The Origin of Kissing ~ Martin Dobrovodsky
You’re kissing your girlfriend deeply and passionately, when suddenly you wonder: how did kissing begin? Okay, okay, that’s probably the last thing you’d be wondering at that moment … but maybe you’re wondering now. Well, in How Did Sex Begin?, R. Brasch goes into some of the views about the origin of this very intimate show of affection. It is thought to have begun way back when there were just unicellular organisms. The sexual union of these organisms involved the linking of their “mouths” in order to exchange hereditary nuclei. [Images: avoiding a kiss + puckering is a nonverbal kiss indicator]
The practice in humans is traced back to primitive times, when mothers premasticated food in their mouths before transferring it to the mouths of their babies by means of a “kiss.” From here, kissing developed into a show of familial affection. But it wasn’t until the sixth century – in what is now France, not surprisingly – that society accepted kissing as a way for adults to express their love and affection for one another (And the rest, as they say, is kiss-story). A more recent theory about the purpose of kissing suggests that it is a way of gauging your partner’s fidelity. For instance, if you notice that your girlfriend isn’t kissing you as passionately as she used to, you might suspect that she’s been locking lips with someone else. Even more telling would be the taste of someone else on her lips. As for the appeal of kissing, Brasch suggests that it has to do with the fact that, of all parts of the body, only the mouth is able to taste and feel at the same time. Also, he says, it recalls the nourishment of suckling at a mother’s breast.
If you want to learn more about body language in dating, be sure to check out the Ebook Body Language Project: Dating, Attraction and Sexual Body Language.