Kissing around the world
It may seem obvious to us - when you love someone, you kiss them; a full-throated, open-mouthed kiss. However, Eskimos and Indians think our delicious "French kiss" rather strange and exotic. Here's a short guide to kissing all over the world.
The favourite French kiss
© Jupiter
What is the origin of "French kissing"? Well if anthropologists are to be believed, it originates from the mouth-to-mouth feeding between mother birds and their chicks. According to the most popular theory, this timeless and perfect act of fusion would then have evolved into sniffing prospective mates and then - before the face assumed its current importance - a light brushing of the mouth against the hands.
One thing we do know is that French kissing was practised during the time of Plautus, (a Latin poet who lived around the second century BC) In one his texts, a slave tells a young girl to "Turn me into a serpent and give me two tongues." Although this practice is as old as time and, to us at least, completely natural, in many parts of the world French kissing is far from the norm.
For example, an Indian watching a French kissing scene from a Western film would almost certainly collapse with laughter. He (or she) would find this strange practice of "eating each other" absolutely hilarious, or, if he were of a sensitive disposition, rather embarrassing.
According to Martine Mourier, who wrote his medical thesis on the subject, only half of the world's population practises French kissing. Some African tribes fear such deep kisses, as they believe that the breath of life is transferred through a kiss so they worry about losing their soul. For them, courtship or foreplay, takes the form of a dance.
Kissing: each to his own
- The Pygmies and Thongas (from Mozambique) find French kissing unhygienic. The Manja tribe, of French Equatorial Africa, don't kiss purely for survival as the women's upper lips are pierced and decorated with a wooden disk with two hooks. If the man wants to kiss the woman, he forms a fist around her thumb; it's much safer that way!
- The Chinese think French kissing obscene. In their opinion, it's an overtly sexual act that shouldn't be done in public. As for the people of Papua New Guinea, they howl with laughter when they see someone kissing. They express love by biting off their loved one's eyelashes or inspecting each other for lice. Each to his own...
- In Bali, they don't kiss either. Instead, they bring their faces close together so that they can smell each other and feel the warmth of their partner's skin. The Tahitians dance the Tamure and rub noses together, which is not dissimilar to the Eskimos who sniff each other affectionately or stick out their tongues.
Scheherazade fully understood the power of the French kiss. She tells how "one evening, in front of her mirror, the woman presses her lips hard against those of her yawning lover. She catches him off guard, forcing his mouth open. She plunges her tongue deep inside and lets it dance round, exploring inside his mouth, with wild abandon." But after a thousand and one nights, this accomplished lover worries that her husband, the Sultan, will tire of her kisses. In this fabulous story by Alain Gnemmi, the magnificent Sultana searches for the ultimate kiss. Her quest takes her from India to the heart of China where she discovers "the secret bite", "the broken cloud" and the "hanging kiss." It's a thrilling introduction to the world of kissing.
Kissing turns heads
To say that kissing turns heads may seem obvious. However, according to German psychologists, it would appear that two thirds of people turn their head to the right while kissing. The researchers used a rather strange method of data collection, in an attempt to avoid ambiguity.
Over a period of two and a half years, the researcher, Onug Gunturkum observed 124 couples kissing in public places (airports, stations, beaches, car parks) in the US, Germany and Turkey. When recording the kisses, he used very strict criteria (couples had to face each other, with lips touching; it was important that neither of them were holding any objects which might influence the way they lean). In total, 80 people leaned their heads to the right and 44 to the left.
Scientists claim that this behaviour develops in the very early stages of our lives. During the initial weeks of pregnancy and the first six months of life, babies are more likely to lean their heads to the right than the left. This same tendency has even been observed in other mammals, most notably, amongst chicks when still in the egg, with this bias towards the right possibly affecting our development of motor and visual control.
According to the researcher, this right-sided preference never disappears and influences much of our behaviour. But what happens, you may ask, when some one who's right-sided wants to kiss someone who's left-sided?
Source: Nature 421, 711 (2003); 10.1038/421711a
Copyright © 2009 Doctissimo
Posted 30.06.2010
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