
Passionate kissing is not a human universal (2015) - cdepman
https://hraf.yale.edu/romantic-or-disgusting-passionate-kissing-is-not-a-human-universal/
======
jelliclesfarm
Kissing is a form of bonding and recognizing kin. Apes and birds feed their
young by passing on chewed up food mouth to mouth.

Sexual kissing could have been a way that was passed down from gestures that
were used to recognize those who aren’t kin.

The term for it is relic gesture.

[https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-
family/scie...](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-
family/science-of-kissing-why-a-kiss-is-not-just-a-kiss-1.3380704)

[..] What are the origins of kissing?

In early human societies, it is believed mothers weaned their babies by
chewing up their food and then passing it to their babies by lip-to-lip
contact. Evolutionary biologists suggest that erotic kissing is a so-called
relic gesture, passed down through cultures from these early practices of the
mother’s deep kissing and the infant’s searching tongue movements.

“If young lovers exploring each other’s mouths with their tongues feel the
ancient comfort of parental mouth feeding, this may help them to increase
their mutual trust and thereby their pair-bonding,” writes Desmond Morris in
his classic book on human behaviour, Manwatching.[..]

Desmond Morris’ Manwatching is an excellent read.

~~~
badrabbit
Or...someone tried it and enjoyed it and then spread the practice? I highly
doubt kissing in humans has anythig to do with exchanging chewed food or
something much deeper than an enjoyable experience like hugging or cuddling.

~~~
EpicEng
>I highly doubt kissing in humans has anythig to do with exchanging chewed
food or something much deeper than an enjoyable experience like hugging or
cuddling.

Based on... what exactly? Have you spent significant time studying ancient
cultures in this regard? By what process did you rule out other explanations?
Why, precisely, do you people enjoy it? What does it mean, physically, to
enjoy something?

This oversimplified brand of logic is what led people to believe that the sun
travels around the earth. Often times things aren't as simple as they seem.
Good thing some people decided to take a closer look at what seemed obvious to
everyone else.

~~~
badrabbit
Ok, people enjoy it because it makes them feel intimate with each other,the
act of intimacy arouses sexual desire. Is that enough or is the studying
ancient cultures part mandatory?

The oversimplified brand of logic is just you generalizig my disagreement to
support your brand of over analysis.

Please, take as much closer look as you want but do look at the whole
picture,not just the booky part. Ask yourself why you enjoy it first,ask why
others enjoy it and start there and stop when you have enough to adequately
explain it.

I stand by my statement, a psychological need for intimacy is the root of the
desire. It could be licking each others ear lobes or something that would now
sound weird, the act is merely an expression of intimacy which is to know and
to be known.

I would even say your conclusion can be viewed as an "oversimplified brand of
logic" as you put it since you are not explaining why feeding chewed food is
tied to sexual expression of affection and why it is prevalent strictly in a
sexual relationship and why parents don't make out with children or between
close friends and siblings,when adopted why did it become sexual? And to be
clear a peck on the surface is not what we are talking about here since that
is not exclusive to lips (forehead,etc...)

~~~
thatcat
>Is that enough or is the studying ancient cultures part mandatory?

The evolutionary biology approach provides pretty deep insight into human
behaviour. Making out is a dissociative state where each person uses their
highly developed talking muscles to physically interact with each other. No
other body part even makes physical sense. Your ear lobe isn't dexterous -
that would be one way interaction.

>Please, take as much closer look as you want but do look at the whole
picture,not just the booky part. Ask yourself why you enjoy it first,ask why
others enjoy it and start there and stop when you have enough to adequately
explain it.

How is your inward facing perspective as "the whole picture"? Evolutionary
biology is the whole picture.

~~~
badrabbit
> Evolutionary biology is the whole picture.

And how dare I question it or anything outside of it right? Sounds very smart
and sciency,I will leave you to it then.

Oh,and I meant introspection, actually asking people, psychological
examination of the subject are part of the evidence picture before you come to
a conclusion. Apparently,anything short of an explanation involving an
"evolutionary" need to exchange chewed food (even though many cultures don't
do intimate kissing -- I suppose your claim is those humans evolved
differently and have adopted it in the last century against their evolutionary
need?) is offensive to your line of thinking.

~~~
thatcat
I suggested other reasons than exchanged foods - it is because the dexterity
is already present in those muscles due to talking and chewing in my opinion.
I don't think the dexterity of your mouth muscles have evolved significantly
in the last century. It is an ability that is a indirect benefit from other
evolved traits.

Insight obtained from introspection or evolution in the 100 year scale will be
mostly psychological/cultural. If you want to understand the big picture
including physical justification you need to look at the large time scale
perspective because it takes much longer for those changes, psychological and
cultural justifications are dependant on the physical. Maybe that's too "booky
or sciency" of a perspective, but I don't think so.

