According to a new study, the origins of modern cold sores or herpes can be traced back to the bronze age, when our forefathers began to engage in romantic and sexual kissing. Based on the study, the virus currently infects approximately 3.7 billion people, which was led by an international team of Cambridge University researchers. The researchers discovered and sequenced ancient genomes from the herpes virus, which causes lip sores frequently.
According to the study, which was published in the journal Science Advances, the Neolithic blooming of facial herpes discovered in ancient DNA could have coincided with the introduction of a new cultural activity imported from the east: romantic and sexual kissing. The researchers extracted viral DNA from the tooth roots of millennia-old human bones and used that information to map ancient herpes genomes.
According to an analysis, painful lip blisters flourished during the Neolithic period, following massive migrations into Europe from Eurasia’s Steppe grasslands. According to co-senior author Dr. Christiana Scheib, a research associate at St. John’s College in Cambridge, ‘herpes is present in every species of monkey, so we assume it has been with us since our own species left Africa’.
According to the study, interbreeding caused population explosions across the continent, fueling increased transmission rates. ‘ However, around five thousand years ago, something happened that allowed one strain of herpes to overtake all others, possibly an increase in transmissions, which could have been linked to kissing. Herpes has been around for millions of years, and various forms of the virus infect everything from bats to coral’.
According to the study, human civilizations’ behaviour is far from universal. Kissing was first recorded in a Bronze Age document from South Asia. Centuries later, the Roman Emperor Tiberius issued a possible herpes-related decree that attempted to prevent the spread of the disease by prohibiting kissing at official gatherings. Herpes symptoms include a high temperature, nausea, headaches, and swollen, inflamed gums with sores in and around the mouth. Herpes can become active in the body after years of dormancy, making it a chronic illness.
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