Everyone knows the popular love heart symbol. For young kids it often comes as a shock to learn that the love heart we doodle in notebooks and see covering store windows in the month of February is not actually an accurate illustration of the human heart.

The love heart symbol has a very old history that started in the 3rd millennium B.C. In those days people used to decorate their vases and pottery with ivy and fig leaves. That was because the ivy leaves symbolised everlasting love for the Greek, the Romans and the early Christians.

By the middle ages they used to show ivy leaves in love scenes, sometimes using red leaves – red being the colour of love.

After the red ivy leaves became rampant, it became the new symbol on playing cards, gradually becoming shaped more like the modern love heart.

But for everyone who doesn’t really like the image of the real heart of the humans: The heart symbol was also used for the illustration of the human heart from the 13th through to the 16th millennium.

The history of the heart symbol isn’t very long or special but it’s interesting.

Now days the heart symbol has morphed into a new form of illustration; SMS. Don’t you just <3 love hearts?