Exclusive:
A new study has revealed that the first kiss was shared over 21.5 million years ago. And it’s not just humans who love a smooch…
Humans do it, monkeys do it and even giraffes, meerkats and polar bears do it… kissing. And incredible new research has revealed that kissing is an extremely long and lingering pastime. In fact, scientists say the very first kiss may have been planted over 21.5 million years ago.
The study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, found that kissing was probably something that great apes, the common ancestor of humans, enjoyed as much as we do now. “Humans, chimps, and bonobos all kiss,” explained lead researcher Dr Matilda Brindle, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Oxford. From that, she concluded, “it’s likely that their most recent common ancestor kissed. We think kissing probably evolved around 21.5 million years ago in the large apes.” Neanderthals too, may have puckered up, scientists say, something proven by saliva microbes. Neanderthals are an extinct group of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia from approximately 300,000 to 40,000 years ago and are the closest extinct human relatives of modern humans.
Research into DNA found modern humans and Neanderthals share a type of bacteria found in our spit known as an oral microbe. “That means that they must have been swapping saliva for hundreds of thousands of years after the two species split,” explained Dr Brindle.
But, for scientists, kissing poses something of a quandary. This is because a smooch has no obvious survival or reproductive benefits. Yet, despite this, it is something that is seen not just in many human societies, but across the animal kingdom from wolves to polar bears. With no biological reason for it…maybe we all just like doing it! Other theories range from grooming to assessing compatibility with a mate.
More research must be done, says Dr Brindle. “It’s important for us to understand that this is something we share with our non-human relatives,” she said. “We should be studying this behaviour, not just dismissing it as silly because it has romantic connotations in humans.” Watch this space…
