What does a kiss mean? How did ancient people express their love?

Kissing is an ancient and popular way of showing love and a sweet enjoyment. Different nationalities in the world are willing to accept it. Kissing can give people a kind of beauty of love, and lovers can really appreciate the sweet taste of love only when they start kissing. Modern psychology tells people that 93% of women want their lovers to kiss her, and men also like to kiss their beloved women, so kissing is the same need and desire between men and women. Kissing is also accompanied by warm and sincere love and pleasant psychological and emotional experience, which helps to produce positive emotions such as harmony and happiness.

So, how did kissing come about? There are roughly the following statements.

Instinct theory

Professor Vogel Harlem, Ph.D. in Swiss psychology and a researcher at the Institute of Anatomy, believes that all human survival instincts are higher than those of other animals. Mammals don't need to learn to react, and humans do. Such as sucking behavior in infancy. Dan Kalinski of the United States found that birds also have the instinct to fill their mouths. As early as the primitive human period, people did not need bowls, chopsticks and spoons. Mothers use mouth-to-mouth methods to feed chewed food into their babies' mouths. In this process, it is necessary to cooperate with the pressure of the tongue and the movement of the mouth, which is very similar to the feeding method of birds. This instinctive maternal love evolution is the origin of kissing. According to this view, kissing can be explained as follows: Because people have the genetic "code" or "memory" of instinctive sucking practice in infancy, kissing can be said to be self-taught. Desmond Miles explained this phenomenon: This method seems unsanitary today, but as an instinct to feed babies, human beings have maintained it for millions of years. This primitive instinct kissing is obviously the origin of modern human kissing.

Posture theory of human heritage

The so-called heritage refers to the customs left over from the previous generation. The sucking mode and mouth-to-mouth feeding mode involved in the "instinctive theory" of kissing have been used as an inheritance habit in the process of human reproduction. Many western experts and scholars who study human behavior generally believe that "the gesture of human heritage" is the origin of modern human kissing. Desmond Miles believes that the sucking action of a baby is the most important gesture in human heritage, and the desire to kiss is actually "to return to the mother's arms".

First of all, the comfort of breastfeeding will leave a lasting impression on our minds. Mother lets the baby suck the nipple intimately, so that the baby's mouth contains something warm and soft, from which a sweet and warm liquid can be sucked out, so that the baby's tongue tastes sweet and his lips feel soft, thus adding a basic comfort-a primitive intimacy.

In the later adult life, people will be eager to restore this intimate relationship, and the original sucking behavior will appear in various disguised forms or angles. And it extends many oral comfort actions, the most typical of which is kissing.

In fact, for lovers immersed in lingering affection, the baby-like behavior pattern has not disappeared, but has degenerated into the comfortable and wonderful feeling of mouth when sucking their mother's breasts. It can be seen that this "recovery" performance of human intimate physical contact behavior shows that sucking posture is the origin of kissing. The origin of this kiss is the most acceptable to those who have experienced this feeling of "reply" on the spot.

Jealousy theory

According to legend, wine was invented in ancient Italy, but rarely. Women are forbidden to drink alcohol except the male host. Women who violate the ban will be severely punished together with their husbands. Therefore, men at that time were afraid to go out, for fear that their wives would be killed by drinking at home. So the first thing to do when you go out is to lean down and put your nose to your wife's mouth to smell if there is any lingering fragrance of stealing. Over time, this lip-smelling behavior developed into kissing.

Another legend is that ancient men went out hunting and instinctively feared that their wives would be taken away by others, and they would drink and have fun together. So, as soon as the man got home, he put his tongue into the woman's mouth to detect the smell of wine and other suspicious foods. Similarly, in order to ensure innocence, a woman will automatically open her mouth when her husband comes in to let him smell it. In some countries in Europe and America, families have a ceremony in which husband and wife kiss each other when they go out and come back. It can be seen that this primitive custom has been passed down to this day and is enduring for a long time.

