Clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia date earliest recorded kiss to 4,500 years ago
CTV
The romantic kiss may have existed for 1,000 years longer than previously estimated, dating back to ancient Mesopotamia, a new scientific article suggests.
The romantic kiss may have existed for 1,000 years longer than previously estimated, dating back to ancient Mesopotamia, a new scientific article suggests.
The article, published in the journal Science on Thursday, looked at surviving clay tablets from Mesopotamia and dated the earliest recorded kiss to 4,500 years ago.
"In ancient Mesopotamia, which is the name for the early human cultures that existed between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in present-day Iraq and Syria, people wrote in cuneiform script on clay tablets," study author Troels Pank Arboll, an expert on the history of medicine in Mesopotamia, said in a news story from the University of Copenhagen.
"Many thousands of these clay tablets have survived to this day, and they contain clear examples that kissing was considered a part of romantic intimacy in ancient times, just as kissing could be part of friendships and family members' relations."
The researchers say recent studies have suggested that kissing originated in a specific geographical area in South Asia 3,500 years ago and spread to other regions.
But in their article for Science, they suggest that kissing was already well established in the Middle East.
"Therefore, kissing should not be regarded as a custom that originated exclusively in any single region and spread from there but rather appears to have been practised in multiple ancient cultures over several millennia," Arboll said.