A kiss is the touch or pressing of one's lips against another person or an object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely. Depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, romance, sexual attraction, sexual activity, sexual arousal, affection, respect, greeting, peace, and good luck, among many others. In some situations, a kiss is a ritual, formal or symbolic gesture indicating devotion, respect, or a sacramental. The word came from Old English ("to kiss"), in turn from ("a kiss").
History
Anthropologists disagree on whether kissing is an instinctual or learned behaviour. Those who believe kissing to be an instinctual behaviour cite similar behaviours in other animals such as bonobos, which are known to kiss after fighting - possibly to restore peace. Others believe that it is a learned behaviour, having evolved from activities such as suckling or premastication in early human cultures passed on to modern humans. Another theory posits that the practice originated in males during the paleolithic era tasting the saliva of females to test their health in order to determine whether they would make a good partner for procreation. The fact that not all human cultures kiss is used as an argument against kissing being an instinctual behaviour in humans; only around 90% of the human population is believed to practice kissing.
The earliest reference to kissing-like behavior comes from the Vedas, Sanskrit scriptures that informed Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, around 3,500 years ago, according to Vaughn Bryant, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University who specialized in the history of the kiss. However, recent studies challenge the belief that kissing originated in South Asia around 1500 BCE. Evidence from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt suggests that kissing was documented as early as 2500 BCE. Kissing was present in both romantic and familial contexts in ancient Mesopotamia, but it was subject to social regulation, and public display of the sexual aspect of kissing was discouraged. Kissing also had a role in rituals. The act of kissing may have unintentionally facilitated the transmission of orally transmitted microorganisms, potentially leading to disease. Advances in ancient DNA extraction have revealed pathogen genomes in human remains, including those transmitted through saliva. The shift in dominant lineages of the herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) during the Bronze Age implies that cultural practices like romantic-sexual kissing could have contributed to its transmission. Ancient Mesopotamian medical texts mention a disease called bu'shanu, which may have been related to HSV-1 infection. While kissing itself was not directly associated with disease transmission in Mesopotamia, certain cultural and religious factors governed its practice.
Both lip and tongue kissing are mentioned in Sumerian poetry:
Kissing is described in the surviving ancient Egyptian love poetry from the New Kingdom, found on papyri excavated at Deir el-Medina:
The earliest reference to kissing in the Old Testament is in , when Jacob deceives his father to obtain his blessing:
features the first man-woman kiss in the Bible, when Jacob flees from Esau and goes to the house of his uncle Laban:
Much later, there is the oft-quoted verse from :
In Cyropaedia (370 BC), Xenophon wrote about the Persian custom of kissing in the lips upon departure while narrating the departure of Cyrus the Great () as a boy from his Median kinsmen. According to Herodotus (5th century BC), when two Persians meet, the greeting formula expresses their equal or inequal status. They do not speak; rather, equals kiss each other on the mouth, and in the case where one is a little inferior to the other, the kiss is given on the cheek.
During the later Classical period, affectionate mouth-to-mouth kissing was first described in the Hindu epic the Mahabharata.
Anthropologist Vaughn Bryant argues kissing spread from India to Europe after Alexander the Great conquered parts of Punjab in northern India in 326 BCE.
The Romans were passionate about kissing and talked about several types of kissing. Kissing the hand or cheek was called an . Kissing on the lips with mouth closed was called a , which was used between relatives. A kiss of passion was called a .
Kissing was not always an indication of eros, or love, but also could show respect and rank as it was used in Medieval Europe.
The study of kissing started sometime in the nineteenth century and is called philematology, which has been studied by people including Cesare Lombroso, Ernest Crawley, Charles Darwin, Edward Burnett Tylor and modern scholars such as Elaine Hatfield.