------
neonate
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200214235741/https://hraf.yale...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200214235741/https://hraf.yale.edu/romantic-
or-disgusting-passionate-kissing-is-not-a-human-universal/)

[https://archive.md/FG6Ss](https://archive.md/FG6Ss)

------
mullingitover
Bonobos do it. I'd wager humans' common ancestors practiced it, and we
unlearned it over time on some groups.

It's interesting that our two closest primate relatives are Bonobos and
Chimpanzees. Bonobos are highly sexual and their sex habits match the full
range of human sexual behaviors. Chimpanzees practice tribal warfare can be
horrific murderers. Humans exceed both our relative species in both of these
areas.

~~~
qplex
>Bonobos are highly sexual and their sex habits match the full range of human
sexual behaviors.

I think not. But matching a basic subset perhaps.

E.g. I don't think you'll find many bonobos jerking off to internet porn.

~~~
RandomInteger4
You're confusing the object for the verb. The sex habit is "jerking off" not
"to internet porn", and all it takes is a simple youtube search for "bonobos
jerking off" to see that you're wrong.

~~~
qplex
The point was that the sexual behaviour of bonobos does not match "full human
range".

~~~
pimmen
That's like saying humans have evolved radically different behavior compared
to 200 years ago because back then they couldn't travel to another celestial
body.

I would argue jerking off to Internet porn and jerking off to a fantasy are
both exhibiting the same behavior, just like a polar explorer from the 19th
century and a lunar explorer from the 20th century are exhibiting the same
behavior.

~~~
qplex
Indeed the core of it is the capability for complex sexual fantasies, and
human behaviour is not limited to simply just jerking off.

I'm not saying humans 200 years ago were incapable of such things.

What I'm saying is that bonobos don't read or write Kama Sutra.

~~~
pimmen
Go back 20 000 years and modern humans didn’t write Kama Sutra either, because
just like bonobos we lacked the technology and knowledge to write.

~~~
qplex
We have very little actual knowledge of pre-historic humans to speculate about
their sexual behaviours (and as with all other human behavior, I'm sure there
is and has been great variance in this).

In any case bonobos would not write Kama Sutra even in 20,000 years. Your
timescale and argument is way off.

Downvoters: I've no more apples for you.

------
rom-antics
>the global ethnographic evidence suggests that [kissing] is common in only
46% (77) of the cultures sampled

Now this is interesting. I live in the US where kissing is a big part of the
culture, but I've never personally liked it. I like women and romance, I enjoy
sex obviously, but I never "got" kissing. Ever since my first kiss at ~15
years old, I always assumed something was wrong with me.

~~~
AareyBaba
From a topological view, kissing creates one long tube with two arseholes at
either ends.

~~~
yencabulator
I have to say that that is exactly my preferred topological arrangement of
those components.

------
INTPenis
Didn't work for me, had to use the google cache version.[1]

1\.
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rkHSE4...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rkHSE4Dp5sIJ:https://hraf.yale.edu/romantic-
or-disgusting-passionate-kissing-is-not-a-human-
universal/+&cd=1&hl=sv&ct=clnk&gl=se&client=firefox-b-d)

~~~
userbinator

        &client=firefox-b-d&hl=sv&gl=se
    

Just an FYI if you didn't know, be careful when sharing links to check that
they don't disclose more information about you than you'd like.

~~~
Johnny555
Just curious what that's disclosing, his browser? Anything else?

~~~
hhanesand
Guessing those last two parameters are languages. I don't see the issue, but I
commonly trim tracking strings off too.

~~~
ta999999171
For the layperson reading, for articles, this is usually anything after the ?
in a URL.

~~~
Johnny555
That's not a good rule of thumb since often the unique identifier you're
interested in is a query arg, so if you strip of everything after the ?,
you're left with nothing. like the URL above, all you'll have left is:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search)

~~~
userbinator
Yes, there's no real general rule (see HN articles for instance) but "if I
omit these parts of the URL, I get the same content" is usually a safe bet.

------
tal8d
After learning that there are people walking around with no inner monologue, I
am no longer surprised by these debunked universalities. People share a lot
less in common than what popular culture would have use think, again no
surprise when considering the effects of popular culture.

------
big_chungus
Well yeah, no kidding. I was raised American but still never got the appeal of
the "spit-swapping" variety; It always struck me as disgusting, though I don't
mind normal "on-the-lips" type. For some reason, people expect that everyone
likes that sort of thing and think I'm weird for not wanting to.

~~~
1000units
It objectively makes you weird. Sex itself is literally slimey and gross but
also very pleasant.

~~~
big_chungus
There are physical reasons for that; reproductive organs have tons of extra
nerves to make it so. That's not true of mouths; the reaction would have to be
psychological. Tongues are there to taste food.

