Kiss off!

CNN – A new study that examines how kissing evolved suggests that ape ancestors and early humans probably locked lips with their friends and sexual partners … behavior (that) may date back 21 million  years. (The) lead author of the research, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford’s Department of Biology, said kissing presents an “evolutionary conundrum.” It appears to carry high risks, such as disease transmission, while offering no obvious reproductive or survival advantage.

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Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re telling me you can’t get someone pregnant by kissing her? What the hell, mom! That’s the last time I take pre-date advice from YOU.

I’m kidding, of course. The old gal was always ready with a good wet one when you arrived for a visit. If you didn’t have to immediately reach for a towel when she was finished, you spent the rest of the day wondering if she really loved you.

But let’s get back to the slightly salacious stuff, shall we? To be clear, just about everyone remembers their first ‘romantic’ kiss, but absolutely nobody can tell when the very first contact between two sets of undeniably human lips occurred. I’m guessing that’s because 100,000 years ago homo sapiens weren’t that good-looking, and everyone just wanted to forget the bad choices they made after downing their fifth Budweiser.™

There’s some evidence, though, that humankind’s earliest kisses were formally recorded somewhere around 4,500 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt – probably in the form of hieroglyphs carved into a tomb built to accommodate the original victim of mononucleosis. Sometimes it can be difficult, though, to get a handle on exactly what those stick figures are really doing. It’s possible, I suppose, that they aren’t actually kissing, but somehow got their braces locked together during a good meal.

If they WERE kissing, though, it’s likely that they took their example from early primates – you know, chimps and bonobos and orangutans – that pretty much never have been able to keep their lips off each other. Well, to be fair, for essentially their entire senior year Derek Deposito and Maryanne LaPone couldn’t, either. But that’s the subject of a separate study.

Returning to the primates, one evolutionary science journal estimates that great apes got into the practice of locking lips somewhere between 16 and 21 million years ago – hard to believe, since back then the closest thing to a toothbrush and mouthwash was a pine cone and a  muddy pool where everyone washed up after a hard day lounging in the trees. I mean, come on. I refuse to kiss my wife after she’s had two bites of an eggplant and garlic pizza.

And while the experts pretty much agree that pre-historic kissing existed, they haven’t been able to get their heads around exactly why it evolved. Was it a little trick to assess a potential mate, or was it just delightful foreplay? Did it help to relieve tribal tensions, or is it somehow connected to the fact that most animal moms chew the food they plan to feed their offspring before dropping it into their mouths? Boy. Think about the number of towels you’d need following THAT transaction.

Some researchers unassociated with the study are quick to point out, though, that most kisses delivered by human beings never land on a mouth. We’ll just mention the commonplace and generally acceptable cheeks and foreheads and golf trophies, and leave the more prurient possibilities to your imagination.

Oh, and one final tidbit: Kisses don’t show up everywhere in the chain of human evolution. One study (How do you get to be a part of one of those, by the way?) suggests that kissing as a common behavior is documented in only 46% of human cultures. The other 54% don’t even give it lip service.

I find that unspeakable.