kissing is not a quirky human habit but an inherited feature within the great ape lineage, one that likely emerged between sixteen and twenty-one million years ago.
Yet a new comparative analysis1 by Matilda Brindle, Catherine Talbot, and Stuart West argues that mouth-to-mouth contact has a far longer lineage than many researchers assumed.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-11-19-ape-ancestors-and-neanderthals-likely-kissed-new-analysis-finds
The results indicate that kissing is an ancient trait in the large apes, evolving in the ancestor to that group 21.5 - 16.9 million years ago. Kissing was retained over the course of evolution and is still present in most of the large apes.
While kissing may seem like an ordinary or universal behaviour, it is only documented in 46% of human cultures,’ said Dr Catherine Talbot, co-author and Assistant Professor in the College of Psychology at Florida Institute of Technology.

No comments:
Post a Comment