14 DAY TRIAL // As part of a new research project focusing on kissing, a group of scientists at Nevada State and Indiana Universities in the US compiled and studied data on how as many as 168 distinct cultures from all across the globe view this practice.
Their findings, detailed in a paper published earlier this week in the journal American Anthropologist, surprised the team a great deal. More so since they blatantly contradict previous studies on kissing.
Not all that many people indulge in smooching
It was previously argued that some 90% of the world's cultures welcome romantic kissing and view it as the best way for two people who are in love to show affection.
As it turns out, this might not be the case. Au contraire, the joint Nevada State and Indiana Universities study found that merely 46% of the world's cultures engage in romantic kissing. On one occasion, the team even documented a culture that regarded kissing as downright disgusting.
“Despite frequent depictions of kissing in a wide range of material culture, we found no evidence that the romantic–sexual kiss is a human universal or even a near universal.”
“The romantic–sexual kiss was present in a minority of cultures sampled (46%),” the researchers behind this latest study on kissing write in the journal American Anthropologist, as cited by Phys Org.
It all depends on the particularities of a culture
The investigation also uncovered that romantic kissing is a common practice in complex societies. Primitive ones whose livelihood revolves around hunting, fishing and working the land, on the other hand, are not all that interested in locking lips.
The fact that modern hunter-gatherer societies do not practice romantic kissing as a means for couples to show affection hints that, in ancient times, early humans did not kiss at all. Rather, our habit of locking lips with our loved ones must be a rather new behavior for the species.