The kiss allegedly developed from ants observation. The death penalty threatened him, the Finns considered him extremely disgusting, the Romans, in turn, a sign of respect. Let's dive into the fantastic story of kisses.
Ants and Kamasutra
Vaughan Bryant, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, in his professional publication on kisses, says the first mention of the kiss dates back to 1000-2000 BC. Excavations in northern India have confirmed this, and it seems that kissing was then a matter of politeness. Of course, this was not a kiss in the same concept as we know it now. The kiss of that time was more like sniffing, since part of it was rubbing the nose on the face of the partner.
1000 years later, the kiss appears in the Kama Sutra, but this time it is, in fact, an erotic kiss, and the Kama Sutra mentions it more than 200 times. Probably, Alexander the Great brought the kiss from India to the west (in particular, to Greece), and among the Greeks this method instantly gained popularity. Since then, it has spread to other countries.
But there is also a theory that claims that the kisses came from the ancient Romans, who noticed how the ants touched their jaws, as if “chatting nicely”. So they decided to try it themselves. Another theory is that kisses came from practice, when mothers chewed their children food, and then put it in the mouths of the babies.
Nevertheless, for example, the ancient Finns considered the kiss the peak of profanity and rudeness, despite their habit of swimming together naked. For the Romans, the kiss was a tribute to the status of man, even differentiated parts of the body to which he belonged. A kiss came to America with Columbus, and probably this was the only thing he brought with him, and for which the indigenous people were grateful. In the 16th century, in Naples, a kiss was considered an offense for which the death penalty threatened.