Fist bumps, waves, and salutes

From ancient Rome to memes: 12 hand gestures explained

Image: Calvin Craig

Hand gestures are everywhere—so ingrained in our daily lives that we often don’t realize how frequently we communicate through them. Whether expressing emotions, adding context to our words, or simply enhancing spoken communication, gestures are a vital part of our shared culture, passed down through generations for centuries. From ancient Rome to the modern day, here are 12 hand gestures and their fascinating origins explained.

Image: Mark Fuller

The exact origins of the thumbs-up gesture remain uncertain, but its earliest documented use dates back to Roman gladiators, where a thumbs-up or thumbs-down was believed to signal life or death in the arena. Today, the gesture is nearly universal, thanks to its popularization through media, travel, and even emojis. However, it carries offensive meanings in certain cultures, and for divers, it signifies "ascend," rather than approval—so context matters!

Image: Nathan Fertig

Believe it or not, the V sign originally began as an insulting gesture, though with the back of the hand facing outward. A more positive meaning, however, was popularized during World War II when Winston Churchill used it as a "V for Victory" symbol. The double-entendre of the gesture likely added to its appeal—flipping the hand’s orientation easily turned it into a mocking snub toward the enemy. In the 1960s, the gesture took on new meaning during the counterculture movements, evolving into an enduring symbol of peace.

Image: Rainier Ridao

The wave as a friendly greeting traces back to medieval times when knights raised their visors to show they meant no harm. Its simplicity and universal appeal have made it a common gesture worldwide, transcending language barriers. However, in some countries like Nigeria and South Korea, certain types of waving can still carry offensive connotations.

Image: Amina Atar

The handshake might be one of the oldest hand gestures on this list, so it’s hard to be sure of its origins. Yet, there is evidence that it was already in use 3,000 years ago, as a way to seal alliances. In ancient Greece it was called dexiosis, and was practised as early as the 5th century BC. While the gesture is found in many cultures, the specifics as to when and how it should be used vary significantly.

Image: José Martín Ramírez Carrasco

Pointing likely originated as a practical gesture to indicate objects or directions, making it one of humanity's oldest forms of communication. Fascinatingly, it is the first communicative gesture to develop in human infants, and linguists believe it plays a crucial role in language acquisition. However, despite its universal utility, many cultures consider pointing at other people with the index finger to be rude or disrespectful.

Image: sydney Rae

The military salute, like the wave, originates in the medieval practice of knights raising their helmets as a gesture of recognition and peaceful intentions. By the 18th century, it had evolved into a formal military custom to signify respect and camaraderie. Today, variations of the salute can be seen across armed forces worldwide, each adapted to reflect the unique traditions and protocols of different nations.

Image: Vince Fleming

While the phrase "give me five" was already slang for a type of handshake, the high five most likely evolved from the "low five," a gesture rooted in African-American culture since the 1920s. The first documented use of the high five occurred in 1977, credited to Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers. It quickly became associated with sports, symbolizing shared triumphs and camaraderie.

Image: Alexis Fauvet

The fist bump can trace its origins to boxers who were instructed to touch gloves at the start of a contest. However, its popularization is a relatively recent phenomenon, gaining traction in sports and youth culture during the 1990s as a more casual alternative to the handshake. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the fist bump became a common greeting, as shaking hands was discouraged to help slow the spread of the virus.

Image: Guillermo Latorre

While the origins of clapping as a form of applause are difficult to pinpoint, it is a common practice in many cultures. One of its earliest documented uses dates back to ancient Roman theater, where audiences clapped or waved pieces of cloth to express approval for performances. The percussive sound of clapping has also found its place in music, particularly in genres like funk, gospel, doo-wop, and flamenco.

Image: Igor Omilaev

The "OK" gesture, made by forming a circle with the thumb and index finger, became popular in 19th-century America as a symbol for "all correct." However, its origins trace back to classical antiquity, where a thumb and forefinger touching was thought to mimic kissing lips, often used as a romantic gesture. It wasn’t until Roman rhetoricians began using it during public speeches that the gesture gained its modern connotation of approval or assent.

Image: Dayne Topkin

The crossed fingers gesture, often used to wish for luck, has its origins in ancient Christianity, where it was likely adopted for its resemblance to the Cross of Christ. Over time, it also became associated with telling lies, especially among children who use it as an excuse for telling a white lie or invalidating a promise.

