New Delhi: Vedic Indians were pioneers of lip-to-lip smooching, with their erotic wisdom even transferring to Greek invaders when Alexander the Great rolled around in 326 BCE — or so goes a popular theory about the origins of kissing.
However, new research suggests that Indians cannot hog all the credit — or even the blame — when it comes to the evolution of viruses like herpes simplex type 1 (HSV-1), which causes an infection that is mainly transmitted through oral contact.
Romantic lip-locking, in fact, pre-dates the Vedic age by a good millennium, according to a paper, titled ‘The ancient history of kissing’, published this week in the journal Science and authored by cross-cultural researcher Troels Pank Arbøll from the University of Copenhagen and biologist Sophie Lund Rasmussen of the University of Oxford.
Noting that recent studies cite an early Vedic document dating to approximately 1500 BCE as the first known record of “human romantic-sexual kissing”, the paper points out “overlooked evidence” documenting smooching in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Syria) and Egypt from at least 2500 BCE onward.
“Humanity’s earliest recorded kiss occurs in sources from the ancient Middle East,” the paper says.
Notably, the history of kissing is of interest to researchers not just because of the insights it provides on romantic and sexual interactions through the ages, but also because of the role that it may have played in the spread of disease and in the evolution of certain viruses such as HSV-1.
Indeed, microbes may provide clues about kissing from times for which there are no written records. The Science paper, for instance, cites a 2017 study that surmised Neanderthals and humans may have kissed each other on the lips more than 100,000 years ago.
This hypothesis, published in a 2017 Nature paper, came about due to genetic evidence of the evolution of a microbe called Methanobrevibacter oralis, found in human mouths and also in hardened Neanderthal tooth plaque.
Here’s a look at how the new research changes what we know about kissing, from the point of view of the history of human sexual expression as well as disease transmission.
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What’s the first record of kissing?
So far, scientists have largely believed that the oldest existing evidence of kissing is from India.
Research by the late Vaughn Bryant, who was a Texas A&M University anthropology professor, is often cited to support this theory.
Bryant has argued that it was only around 1500 BCE that Vedic texts started mentioning people “touching” with their mouths.
His theory is that after Alexander the Great conquered parts of India in 326 BC, his generals returned to their homelands and brought their newfound knowledge of kissing with them.
“References to kissing did not appear until 1500 BC, when historians found four major texts in Vedic Sanskrit literature of India that suggested an early form of kissing,” Bryant said in a separate 2010 statement.
“There are references to the custom of rubbing and pressing noses together. This practice, it is recorded, was a sign of affection, especially between lovers. This is not kissing as we know it today, but we believe it may have been its earliest beginning,” he added.
“About 500 to 1,000 years later, the epic Mahabharata contained references suggesting that affection between people was expressed by lip kissing. Later, the Kama Sutra, a classic text on erotica, contained many examples of erotic kissing and kissing techniques,” he further noted.
But the new Science paper has challenged the premise that kissing evolved solely in India.
The researchers point out substantial evidence from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt dating back to at least 2500 BCE, suggesting that lip kissing was practised independently in multiple ancient cultures.
This evidence primarily comes from records from the Sumerian and Akkadian languages, written on clay tablets, from Mesopotamia.
Within these texts, the earliest examples in the Sumerian language describe kissing in relation to erotic acts, possibly after sex, with the focus on lip-to-lip contact.
In the Akkadian language, references to kissing fall under two categories — the first being “friendly and familial affection”, and the second pertaining to “an erotic action”, the paper says.
Moreover, the researchers note that two prehistoric sculptures from Ain Sakhri (near Bethlehem) and Malta imply that humans began kissing romantically long before the invention of writing.
The viral factor
Around 67 per cent of the global population carries the HSV-1 virus, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) fact-sheet. This virus is the main cause of oral herpes which comes with symptoms such as cold sores or blisters in and around the mouth.
So, where did this widespread and persistent virus come from? A team of scientists, led by the University of Cambridge, sequenced ancient genomes from the virus and published their findings last June in the journal Science Advances.
They hypothesised that the HSV-1 strain may have become more prevalent over time due to changes in human behaviour. These include the act of locking lips while love-making, which may have changed the way that the herpes virus behaved, introducing genomic changes linked to oral transmission.
A University of Cambridge release on this study says the Indian subcontinent may have been the starting point, stating that the earliest known records of kissing were found in ancient “Bronze Age” texts, suggesting that the custom of kissing may have travelled west over time due to migration.
However, the new Science paper puts a question on this assumption.
According to the researchers, kissing seems to have evolved independently in separate populations and was practised in multiple ancient cultures over several millennia.
The researchers cite studies that suggest kissing evolved as a way of “testing waters”. A potential sexual partner’s suitability was evaluated through chemical cues communicated in the saliva or breath during a kiss. It mediated feelings of attachment between individuals and facilitated sexual arousal.
The fact that mouth-to-mouth kissing with a romantic-sexual purpose is seen in bonobos, and platonic kissing to manage social relationships is documented in chimpanzees, may hint at the presence and evolution of this behaviour in human ancestors.
“Because this behaviour did not emerge abruptly or in a specific society but appears to have been practiced in multiple ancient cultures over several millennia, the kiss cannot be regarded as a sudden biological trigger causing a spread of specific pathogens, as recently proposed,” the researchers write.
“The debate about kissing as a vector of disease transmission illustrates the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to produce a holistic representation of historical disease transmission through social interactions,” the authors conclude.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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