Moderns and Mesopotamians embody emotions in different ways
Modern/PNAS: Lauri Nummenmaa et al. 2014, Mesopotamian: Juha Lahnakoski 2024
The people of Mesopotamia must have known grief, fear, love, and fear, but they didn’t necessarily think about them the way we do. An analysis cuneiform texts it shows that these ancient people felt disgust in their backs, suffering in their armpits and sexual arousal in their ankles. The work reveals the important connection between culture and knowledge in our understanding of feelings.
