{"id":15516,"date":"2024-02-14T00:46:19","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T00:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/14\/humanitys-earliest-recorded-kiss-adds-new-twist-to-the-history-of-locking-lips\/"},"modified":"2024-02-14T00:46:19","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T00:46:19","slug":"humanitys-earliest-recorded-kiss-adds-new-twist-to-the-history-of-locking-lips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/14\/humanitys-earliest-recorded-kiss-adds-new-twist-to-the-history-of-locking-lips\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanity\u2019s earliest recorded kiss adds new twist to the history of locking lips"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cThe meeting of lips is the most perfect, the most divine sensation given to human beings, the supreme limit of happiness.\u201d <\/p>\n

So wrote the 19th century French author Guy de Maupassant in his 1882 short story, \u201cThe Kiss.\u201d He wasn\u2019t alone in his flowery thoughts about kissing. Romantic kisses have long been celebrated in songs, poems and stories, commemorated in art and film. <\/p>\n

No one knows for sure when humans first figured out that mouth-to-mouth contact could be used for romance and erotic pleasure, but scientists reported in May 2023 that people were locking lips at least 4,500 years ago. The findings, published in the journal Science, pushed back the history of the practice by about 1,000 years. <\/p>\n

\u201cKissing has been practiced much longer than perhaps a lot of us realized, or at least had thought about,\u201d said lead study author Dr. Troels Pank Arb\u00f8ll, an assistant professor of\u00a0Assyriology \u2014 the study of Assyria and the rest of Mesopotamia \u2014 at the University of Copenhagen. <\/p>\n

Thousands of clay tablets from Mesopotamia survive to the present; their references to kissing shed light on romantic intimacy in the ancient world, the researchers reported. <\/p>\n

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Related article<\/span> 6 historical mysteries that scientists finally cracked in 2023 \u2014 and one they didn\u2019t<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThis fascinating case study adds to a growing body of scientific research on romantic\/sexual kissing, and helps us understand kissing\u2019s origins in human social behavior and in intimate life specifically,\u201d said evolutionary biologist Dr. Justin R. Garcia, a professor of gender studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. Garcia, who investigates the culture and evolution of human intimacy at the Kinsey Institute, was not involved in the research. <\/p>\n

When de Maupassant wrote his heartfelt descriptions of loving kisses, he probably wasn\u2019t thinking too hard about how kissing arose in the first place amid civilizations of the past. But the origins of this \u201cmost divine sensation\u201d are deeply rooted in human history and evolution, and there is likely much about its role and significance in ancient cultures that is yet to be discovered, the study authors wrote. <\/p>\n

Passionate kisses<\/h3>\n

Previously, the oldest recorded evidence of kissing was attributed to the Vedas, a group of Indian scriptural texts that date back to around 1500 BC and are foundational to the Hindu religion. One of the volumes, the Rig Veda, describes people touching their lips together. Erotic kissing was also featured in great detail in another ancient Indian text: the Kama Sutra, a guide to sexual pleasure dating to the third century AD. Modern scholars therefore concluded that romantic kisses likely originated in India. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs an Assyriologist, I study cuneiform writing,\u201d Arb\u00f8ll said. Cuneiform, in which characters are pressed into tablets using cut triangular reeds, was invented around 3200 BC. Early cuneiform was used by scribes for bookkeeping, Arb\u00f8ll explained. But around 2600 BC \u2014 perhaps even earlier \u2014 people began recording stories about their gods. <\/p>\n

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Related article<\/span> Meet the animals with love lives more complicated than yours<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIn one of these myths, we get this description that these gods had intercourse and then kissed,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s clear evidence of sexual romantic kissing.\u201d <\/p>\n

Within a few centuries, writing had become more widespread across Mesopotamia. With that came more records of daily life, with mentions of kisses traded by married couples and by unmarried people as an expression of desire. <\/p>\n

