Romantic kissing was an established practice in Mesopotamian societies as early as 4,500 years ago, according to a new article based on a variety of written sources, which also analyzes its possible role in the transmission of certain diseases. The article’s authors Trolls Punk Arbol of the University of Copenhagen and Sophie Lund of the University of Oxford indicate that, although the kissing tradition is probably older, documentary evidence places it about 1,000 years earlier than it is now. scientific community.
The article states that there is a body of unseen evidence for romantic-sexual kissing that exists in ancient Mesopotamian texts from 2,500 BCE, in ancient Mesopotamia, the name of the earliest human cultures that lived along the Euphrates Rivers in present-day Iraq. and the Tigris. and Syria, the people wrote on clay tablets in cuneiform script. Many thousands of these clay tablets have survived to the present day and contain clear examples that in ancient times kissing was considered a part of romantic intimacy, just as it could be part of friendships and relationships between family members, explains Arbøll. Are. “However, kissing should not be viewed as a custom that originated in only one region and spread from there, but rather – he believes – has been a practice in many ancient cultures over many millennia.”
Regarding its role in the development and spread of orally transmitted diseases such as herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), they believe that it cannot be treated as a sudden biological trigger that triggers the spread of specific pathogens. causes, as some research has shown suggested. Beyond its importance for social and sexual behavior, the presence and function of a romantic kiss may have a secondary and unintended effect on disease transmission, according to the article published in Science. Recent paleogenomic research has shown that kissing-transmissible pathogens common today, including HSV-1, Epstein–Barr virus and human parvovirus B19, were present in ancient and even prehistoric historical times.
Arbøll and Rasmussen reviewed ancient DNA, cultural artifacts, and ancient medical records to show that the presence of kissing diseases may be older and more widespread than some recent studies suggest. “Kissing does not appear to have emerged as an immediate behavioral adaptation in other contemporary societies, which inadvertently accelerated disease transmission,” say the authors, quoted by the University of Copenhagen. Humans typically display two main types of kissing: the friendly parent-child kiss and the romantic-sexual kiss, the researchers recall. The former is a widespread practice among humans across time and geography, but the latter is not culturally universal, but occurs in stratified societies.
