As if we did not know that! 😊 Did the kiss become more common with human fur-loss?
"... Clay tablets from Ancient Mesopotamia dating to 2500 B.C.E. provide the earliest archaeological evidence of romantic kissing. The behavior may even be older than civilization itself, with some studies suggesting neanderthals swapped spit with modern humans— and shared each other’s oral microbes—more than 100,000 years ago. ...
Why did humans start kissing in the first place? Some researchers have suggested it evolved from sniffing, nursing babies, or even parents passing chewed-up food to their children. But in an article published last week in Evolutionary Anthropology, evolutionary psychologist Adriano Lameira suggests that kissing got its start as a fur grooming ritual still observed in modern-day chimpanzees and other great apes. After searching through its companion’s coat for parasites or debris, he explains, one ape will typically pucker its lips and remove the offending item with its mouth. ..."
From the abstract:
"A kiss has been a signal of special affection across continents and cultures for millennia. Between times and peoples, social norms invariably prescribe kissing to specific affiliations and contexts, implying deeper biological bases. Why the protruding of the lips and slight suction when touching another? Capuchin monkeys stick their fingers in their friends' eyes as sign of affection, why have humans developed kissing? Here I briefly review proposed hypotheses for the evolution of human kissing. Great ape social behavior suggests that kissing is likely the conserved final mouth-contact stage of a grooming bout when the groomer sucks with protruded lips the fur or skin of the groomed to latch on debris or a parasite. The hygienic relevance of grooming decreased over human evolution due to fur-loss, but shorter sessions would have predictably retained a final “kissing” stage, ultimately, remaining the only vestige of a once ritualistic behavior for signaling and strengthening social and kinship ties in an ancestral ape."
The evolutionary origin of human kissing (open access)
"Did the first kiss look like this?"
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