Image: Towfiqu barbhuiya

Though likely as old as human frustration itself, the facepalm gesture became globally famous through internet memes, becoming a shorthand for disappointment or exasperation in both real life and online. Surprisingly, it’s not exclusive to humans—primates have been observed using similar gestures to signal a desire for solitude or to avoid social interaction.

FRUITFUL CHANGES

10 Common Fruits That Used To Be Completely Different

Image: Jacopo Maia

As humanity's agricultural practices evolved, crops changed shape, taste, and even color. And although we like to think of the fruits we know and love as timeless creations of nature, the truth is that they have also transformed over time—and a lot!

Here are 10 intriguing examples of fruits that underwent significant changes before becoming the fruits we know today.

Image: Anastasia Eremina

Bananas have an interesting (and complex) story. Initially, they weren’t the fleshy, tasty treats we know today, but were almost inedible and had enormous seeds in them. Through selective breeding over dozens of generations, humans transformed bananas into the sweet, seedless fruit we know today. But the changes didn’t stop there: in the first half of the twentieth century, the main banana cultivar in the world was victim to a mysterious disease that almost wiped out bananas completely, and they had to be replaced with a more resistant variety.

Image: Shelley Pauls

Wild apples were small, sour, and varied greatly in flavor and not necessarily for good. Over many centuries, humans chose to grow and eat the ones that were larger and more palatable, leading to sweeter fruits with a more consistent flavor. Our ancestors brought these "elite" seeds around with them while they traveled the world, giving rise to many of the cultivars we know today.

Image: Sahand Babali

Once, watermelons weren’t bigger than a peach. You might find that hard to believe, but most of what we now love about watermelons was selected for thousands of years. Unfortunately, this came at a cost. In the process, watermelons lost genetic diversity, and became more vulnerable to pests and diseases, making them harder to grow.

Image: Maja Petric

One of the earliest domesticated fruit crops, grapes have been a part of human history for millennia. How early grapes exactly looked is kind of a mystery, but we can guess that they were smaller and not all that sweet (starting to see a pattern here?). Fortunately, our ancestors loved the fruit so much that they bred hundreds of varieties, some for winemaking and others to feed their families.

Image: Jacek Dylag

What we call a strawberry is not even a berry. And, to be fair, they are not even a "purebred" fruit, but rather a "hybrid" of two different related species. The hybridization was intentional and was part of the domestication of wild strawberries—that were initially tiny and packed with too many seeds. We can thank this intense selection process for the sweet, juicy treat they are today.

Image: Ian Baldwin

Peaches originally appeared in China, and, according to botanical experts, they were way smaller than they are today and, allegedly, "tasted like a lentil." Yeah, we are as surprised as you. However, after nearly six thousand years of artificial selection, domesticated peaches grew to be 16 times larger, sweeter, and juicier than their wild counterparts, while also increasing the amount of nutrients essential to human survival.

Image: Max

Not even the timeless orange is safe here. Yeah, you guessed it, they used to be nothing like what we now expect of a standard orange, being generally smaller and bitter than today’s sweet and juicy cultivars. Interestingly, they were also the result of hybridization between two varieties of citrus we are still familiar with: pomelo (Citrus maxima) and mandarin (Citrus reticulata).

Image: Hitoshi Namura

Though avocados were only semi-domesticated, with early humans in the American continent choosing to grow wild varieties rather than keep specialized plantations, their evolutionary history is quite surprising. This fruit evolved at the beginning of the Cenozoic era, when the local megafauna (very large animals like the megatherium) ate it whole, helping its seeds begin their germination process within their stomachs. Relics of a long gone past, they were only saved from extinction by human intervention.

Image: Alexander Schimmeck

Similarly to avocados, the "king of fruits" is today considered an evolutionary anachronism, as its large seeds were once dispersed by now-extinct animals. However, as humans fell in love with the tasty fruit, mango species dispersed far from their original range, giving birth to hundreds of different varieties that resulted in an overall sweeter and less fibrous fruit.

Image: Juno Jo

Though little is known about its domestication, pineapples were already a staple crop of South American societies at least a millennia before Europeans arrived. The wild fruit had various uses, including making alcoholic beverages, medicines, and even crafting poison arrows. After contact, Europeans went bananas over this new exotic and strange-tasting fruit, but they were so expensive that most used them only as decoration and did not start to eat them until they began to rot.