Recent research hypothesizes that the earliest evidence of human kissing on the lips originated in a very specific geographic area in South Asia 3,500 years ago, and may have spread from there to other regions while accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus.

However, writing a new article in the journal Dr. Troels Punk Arbell and Dr. According to Sophie Lund Rasmussen Science Kissing was already common practice in the Middle East 4,500 years ago, according to a number of written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies. And possibly much sooner, pushing the earliest documents of kissing back 1,000 years compared to what was previously accepted in the scientific community.

“In ancient Mesopotamia, the name of the early human cultures that existed between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in present-day Iraq and Syria, people wrote in cuneiform on clay tablets. Thousands of these clay tablets have survived to the present day. Troels Pank Arbell, Mesopotamian medical history expert Dr. . “So kissing should not be seen as a tradition that only originated and spread from any one region, but instead seems to have been practiced in many ancient cultures for several millennia.”

Adds Sophie Lund Rasmussen: “In fact, studies of humans’ closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, have shown that both species kiss; it’s cross-cultural.”

Kissing as a potential contagious

The practice of kissing, in addition to its importance for social and sexual behavior, may have played an undesirable role in the transmission of microorganisms, potentially leading to the spread of viruses among humans.

However, the suggestion that a kiss could be seen as an immediate biological trigger behind the spread of certain pathogens is more controversial. The spread of herpes simplex virus 1, which researchers believe may have been accelerated by the onset of kissing, is an example of:

“There is a substantial amount of medical texts from Mesopotamia, and some of them talk about a disease whose symptoms are reminiscent of herpes simplex virus 1,” says Dr. Arbell.

He adds that it should be emphasized that ancient medical texts were influenced by various cultural and religious concepts and therefore cannot be read as they seem.

“However, it is interesting to note that there are some similarities between the disease known as buchanan in ancient medical texts in Mesopotamia and the symptoms caused by herpes simplex infections. Buchan’s disease was mainly in or around the mouth and throat, and the symptoms were blisters in or around the mouth, which is one of the predominant signs of herpes infection. contained.’

“If the practice of kissing was widespread and deeply rooted in some ancient societies, the consequences of kissing for pathogen transmission were probably more or less constant,” says Dr. Rasmussen. Rasmussen.

Arbell and Dr. Rasmussen concluded that future findings from ancient DNA research, which will inevitably spark controversy about complex historical events and social interactions such as kissing as a driver of early disease transmission, would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach.