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LiveScience
LiveScience
Clarissa Brincat

Kissing goes back 21 million years, to the common ancestor of humans and other large apes, study finds

A photo of an ape pressing its lips to another ape's cheek in a kiss-like behavior.

The act of kissing may have started long before modern humans existed, a new modeling study suggests.

Kissing stretches back roughly 21 million years, to the shared ancestor of humans and other large apes, according to the study, published Wednesday (Nov. 19) in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. Meanwhile, Homo sapiens likely emerged around 300,000 years ago.

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