Kissing

Recently, I was wondering about kissing, so I looked it up. It is a profoundly bizarre act. Is there a more espressive gesture in the human repertoire?

When parents kiss their children it means one thing, but when they kiss each other it means something entirely different. People will greet a total stranger with a kiss on the cheek, and then use an identical gesture to express their most intimate feelings to a lover.

Madonna kissed Britney, Judas kissed Jesus, gambler kisses the dice for luck; someone once even kissed in a car for 54 hours straight.

After some research, I have found that : either the kiss is a human universal, one of the constellation of innate traits, including language and laughter, that unites us as a species, or it is an invention, like fire or wearing clothes, an idea so good that it is bound to metastasize across the globe.

Whatever its origins, kissing seems to be advantageous.