Study links modern herpes variants to kissing during this time

Herpes is spread through contact with sores and saliva. kissing, basically. Researchers now believe that the spread of herpes may have been triggered by the introduction of kissing, which became popular during the Bronze Age.

Their findings, published in the journal Science Advances, are based on DNA from the first ancient specimens of herpes. After analysis, they discovered that the variant of herpes that is dominant today was adopted 4,500 years ago.

Photo by Brodie Vissers via Burst

RELATED: Does Your Gut Affect Your Urges to Drink?

“The variants common in Europe today all share a common Bronze Age ancestor,” said Dr. Charlotte Houldcroft, one of the virologists on the studies, told The Guardian. “There were variants before that, but these have been superseded, probably due to human behavior.”

The researchers analyzed 3,000 different historical burial sites and found only four subjects with herpes infections. These motifs varied greatly by location and era, one belonging to the Iron Age in the Ural Mountains, another to a 16th-century village on the banks of the Rhine, and more.

Researchers believe herpes spread when people started kissing after westward migration — from Asia to Europe — spread the custom around the world. Before that, kissing was not ubiquitous, the first record of it appearing in a Bronze Age manuscript from South Asia. Researchers believe that before these migrations, herpes was transmitted from mothers to their children.

RELATED: Study finds sweet spot in amount of weekly exercise

“If you suddenly have a group of people kissing, which wasn’t universal human behavior, that’s an additional way of spreading the virus,” explains Houldcroft.

However, researchers make it clear that these are just theories and that there is currently no way to prove their accuracy. “Only genetic samples hundreds or even thousands of years old will allow us to understand how DNA viruses like herpes and monkeypox, as well as our own immune systems, adapt in response to one another,” Houldcroft said. But speculating is a lot of fun.