The Surprising History of Kissing: From Mesopotamia to Modern Day

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Oxford have argued that romantic-sexual kissing was documented much earlier than previously thought, in at least 2500 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia or modern-day Iraq and Syria. This contradicts a previous study that suggested the modern strain of the HSV-1 virus, which causes facial herpes, began about 5,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, an era that also recorded the earliest known written record of romantic kissing in a manuscript from South Asia dated to 1500 BCE. The researchers argue that kissing was likely not a significant trigger behind the spread of pathogens such as HSV-1.