Humanity’s First Recorded Kiss Was Earlier Than We Thought

“My upper lip becomes moist, while my lower lip trembles! I shall embrace him, I shall kiss him.” —1900-1595 B.C.E. tablet from Sippar, Mesopotamia; translation by Nathan Wasserman, Akkadian Love Literature of the Third and Second Millennium B.C.E.

These breathless lines of cuneiform script, etched into a clay tablet some 4,000 years ago, are among the very first depictions of romantic kissing. But hints from archaeology and DNA suggest that humans were kissing long before they had the ability to tell about it in writing; the amorous act might even be as old as our species. Unfortunately, as kissing caught on so did a side effect—the spread of disease. Now, scientists studying the evolution of persistent pathogens are delving into the history of the kiss and trying to uncover smooching’s longtime role in their transmission.

Troels Pank Arbøll, a cuneiform expert at the University of Copenhagen who specializes in the history of medicine, co-wrote a perspective in Science this Thursday that explores the ancient history of kissing and its role in disease transmission. Arbøll and Sophie Lund Rasmussen pored over cuneiform writings from Mesopotamia, keying in on overlooked references to kissing and medical records describing disease. The study pushes back the often cited date for the oldest written evidence of the kiss, a 3,500-year-old Bronze Age manuscript from India. The authors describe Mesopotamian tablets 1,000 years older but, citing evidence from ancient art and DNA, Arbøll stresses the 4,500-year-old writings shouldn’t be thought of as the original cradle of kissing.

That’s because a kiss is fleeting and doesn’t leave much behind for scientists to uncover. “The origin of sexual romantic kissing must have been way further back into prehistory than we are able to detect with present methods,” Arbøll says.

Kissers may exhibit individual style, but researchers differentiate between two main types of kissing. The first is the type of peck one might expect from family or friends, which appears to be fairly ubiquitous among societies the world over. But the second type, the long, open-mouthed kiss favored by lovers, is the focus of this research.

Why would people lock lips and swap spit? The kiss’ allure is a matter of ongoing psychological and physiological research. Some suggest kissing helps humans size up potential mates. When going in for a smooch, one might encounter bad breath, for example, which would typically be a turnoff. That breath might also warn some part of your brain of decay, diseases or other indicators of unfitness. And that saliva passed mouth to mouth contains hormones and other compounds that may give the brain clues to determine a kissing partner really is suitable as a match.Kissing also builds pair bonding, and happier couples kiss more, some research shows, though experts can’t say exactly how it works. One reason may be that it simply feels good; while kissing, our sensitive lips and tongues trigger areas of the brain involved in increasing pleasure and decreasing stress.

Nonhuman primates have also been spotted smooching. Bonobos engage in mouth-to-mouth kissing as part of their sexual behavior. Chimps employ platonic kisses, which are part of their social interactions in the group. Might kisses have played the same kinds of roles in early Homo sapiens, meaning our proclivity to kiss could be as old as our species itself? Scientists don’t know.

Clear evidence exists that humans had sexual relations with Neanderthals—the proof can be seen in our DNA. But did they kiss? Scientists studying Neanderthal tooth plaque uncovered the genetic signature of a 48,000-year-old microorganism still found in human mouths today, and different from those of the era’s Neanderthals. How did it get there? Kissing is a definite possibility, though not the only one, as the two species might have also shared a meal.

Hints exist from art and archaeology as well. The embracing figures in the 11,000-year-old Ain Sakhri sculpture, the oldest to depict people making love, may well be locked in a passionate kiss as well. A lack of facial features makes this open to interpretation.

Cuneiform writing appeared around 3200 B.C.E. and for several hundred years seems limited to humdrum administrative texts. After a while, perhaps inevitably, the subject of amorous relations found its way into the Mesopotamian record—and with them the first references to kissing some 4,500 years ago.