The Absolutely Disgusting Reason Humans Started Kissing

Kiss your assumptions goodbye.

You might think you know why humans like to kiss each other, but a new study published this month reveals the real history behind why we kiss.

Research conducted by Adriano R. Lameira, associate professor of psychology at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, concluded that kissing was once an evolutionary instinct, something done to groom another person.

“There is evidence that kissing is not a derivative signal of human emotion,” Lamela told the Daily Mail, believing that kissing was once part of the method of removing lice.

“Rather, it represents a surviving, vestigial, vestigial form of primate beauty that retains its ancestral form, context, and function.”

According to a study of ape behavior, “Kissing is likely the last mouth-contact phase retained in grooming behavior, when the groomer uses the protruding lips to suck on the fur or skin of the groomed subject to attach debris or parasites.”

“Given the high parasitic load on the ground, this makes grooming very important for hygiene purposes,” Lamela said.

But as humans evolved with less and less body hair, grooming became less necessary, eventually leaving only kissing as we know it today.

Lamela estimates that humans “turned into kissing apes” about 2 million to 4 million years ago. According to the Daily Mail, the earliest record of human kissing appeared in Mesopotamia around 2500 BC. in Asian literature.

However, he noted that how it came to be a sexual act “remains more speculative,” adding that kissing with “sexual intent” was a “special case” of such behavior and that further research was needed to determine whether kissing and how sex happens. Became so entangled.

“Kissing becomes a mutual mouth-to-mouth act only when it becomes a general practice for expressing affection,” he explains.

Kissing is now “a concrete symbol of trust and belonging,” Lamela added.

“Few natural human signals carry the symbolic meaning and social sanction of kissing,” Lamela said, adding that kissing is now “a concrete symbol of trust and belonging.”