Research revealed the date and place of the world’s first lip kiss; Reading

New Delhi: In a shocking revelation, researchers now report that lip kissing was practiced by the people of the ancient Middle East 4,500 years ago, pushing the oldest documentation for kissing back 1,000 years. Earlier research hypothesized that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographic location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it could have spread to other regions, along with herpes simplex virus 1. could hasten the spread.

Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Oxford, in a new article published in the journal Science, draw on a range of written sources from early Mesopotamian societies to suggest that kissing was already a well-established practice 4,500 years ago. was the Middle East. In ancient Mesopotamia, which is the name for the early human cultures that existed between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in present-day Iraq and Syria, people wrote in cuneiform script on clay tablets.

Doctor. Trolls Punk said, “Thousands of these clay tablets have survived to the present day, and they contain clear examples that in ancient times kissing was considered a part of romantic intimacy, just as kissing could be part of friendships and relationships between family members.” Is.” Arboll, an expert on the history of medicine in Mesopotamia. Therefore, kissing should not be regarded as a custom that specifically originated in any one region and spread from there, but rather appears to have been practiced in many ancient cultures over many centuries.”

In addition to its importance for social and sexual behavior, the practice of kissing may have played an inadvertent role in the transmission of microorganisms, potentially allowing viruses to spread to humans. However, the suggestion that kissing can be regarded as the sudden biological trigger behind the spread of particular pathogens is more dubious.

The spread of herpes simplex virus 1, which researchers have suggested may have been accelerated by the introduction of kissing, is a case in point. “There is a large collection of medical texts from Mesopotamia, some of which refer to a disease with symptoms reminiscent of herpes simplex virus 1,” Dr Arbol said.

In fact, bonobos and chimpanzees, the closest living relatives of humans, have shown that both species engage in kissing,” which may suggest that the practice of kissing is a fundamental behavior in humans, explaining why it is common across cultures. can be found,” added Dr Sophie Rasmussen.