emotions and the heart

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Despite that emotions actually come from the brain, through language, we usually speak of them coming from the heart. Why is this? Why do we associate emotions with the heart? Is it because of how the heart reacts to emotions as to why primitive people began to associate them with the heart?

It's no great secret, When you feel strong emotions, you often feel them in your chest, so "heart" just became synonymous with "emotion". For example, when you fall in love, you feel flutters in your heart...when you are sad, your heart may feel heavy...when you get excited or fearful, your heart will race. I think that it was commonly thought in the past that emotions originated in the heart because of this.

The ancient Greeks, the Babylonians and the Egyptians believed that feelings, thoughts and emotions originated in the heart. The Egyptians sucked out the brains of the deceased through the nostril (ugh!) before mummifying their dead.

It was only in more recent times that the brain was found to be the seat of thought and feeling.

ruveyn