophers, and over time, it just got stylized and simplified into what we use today. It’s just one of those things where the cultural meaning totally took over the biological reality, which I see happen all the time when I'm explaining stuff to patients.