Rome, 1st century A.D. As yet another fire breaks out somewhere. At Emperor Nero's house is on display the last remaining specimen of a large plant belonging to the genus Ferula of the Umbelliferae family; the legendary Sylph. Not a single one will ever be found again.

The plant, according to legend a gift from the god Apollo, grew only in a narrow 60-kilometer coastal area in Cyrenaica (present-day Libya) and was the major economic resource of the ancient city of Cyrene ,appearing even on its coins.

Silphium was considered one of the most important medicinal resources of the ancient world. So much so that it had virtually unlimited uses. The product of its root: a red resin named Laserpicium, was sold by the pound; literally. That is a seed of Silphium below !

But wait a minute! A heart-shaped seed + aphrodisiac medicine.

Someone thought let's make it the symbol of love...and not surprisingly, the hieroglyph representing the Silphium plant is also shaped like this. Never underestimate the romance of the ancient Egyptians.

In short, over time, the shape of the little heart as we know it becomes, at least in the Mediterranean basin and surrounding areas, "the ideogram of love." Gradually this association expands more and more.

Beware the following part is obviously historically inaccurate and I have had fun inventing the events leading up to 1988:

Siberia one December a long time ago. Sergey turning to his friend Ivan: "I want to let Olga know that I love her" Ivan: " draw her a heart in the snow; Western fashion" and so on one word of mouth after another centuries pass and one fine day. As Kublai Khan's fleet, trying to invade Japan is about to be blown away by the divine wind, for the second time. Instead, an unsuspecting Korean sailor drunk on Soju (a Korean spirit) named Bon-Hwa amazingly manages to almost accidentally reach the coast, shipwrecked on the island of Okinawa. There he meets Kozue, an Ama pearl fisherwoman, who gives him a taste of sake. The two fall madly in love, and Bon-Hwa, who knows the heart symbol, scorches its outline on a coconut to show his feelings to his beloved. The symbol has thus finally landed in Japan as well. Much later, a distant relative of the fisherwoman becomes a graphic interface programmer at the Japanese company Sharp. His name is unknown, but for convenience we will call him Shiba Hiroshi.

It is 1988 and there is a decision to be made about which sets of emoji to include in the interface of the new PDA, which is about to be released: the PA-8500 (below the original set of emoji) . The proposals from the group in which Hiroshi works are to initially include only the smiley face and poop. Hiroshi balks and asks to include the heart as well. The rest as they say is history.

Also during this period the term emoji was also born, which we remember comes from the union of two Japanese words : (eh 絵 , picture) + ( mōji 文字, character). In short, the term emoji describes a pictogram.All of this film to say that when you put a little heart to a woman\man in Rome, it is a bit like sending home the last seed of Silphium after 2,000 years ❤️