Ingrid Bergman is said to have put forward one of the most remarkable definitions of the act of touching lips: “A kiss is a lovely gesture that nature has designed to stop words when they are no longer needed.” It’s a trick.”
But some scholars are looking at cuneiform writing on clay tablets that are more than 4,500 years old to try to clear up the ambiguity of words associated with kissing.
Commentary article published on May 18. chemistry It explains how the text’s mention of kissing appears even further back, closer and closer to the invention of the character itself. The first documented evidence of kissing is often cited as being from an Indian document of 1500 BC, but the article is dated at least 2500 BC to Mesopotamia, found in the story of Smoothing. and a “substantial corpus of overlooked evidence” regarding kissing in Egypt, depicting both gods and commoners.
A kiss can leave more than just the magic of the moment. Memories can be supplemented by oral herpes and Epstein-Barr virus.It is speculated that Neanderthals and modern humans may have touched their lips in the presence of this microbe more than 100,000 years ago. methanobrevibacter oralis For both species, Troels Pank Arbol, an Assyrian scholar at the University of Copenhagen who has studied the medical history of ancient Mesopotamia and co-authored the paper, said: chemistry.Mr Arbor said Scientific American About the ancient origins of the romantic kiss.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What is the first recorded romantic kiss?
The earliest evidence is in a language called Sumerian, which has no modern analogues. Shortly thereafter, texts were also found written in an ancient Semitic language called Akkadian, which is related to today’s Hebrew and Arabic. Somewhere before 2500 B.C.E., we begin to find written mythological documents, including stories and spells about gods. The presence of copulation and kissing in these stories clearly indicates that it is a sexual kiss.
Centuries after these early references, outside the states and temples, a growing number of personal documents are beginning to find references to sexual kissing practiced by members of society.
There are two types of kisses. What’s the difference between the two?
We distinguish between so-called “parental kisses” and “friendly kisses”. Parents kissing their children, friends kissing each other, and acts of submission common in ancient Mesopotamia. For example, where to kiss the feet of the ruler.
Sexually romantic kisses: Kisses related to sexual acts or love.
Do all societies kiss?
In anthropology, research has shown that while sexual and romantic kisses are not universal to all human cultures, parental kisses appear to be relatively ubiquitous. Researchers have found that in modern societies, sexual and romantic kisses tend to occur where social hierarchies are high and where many people are present. [social] In class, people come into contact with others they don’t know.
it’s hard to say whether [kissing] was universal. The societies that created these references are often also highly stratified societies. So it’s possible that the same trend we’re seeing today is confirmed, but it could be a coincidence.
The first kiss record is not the same as the first kiss. So what do we know about when the kiss actually started?
Previous research has suggested that the earliest documents are from India, suggesting that the kiss was brought to other parts of the world from India during a diffusion process. But now that we have evidence from Mesopotamia and Egypt, we can’t really speak to a single historical origin. If you look into prehistory, you can see some figurines that seem to indicate that kissing was practiced at that time. Neanderthals and humans are said to have kissed.
How do we know that?
The study we cite found microbes that were transmitted from Neanderthals to humans via saliva. It may have been by kissing, but the author also clarifies that they may have shared food.
What about our closest primates?
Bonobos kiss for sexual arousal, but chimpanzees use kissing to determine the suitability of a mate, in the sense that it has some chemistry. [scent and taste] A clue to determine compatibility. It seems to indicate that there is something very fundamental there, or that goes back far back in human history.
What is the biological purpose of kissing?
It has to do with mate compatibility, at least in part, and things like breath can indicate bad teeth, which can indicate bad genes. And then, of course, there is sexual arousal, but this also has to do with genetic inheritance.
What role did kissing play in disease transmission and disease recognition in ancient cultures?
Kissing didn’t seem to play a big role, at least from an ancient point of view. People had ideas about pollution. For example, in ancient Mesopotamia there were letters telling people not to drink from the cup of certain sick women or to lie in her bed. But that’s not how we conceptualize it. Because it was influenced by religion and people didn’t have a germ theory of disease. It’s entirely possible that they avoided kissing sick people, but kissing doesn’t seem to play a big role in these beliefs.
From the point of view of modern medicine, there are some clear examples of what diseases are transmitted by kissing. One of them, of course, is herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). However, our contention is that kissing has a wide geographical distribution and has been practiced for so long that it must have had a certain impact on disease transmission. It was used throughout those societies, so it wasn’t like a sudden acceleration of infection.
Were there ancient social rules about kissing? For example, what would happen if you kissed an ancient Mesopotamian priestess?
Iraqi sources dating from around 700 BC attribute the lack of language ability to kissing a priestess, who was probably not sexually active.
There are indications in ancient documents that society would have tried to regulate kissing. For example, there are indications that kissing a partner on the street was frowned upon and perhaps continued kissing as something done between married couples was preferred. But the problem is that when society tries to introduce these regulations, it usually points to the fact that it was common. So it’s most likely that there were far more kisses going on than we’re necessarily discovering.
Why is that part of kissing history so easy to miss?
There’s a lot that goes unrecorded in these everyday activities. If people wanted to look back on our time 1000 years from now, it would look very different from how most people actually lived. It’s always a question of survival of evidence. The farther back in history we go, the less and less text there is.
It is always interesting to go as far back in history as possible, and it affects how we study cultures and broader phenomena. However, I think there are also common human things that can be recognized beyond time and space.