Some examples cautioned about the perils of kissing; to kiss a priestess sworn to a form of celibacy \u201cwas believed to deprive the kisser of the ability to speak,\u201d according to the study.\u00a0 Another prohibition addressed the impropriety of kissing in the street; that this warning had to be made at all, hinted that kissing was \u201ca very everyday sort of action,\u201d albeit one that was preferably practiced in private, Arb\u00f8ll said. <\/p>\n

Across thousands of cuneiform tablets kissing isn\u2019t the most mentioned topic, \u201cbut it is attested regularly,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t talk, just kiss<\/h3>\n

Humans aren\u2019t the only animals that kiss \u2014 so do our closest primate relatives. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) trade kisses as greetings. For bonobos (Pan paniscus), kissing is part of their very frequent sex play; they copulate face-to-face and often engage in \u201cintense tongue-kissing,\u201d wrote primatologist Frans B.M. De Waal, a behavioral biologist at Emory University in Atlanta. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that romantic kissing evolved in primates as a way to evaluate fitness in a potential mate, \u201cthrough chemical cues communicated in saliva or breath,\u201d Arb\u00f8ll and Rasmussen wrote. <\/p>\n

But kissing isn\u2019t all sociability, fun and pleasure. One less enjoyable side effect of kissing in humans is the spread of infectious disease. Another study, authored in July 2022 by more than two dozen researchers from institutions in Europe, the UK and Russia, stated that the rapid rise of a lineage of the herpes simplex virus HSV-1 in Europe about 5,000 years ago, was \u201cpotentially linked to the introduction of new cultural practices such as the advent of sexual-romantic kissing,\u201d following waves of migration into Europe from the Eurasian grasslands. <\/p>\n

But Arb\u00f8ll and Rasmussen suspected that romantic kissing became accepted in Bronze Age Europe, and not because of migration alone. It\u2019s more likely, they wrote, that the practice of kissing was already at least passingly familiar to people in Europe because it was common in Mesopotamia \u2014 and possibly in other parts of the ancient world \u2014 and wasn\u2019t just restricted to India. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt must have been known in a lot of ancient cultures,\u201d Arb\u00f8ll said. \u201cNot necessarily practiced, but at least known.\u201d <\/p>\n

Kissing then and now<\/h3>\n

Unlike the kisses shared between parents and children, which are thought to be \u201cubiquitous among humans across time and geography,\u201d romantic kisses are not common everywhere. Even today, many cultures shun romantic kissing, Arb\u00f8ll and Rasmussen reported. <\/p>\n

In a September 2015 study coauthored by Garcia, researchers surveyed 168 modern cultures worldwide, finding that only 46% of those societies practiced kissing that was sexual or romantic. Such kissing, the authors reported, was far less common in foraging communities, and was more likely to be found in societies that had distinct social classes, \u201cwith more complex societies being more likely to kiss in this manner.\u201d <\/p>\n

While Arb\u00f8ll and Rasmussen\u2019s study suggests that romantic kissing wasn\u2019t unusual in ancient Mesopotamia, the authors point out that there were still taboos about who could kiss and where they could do it \u2014 and that romantic kissing was far from a universal experience across all cultures. <\/p>\n

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Related article<\/span> Stone Age megastructure found submerged in the Baltic Sea wasn\u2019t formed by nature, scientists say<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThis article is an important reminder that widespread kissing we see represented all around us in western society today was not always, and is still not always, a part of everyone\u2019s displays of intimacy,\u201d Garcia said. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s also possible that if kissing in the ancient world was more widely distributed than once thought, it was \u201cperhaps more universal than in modern times,\u201d Arb\u00f8ll added. \u201cIt opens some questions that are interesting for future research.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine.<\/em><\/em> <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe meeting of lips is the most perfect, the most divine sensation given to human beings, the supreme limit of happiness.\u201d So wrote the 19th century French author Guy de Maupassant in his 1882 short story, \u201cThe Kiss.\u201d He wasn\u2019t alone in his flowery thoughts about kissing. Romantic kisses have long been celebrated in songs, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15517,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}