[HN Gopher] Humanity's earliest recorded kiss occurred in Mesopo...
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Humanity's earliest recorded kiss occurred in Mesopotamia 4,500
years ago
Author : wglb
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-05-22 13:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| n1b0m wrote:
| Do we have any evidence for the first person to shout "get a
| room"?
| pfdietz wrote:
| It may have been sometime around the invention of rooms, which
| is back in the neolithic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I'd wager that sex wasn't private across cultures and time
| periods
|
| Even with loosening attitudes now you see that many people
| prioritize safety and privacy removes that
|
| So public and group sex is more appealing to a broader range
| of people than might already be aware. For example, most of
| our courtship is spending energy demonstrating to women that
| we are safe to be alone with, and for women that its
| worthwhile to take a chance since there is no accurately way
| to predict which man will do what in private. (Men are
| vulnerable to the same things, but its not part of our
| culture to prioritize that, most supporting statistics are
| based on an absence of stats to overamplify the stats that do
| exist). This makes it seem like interest in sex is far
| different across the sexes than is accurate. But when you
| increase the safety aspect in other ways, you'll find many
| more women would also rather skip the courtship games since
| that assurance isn't necessary.
| klyrs wrote:
| Unsure about shouting but it's probably recorded in Roman
| graffiti.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I think this fits, implicitly anyways: "Theophilus, don't
| perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog."
|
| I am unsure if this is the 'most excellent' Theophilus that
| Luke and Acts both mention.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| It's from the parody "Acts of the Adonis"
| pfdietz wrote:
| Maybe he was really good at it.
| pizzaknife wrote:
| now im left wondering what sort of immune system
| benefits/detriments this practice produces - I'll have to try it
| sometime!
| paulddraper wrote:
| Strengthens immune system.
|
| If you really cared about your well-being, you would set up
| hand-desanitizing stations. A simple bowl at every juncture
| filled with dirt, vomit, fecal matter.
| lynx23 wrote:
| That is so true, at least as far as an exaggregated
| picturesque example goes. Already 20 years ago, stories
| started to pop up about farms offering holidays for kids from
| cities with immunological health problems. The explanation
| was, and it just feels like a logical thing to happen, that
| overly clean environments lead to all sorts of health issues,
| and putting kids in contact with a bunch of dirt and around
| animals can improve things. Presented by mainstream media, in
| ya face. And then there came covid-19, and suddenly there
| "we" were, spraying everything with disinfectant, and overall
| worsening the immune system of everyone by artifical
| separation and even mandated house arrest. And if you
| remembered the past, and happened to utter something about
| that making the immune system even worse, you were outcast as
| a lunatic. And what happened? We had a _big_ wave of
| infections of small children _after_ the pandemic, with
| overfilled hospitals and everything, as a result of avoiding
| certain infections you always happen to get. Postponing these
| almost created yet another crisis. Ah, but meddling is always
| a good thing I guess, and pointing at people with different
| opinions, thats also very important for apes. When it comes
| to "how to life your live" we are such a pathetic species
| blinded by materialism and systematically stupified by the
| media. And, everyone writing such a statement is
| automatically sort of cast aside as crazy. Its a lovely
| place.
| kortex wrote:
| Actually, hygiene hypothesis primarily applies to parasites
| and benign bacteria. Exposure to a wide variety of those
| reduces type II hypersensitivity (allergies and asthma) and
| digestive disorders. Data point of 1, I massively improved
| my allergies with helminth therapy.
|
| Viruses and systemic bacteria kind of just fuck you up for
| the most part. Long COVID, Mono (EBV), Chickenpox/shingles,
| HSV 1 and 2, HPV, those all just wreck your body in
| difficult-to-repair ways, increase your risk of things like
| cancer and MS (and possibly dementia). Lyme, syphilis, and
| other nasties that hide from the body's defenses can cause
| lifelong inflammation, rewire your immune system to cause
| allergies and autoimmune disorders.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I mean, sure, believe this if you want to, but it's
| simplistic thinking. You're taking the answer you find most
| emotionally satisfying to you and running with it. As an
| anecdote, I grew up on an acreage. I was exposed to cats,
| dogs, dust, pollen, and horses and was in close proximity
| to all of them throughout my childhood. What am I extremely
| allergic to? Cats, dogs, dust, pollen, and horses.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Allergies are an over-response of the immune system.
|
| So, yes, exposure will _absolutely_ strengthen your
| immune system response. (...which in this particular
| case, is the wrong thing)
| cromulent wrote:
| Dr Karl (aussie science guy) got all the well-wishers to put
| their unsanitized finger into his eldest son's mouth on his
| birth day. Sample size 1, worked OK.
|
| https://twitter.com/DoctorKarl/status/820944574906368000
| paulddraper wrote:
| Cromulent username
| simonh wrote:
| Just so you know.
|
| https://www.news24.com/amp/life/wellness/body/condition-cent...
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I wonder how far back the researchers think human sexual
| intercourse goes?
| jaldhar wrote:
| "Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (Which was
| rather late for me) between the end of the Chatterley ban and
| the Beatles' first LP."
|
| -- Phillip Larkin
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| There are recordings going back at least to the early 1970s.
| lynx23 wrote:
| You nailed it.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> Recent research has hypothesized that the earliest evidence of
| human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical
| location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it may have
| spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread
| of the herpes simplex virus 1._
|
| I find the implied thought process here hilarious: the first
| stone tool industry is three million years old [1], fire a
| million years, modern humans 300,000, and agriculture about
| 10,000 years old.
|
| But kissing? Yeah that's gotta be high tech invented 4,500 years
| ago, a hundred years before the Egyptians gods invented felatio
| [2]. Yeah that tracks.
|
| At what point can we say without concrete scientific evidence
| that the likeliest scenario is that we were too busy making out
| for tens of thousands of years to record the invention of
| kissing?