Body differentiation theory

In the "Drinking Articles" of Plato's Dialogue, Plato described his love philosophy through the mouth of drinkers. It also includes the philosophy of the origin of the kiss. Aristophanes, one of the drinkers, agrees with the theory of body differentiation, that is, love arises between divided bodies. Loving each other is an attempt to reconnect separated and unified entities. According to myths and legends, in the past, human beings were a special kind of animals, with four hands and four legs, two faces and four ears, all of which were extremely powerful and intelligent. On one occasion, Zeus, the main god of Olympus, discovered these rough-looking hermaphrodites, fearing that their strength would become stronger and stronger, which would one day threaten the safety of the gods in the sky. Therefore, Zeus decided to divide the human body into two halves. "Each half is eager to be reunited with the other half." They "hugged and kissed each other, eager to grow up together again."

Consciousness theory

Many physiologists believe that the mouth is the door of life and the lips are the door leaves. Even if a person is blind and deaf and has a bad nose, as long as he keeps his mouth shut, he can not only breathe, but also eat to make a living. So touching others with your lips is a direct expression of love and respect.

Some scholars believe that kissing originated from sadism and cannibalism in distant times, which can also be classified as "consciousness theory". According to this theory, modern kissing is very close to cannibalism, but it has become more elegant. However, it has also been verified that kissing originated from the habit of early human survival consciousness. According to Dan Kalinski, an American, Neanderthals often licked their friends' cheeks because of the lack of salt, which gradually evolved into kissing.

Ownership theory

Eskimos lick their belongings first and use this "kiss" as a spell to repel others' hands. The reason for licking is that everyone's saliva has a unique smell, and the uncivilized sense of smell is extremely developed. Therefore, after moving your own smell to the other person, others will know who the "famous flower" is as soon as they smell it. Civilized people's sense of smell has deteriorated. Some people say that it is because they eat too much sugar, while uncivilized people don't eat much sugar, so their sense of smell can be compared with that of animals.

Medical theory

People in uncivilized times believed that diseases, especially insanity, were caused by evil spirits entering the body. So Eskimos, Indians, Paraguayans, Australians and South African aborigines still kiss patients today, trying to suck out evil souls. This custom later evolved into a manifestation of mutual care, greetings and friendship.

Nose touching theory

Others believe that kissing is related to the ancient habit of rubbing noses with each other. Wilder, a Dutch obstetrician and gynecologist, mentioned in his book Complete Marriage written in 1726: "Japanese, China and Vietnamese don't kiss. They don't use their mouths, but they often touch each other with their noses. " In analyzing love, Figuerre Harlem said: Besides the above, Mongols, Eskimos and even Burmese also have the custom of wiping their noses. The so-called "sniffing" means that this custom is consistent with the mutual sniffing of some animals. For example, in some tribes in Tibet, men and women say "smell me" instead of "kiss me". Therefore, many experts believe that there are three sensory organs involved in kissing: touch, taste and smell. But for white people, touch plays the biggest role. Compared with white people, yellow people have a stronger sense of smell. Therefore, in the East and the West, in different races, nationalities, countries and regions, the origin of kissing may be divided into two categories: tactile type and olfactory type.

In fact, China people had the custom of kissing as early as when Europeans were drinking blood and grinding their noses. The kissing pictures of men and women found by China cultural relics workers in the Han Tomb of Longwang Temple in Juxian County can prove this point. Nowadays, people in many countries think that kissing is a fashion to imitate foreigners, but they don't know that it is a custom that their ancestors have long had.

It can be seen that the theory of kissing involves human sensory organs, psychological needs, physiological reactions, consciousness, needs and so on. The appearance of kissing is a characteristic of a highly evolved society. It is an intimate means to express various contents, and it is a way of emotional communication based on specific feelings and spiritual omissions. It is the representative of the germination of civilization and the enrichment of human sexual instinct. Kissing itself helps to promote sexual passion. Usually, men and women can enhance emotional communication and integration by kissing. Nicoulaud Song, an animal behaviorist at new york State University, recently put forward the latest viewpoint about kissing: the fundamental purpose of kissing is to deliver addictive substances such as narcotics, and to pursue a natural combination with each other in chemical form. The so-called "love" is actually an infatuation with chemicals, especially the sebum of the other person. This is probably the latest explanation about people's enthusiasm for kissing!