Why do we touch strangers so much? A history of the handshake offers clues
Coronavirus is disrupting an age-old habit with roots spanning from ancient Greece to the American Quakers.
THERE’S A LOT that can be conveyed in a handshake, a kiss, or a hug. Throughout history, such a greeting was used to signal friendship, finalize a business transaction, or indicate religious devotion. But touching strangers can also transmit other, less beneficial shared outcomes—like disease outbreaks.
As fears about COVID-19, or coronavirus, mount, France has warned its citizens to pause their famous cheek kisses, and across the world business deals are being sealed with an elbow bump. But with histories tracing back thousands of years, both greetings are likely too entrenched to be so easily halted.
A popular theory on the handshake’s origin is that it began as a gesture of peace. Grasping hands proved you were not holding a weapon—and shaking them was a way to ensure your partner had nothing hiding up their sleeve. Throughout the ancient world, the handshake appears on vases, gravestones, and stone slabs in scenes of weddings, gods making deals, young warriors departing for war, and the newly dead’s arrival to the afterlife. In the literary canon, it stretches to the Iliad and the Odyssey.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/why-touch-others-history-handshake-offers-clues/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=linkedin::cmp=editorial::add=li20200313history-newhistoryhandshakes:rid=&sf231467907=1
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