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan
|
| [2] https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/worlds-first-
| documen...
|
| Edit: thank you for the correction on age of controlled fire
| burnished wrote:
| Look, when some one says that the earth moved, it didn't leave
| a geological record. They checked.
| [deleted]
| kbelder wrote:
| Finding and documenting the earliest evidence of kissing is
| legitimate research, and good on them.
|
| But, yes, making even the slightest assumption that this
| evidence is related _at_ _all_ to the actual origin of kissing
| is ridiculous. I think researchers are very reluctant to add
| "of course, it obviously started 100,000 years earlier, we just
| don't have direct evidence" to their papers. That tacit
| acceptance that lack of evidence is evidence of a lack shows up
| in a lot of different fields, like cosmology, even our response
| to COVID.
|
| I get that researchers don't want to add speculation to their
| publications, but overstating the certainty of evidence isn't
| good either. We all need some Bayesian initial priors set.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| One data point is that of all creatures, only bonobos and
| humans kiss. Humans don't seem to learn the concept of a kiss
| until at least a year, and even then it's more of a mirroring
| gesture. It seems like a much higher level social construct
| than smiling, laughing, nuzzling, etc.
| simonh wrote:
| Nitpick. Fire probably goes back a million years or more.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_hum...
| francisofascii wrote:
| Right. One of our closest relatives, the bonobo, also kiss.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Also known for their unique handshakes
| bonzini wrote:
| Like this? https://youtu.be/Ub9Ed7AFlvw?t=15
| sph wrote:
| Probably something sexual... I was reading on bonobos
| recently, and how female bonobos quickly rub their
| clitorises together to greet one another.
|
| It is really fascinating how sex is a huge part of their
| culture.
| ye-olde-sysrq wrote:
| That was the prior research and hypothesis, which the article
| claims this new finding supercedes, moving it back an
| additional 1000 years.
|
| Also the new research doesn't claim that's when it started,
| it's just the earliest record. It even mentions further down
| that kissing is seen in primates, suggesting that humans have
| potentially always kissed. (It of course just took us a while
| to develop art and preservation thereof enough that we could
| both record it and have that recording survive to the current
| day).
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| It does seem to claim that's when it started, and attributes
| an increase in the spread of HSV to the introduction of
| kissing.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| No, the linked article is a summary of another article
| written to contradict the earlier researchers that made the
| claim about HSV spread being connected to the practice of
| kissing.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yes, I think the researchers behind the work TFA is talking
| about _also_ finds it hilarious, but "that's stupid" is less
| publishable than "we found a counterexample in the
| archaeological record (and also that's stupid)"
| facorreia wrote:
| I agree. This is a common logical fallacy. The absence of proof
| is not proof of absence.
|
| a) There's no way to prove that this was the earliest recorded
| kiss. Others may have been recorded but they haven't been found
| (or the record has been destroyed).
|
| b) Of course as pointed out in the thread, the "earliest
| recorded kiss" is not the same as "the earliest kiss".
|
| A better title would be "Earliest recovered record of a kiss is
| from 4,500 years ago".
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Birds and numerous other animals (including humans) tear off or
| chew food for infants. Making artwork sufficiently durable to
| last thousands of years is the only recent invention here.
|
| 'Earliest recorded ________' is archaeology hype, kinda like the
| periodic 'x-rays reveal NEW image underneath famous pointing!!!'
| stories are reliable art hype. It's interesting, but not
| profoundly so.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| One of the best things I learned from an older software engineer
| ever, way back, was when we were discussing about whether it was
| worth investing effort into building some new tool or not.
|
| "Is this actionable?" he said. Meaning, we shouldnt bother
| investing the effort to decisively learn some thing X _if_ once
| knowing its value its... not really actionable.
|
| That it doesnt empower us to do something differently than we
| would have done otherwise, in the absence of knowing X.
|
| It was my first thought when I saw a story on HN about scientists
| figuring out (and only approximately, mind you) when the first
| kiss happened.
|
| Who cares? What would we do _differently_ today if we were
| confident the 1st kiss was exactly 8000 years ago or 5000 years
| ago or 120,523.74 years ago?
|
| Nothing. Nothing would be different. So perhaps we should spend
| our time and focus on higher priorities (like say democracy
| dangers, climate, curing cancer etc.)
| tomcam wrote:
| It appears to me there's a lot more than kissing going on in this
| picture
| [deleted]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I'm introducing new legislation to protect our youth from this
| representational art menace. You may say it's been going on for
| thousands of years, and I say that's what happens when you
| don't nip it in the bud.
| tomcam wrote:
| That's what I call some out of the box thinking. Thanks for
| dealing properly with this important matter.
| onlypositive wrote:
| [flagged]
| mometsi wrote:
| Abo and Nusur, sittin in a tree,
| nologic01 wrote:
| Earliest recorded sex act occured in Mesopotamia
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I think they have the tablet turned sideways. Given the flat feet
| and only one leg raised, it seems likely they were standing.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Yeah, this phys.org repost is just a worse version of the
| original letter to Science[1], where (among many other
| benefits) they do show this tablet the right way up.
|
| [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf0512
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(page generated 2023-05-23 23:00 UTC)