Kissing is a form of bonding and recognizing kin. Apes and birds feed their young by passing on chewed up food mouth to mouth.<p>Sexual kissing could have been a way that was passed down from gestures that were used to recognize those who aren’t kin.<p>The term for it is relic gesture.<p><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/science-of-kissing-why-a-kiss-is-not-just-a-kiss-1.3380704" rel="nofollow">https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/scie...</a><p>[..] What are the origins of kissing?<p>In early human societies, it is believed mothers weaned their babies by chewing up their food and then passing it to their babies by lip-to-lip contact. Evolutionary biologists suggest that erotic kissing is a so-called relic gesture, passed down through cultures from these early practices of the mother’s deep kissing and the infant’s searching tongue movements.<p>“If young lovers exploring each other’s mouths with their tongues feel the ancient comfort of parental mouth feeding, this may help them to increase their mutual trust and thereby their pair-bonding,” writes Desmond Morris in his classic book on human behaviour, Manwatching.[..]<p>Desmond Morris’ Manwatching is an excellent read.
Bonobos do it. I'd wager humans' common ancestors practiced it, and we unlearned it over time on some groups.<p>It's interesting that our two closest primate relatives are Bonobos and Chimpanzees. Bonobos are highly sexual and their sex habits match the full range of human sexual behaviors. Chimpanzees practice tribal warfare can be horrific murderers. Humans exceed both our relative species in both of these areas.
>the global ethnographic evidence suggests that [kissing] is common in only 46% (77) of the cultures sampled<p>Now this is interesting. I live in the US where kissing is a big part of the culture, but I've never personally liked it. I like women and romance, I enjoy sex obviously, but I never "got" kissing. Ever since my first kiss at ~15 years old, I always assumed something was wrong with me.
Didn't work for me, had to use the google cache version.[1]<p>1. <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rkHSE4Dp5sIJ:https://hraf.yale.edu/romantic-or-disgusting-passionate-kissing-is-not-a-human-universal/+&cd=1&hl=sv&ct=clnk&gl=se&client=firefox-b-d" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rkHSE4...</a>
After learning that there are people walking around with no inner monologue, I am no longer surprised by these debunked universalities. People share a lot less in common than what popular culture would have use think, again no surprise when considering the effects of popular culture.
Well yeah, no kidding. I was raised American but still never got the appeal of the "spit-swapping" variety; It always struck me as disgusting, though I don't mind normal "on-the-lips" type. For some reason, people expect that everyone likes that sort of thing and think I'm weird for not wanting to.
Reminds me of “boko-maru” of the made-up religion [1] in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.<p>1. <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism</a>
It's certainly not universally viewed as acceptable intimacy by all cultures. Even more certainly, it's not viewed as acceptable intimacy in public. In some cultures, you're about as likely to see a couple kiss in public as you are to see them have sex in public.<p>> Similarly, the authors state that “no ethnographer working with Sub-Saharan African, New Guinea, or Amazonian foragers or horticulturalists reported having witnessed any occasion in which their study populations engaged in a romantic–sexual kiss”<p>That doesn't mean they don't kiss, of course. Consider that an ethnographer studying people in Tehran would probably conclude their society simply doesn't have homosexual behaviour. If nothing else, I would imagine that, like with other forms of intimacy often viewed as deviant (for example, anal or oral sex), clever people frequently rediscover it, and some like it, and then practice it, even if in secret.