~~~
mrami
Hands, lips, tip of tongue. "Mouthfeel" is as important to taste as flavor.
Lips aren't for tasting either, why so many nerves?
[https://www.quora.com/Which-is-most-sensitive-part-of-the-
hu...](https://www.quora.com/Which-is-most-sensitive-part-of-the-human-body)

------
lazyasciiart
I wonder what an ethnographer in New York in the 1920's would have described
about the attitudes to kissing.

~~~
twelvechairs
The Kinsey reports of the late 1940s/50s were a major breakthrough in western
understanding of sexuality that had a lot of influence on changing attitudes
in the 60s. Before studying human mating he'd studied the mating of gall
wasps.

------
scw
Reminds me of “boko-maru” of the made-up religion [1] in Vonnegut's Cat's
Cradle.

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism)

------
foogazi
Wonder if there is a replacement for the intimacy or is there just an
unbridged void

~~~
newnewpdro
Cuddling? Lots of mammals do it, and in my experience it's a very comforting
and bond-reinforcing activity. It doesn't feel awkward and forced at all to
me, unless with the wrong people, which strikes me as a desirable feature.

------
coleifer
Biting on the other hand...

------
throwaway41968
...there are people who thought it was?

~~~
themoat
This is kind of a minor reason to leave a smug comment.

By what age should a person give deep thought into shows of romantic affection
in cultures they've previously not considered?

~~~
throwaway41968
At what age should one be exposed to different cultures _at all_ so they learn
that everything they've experienced so far isn't an absolute constant of human
nature? Pretty early I'd say.

~~~
themoat
I lived in a couple third world countries where grown adults asked if we had
cats in the United States.

Should I look down on them for not knowing something about my culture? Or do
we have different concerns in our lives in different parts of the world?

I'm not saying that being culturally aware is not good for a person. I'm
saying it's not a sign of being better than others. It's essentially the same
as me memorizing brain teasers when I was 12. Neat, but not the type of thing
to brag about.

~~~
crispinb
Who is looking down on anyone? You get to that conclusion by making the least
charitable gloss available in your original comment.

My own reaction to the article was surprise that anyone thought kissing was a
human universal because _it never occurred to me that it was_. This was pre-
reflective on my part (I had never given any thought to kissing at all). It
wasn't an outcome of any exercise in cultural awareness, or thinking thereon.

I have no idea whether @throwaway41968's comment was intended in my way or was
indeed 'smug' as you say. But you don't know either, and it's a disservice to
conversation to assume the worst.

If I took your interpretive tack, then I would assume you chose the
interpretation you did because you enjoy scrapping on the net and calling
people 'smug' etc. Would that be justifiable or useful to the conversation? I
think not.

~~~
themoat
Sorry. I can admit I was wrong. I haven't seen ellipses used to begin a
sentence that asks a question in a way that wasn't flippantly dismissive
before. Couple that with a throwaway account and I jumped to conclusions.

I probably should have asked what his comment meant before I spoke.

~~~
crispinb
Well you may not be wrong - I don't know any better than you. I'm just
suggesting a principle of charity leads to better conversations. And I'm not
pointing fingers - it's something I need to work on (ie. pause to think and/or
ask for clarification, particularly before posting anything accusatory)

------
romualdr
Sans déconner

------
1000units
I have a fairly strong suspicion this is just a Yale thing.

------
retrac
It's certainly not universally viewed as acceptable intimacy by all cultures.
Even more certainly, it's not viewed as acceptable intimacy in public. In some
cultures, you're about as likely to see a couple kiss in public as you are to
see them have sex in public.

> Similarly, the authors state that “no ethnographer working with Sub-Saharan
> African, New Guinea, or Amazonian foragers or horticulturalists reported
> having witnessed any occasion in which their study populations engaged in a
> romantic–sexual kiss”

That doesn't mean they don't kiss, of course. Consider that an ethnographer
studying people in Tehran would probably conclude their society simply doesn't
have homosexual behaviour. If nothing else, I would imagine that, like with
other forms of intimacy often viewed as deviant (for example, anal or oral
sex), clever people frequently rediscover it, and some like it, and then
practice it, even if in secret.

~~~
Johnny555
They didn't just use observation:

"The Tsonga people of Southern Africa are also openly disgusted by the
practice: “Kissing was formerly entirely unknown… When they saw the custom
adopted by the Europeans, they said laughingly: “Look at these people! They
suck each other! They eat each other’s saliva and dirt!” Even a husband never
kissed his wife"

~~~
retrac
Yes, and people say the same thing about homosexuality in societies that
strongly disapprove of it. They find it comical, disgusting or similar.
Doesn't mean the practice doesn't occur.

~~~
bawolff
The original article was about kissing not being a general thing in lots of
cultures. If a minority of people in those cultures still engage in kissing
that hardly disproves the point of the article.

------
glouwbug
Comments are all over. HN loses its ability to converse with the slightest
mention of sex

~~~
g82918
It's a Friday, quality tends to degrade during the weekend. Usually
professionals reading the site tend to view and comment more during the work
week while things are compiling/deploying. The weekend tends to be more
hobbyist/lonely people like me.

~~~
glouwbug
Well, cheers, and happy Valentine's regardless

