One Kiss or Two?: The Art and Science of Saying Hello

260 Pages·2018·1.54 MB·English

by  Andy Scott

One Kiss or Two?
In Search of the
Perfect Greeting
ANDY SCOTT
For my friends and family – finally
Preface
I was standing outside a hotel in Istanbul, trying to get my bearings, when the
idea for this book first came to life. Two bouncer-like figures stood either
side of the entrance looking tough. It was hardly the most welcoming sight
and I held back from asking for directions. But, then, to my amazement, a young
guy wandered over and greeted them with double kisses, lightly holding their
chins as he passed from cheek to cheek. Suddenly, the stone-faced doormen
were all smiles and laughter. It was an intimate scene and I was left wondering
why, back home in the UK, we sometimes struggle with even a handshake. What
was so different in Turkey?
In different forms, this was a question that stayed with me over the following
months, as I made my way across Europe and down Africa. I’d finally finished
my PhD and was on a giant trip, trying to get from Cambridge to Cape Town
overland using public transport. As I crossed from country to country and culture
to culture, I began to keep note of the different greetings I encountered. I was
particularly struck by the reception I received in Sudan. It was a country I was
nervous about entering, with its news dominated by war and instability. But,
where I was travelling, I needn’t have worried. Apart from the barren landscape
and burning heat, my overwhelming impression was of incredible friendliness. If
in doubt, all I had to do was use the traditional Arabic greeting As-salamu
alaykum (‘Peace be upon you’), and people’s faces would light up as they
returned the gesture. Back home, it was a sentiment reserved for my yearly visit
to church and even then was a bit embarrassing, but here it felt like the perfect
way to break down any barriers or suspicion, and I found myself greeting like
never before. The physical side of Sudanese greetings also had a special quality.
Between men, they often began with an exaggerated pat to the right shoulder
before combining this with a handshake. I started off tentatively, but there was
always particular delight when I joined in the ritual.
In Ethiopia, the shoulder pat became the shoulder bump, which was then
replaced by a sort of finger snap in parts of Kenya. Of all the greetings I
encountered, though, my favourite was towards the end of my trip, in Namibia.
Having just arrived, I was standing in a bank changing some money, when I
noticed two men approaching each other, smiling broadly. The younger man
stopped a couple of metres short and crouched down, holding his hands together
as if about to pray. He then gave a short burst of applause, while the other man
watched in appreciation. No one else seemed to notice, but I was transfixed. The
whole display finished with a hug and a handshake, accompanied by a warm and
enthusiastic exchange. Again, what was different in Namibia, I wondered? How
did people come to greet each other like superstars?
Back home, inspired by my trip, the idea of a book on greetings took hold.
‘But hasn’t it been done before?’ people asked. It seemed so obvious. After all,
there are books on just about every aspect of human behaviour. I’d even seen
books on queuing. Surely there must be one on the first moment of interaction. I
nervously turned to Google, certain I would find the book that would kill the
idea. But, to my relief, all I found, buried among a bunch of sites selling
Christmas cards, was a children’s picture book which, while fun, didn’t give
greetings the treatment I’d begun to think they deserved.
At first, I thought in terms of a global guide, and began to search for and
catalogue different greetings from around the world. There were more variations
of the handshake, such as the diagonal clasp and fist bump, and then different
twists on our most common greetings. But I was determined to find the most
unusual and reveal humans in all their oddness. It was like being on an Indiana
Jones adventure, albeit sitting in front of a computer screen. There are the more
well-known ones, such as the Maori nose rub (the hongi) in New Zealand or the
prayer sign (the namaste) in parts of Asia. But, as I got deeper, past the first
pages, I started to discover more outlandish customs – behaviour that made me
question what it really means to say hello. There’s cheek-sniffing in Tuvalu and
foot-kissing in Bangladesh; in Tibet, there’s the practice of poking tongues out,
while members of the Maasai tribe in Kenya mark each other’s arrival by
spitting on the floor. One article even described the convention among Central
Eskimos of slapping strangers around the face when first meeting. The stranger
is then entitled to slap back and more rounds follow, in ever-greater intensity,
until someone finally falls to the floor, presumably in a lot of pain.
All of this challenged my understanding of what it means to greet. Being a
naturalist at heart, I started to look beyond our own species, wondering if and
how the rest of the animal world says hello. My own knowledge mostly came
from watching our cats. I realise that there’s a danger of thinking of our pets in
human terms, but I was struck by how they seemed to have their own special
greetings. Of the current bunch, Alice (who is sitting next to me as I type) has a
peculiar way of quivering her tail whenever she walks in, which usually lasts for
a few seconds until she’s had her first stroke. Then there’s her brother, Bedford,
who is much more vocal, especially when bringing in mice or birds, which he
announces with a deep meow, as if he’s summoning the spirits. Towards each
other, they mostly hiss and growl. But at friendlier moments they’ll rub noses
and inspect each other’s behinds. I’d even heard of cats headbutting each other.
Did these count as greetings, I wondered? And what about species closer to our
own?
In the end, as I collected all of the different customs, I realised that my
global-guide idea had turned into something else. I’d started to see these first
moments of interaction as a window into different cultures, maybe even our
species as a whole. The thing that began to interest me was not so much what
people did but understanding why they did them. How did these greetings come
about, evolve and spread? How did we come to shake hands, pat shoulders and
slap faces? And why do we even bother with these rituals in the first place?
Were they simply a matter of culture or, looking at our cats, was our biology
involved? Stepping back, I was struck by a simple fact: that greetings are at once
both universal and particular; that is, they’re something we all do but each in our
own special way. While basic, I felt like this touched on something profound –
something about what it means to be human and about our place in the world.
So these are the aims of this book: to reveal greetings in all their variety and
complexity, and to understand their origin, why we do them and how they have
evolved. To this end, what follows takes us on a journey in search of answers to
some basic questions. Starting out, though, we’ll look at where and how our
greetings can go wrong. In truth, the driving inspiration behind this book was not
so much travelling the world and marvelling at humanity’s diversity as being at
home and getting in a constant muddle. As we’ll see, our greetings have become
a big source of confusion and embarrassment, and things seem to be getting
worse. Part of the problem is that these first moments of interaction are
important, though we don’t always know why or how. In subsequent chapters,
we’ll try to get to grips with some of this, to see if we can help get our greetings
right or at least better understand why we get them wrong. First, we’ll dissect
what’s in a greeting to find where the problems lie. We’ll then see if there really
is such a thing as a perfect greeting and how we can know. Next, we’ll tackle the
issue of handling greetings from around the world to understand how we should
behave when meeting people from different cultures. Having come to terms with
our differences, though, we’ll go in search of what unites us and whether our
greetings share any common origins. Here, we’ll step back into our evolutionary
past and explore our connections with the rest of the animal world. In doing so,
we’ll see how our strangest greetings actually reveal some fundamental aspects
of human behaviour that connect us all. We’ll also look more closely at some of
the physiological dimensions to our greetings, exploring how our senses and,
most importantly, our brains come into play. Having dug into the origins of our
greetings, we’ll trace how they’ve evolved and spread, using them as a
barometer for our entire history. Finally, we’ll take a look into our future,
assessing where our greetings are going.
All in all, stretching across the whole of human history, searching every
corner of the planet and bringing in the rest of the animal world, it’s going to be
an interesting journey. Along the way, we’ll meet and be guided by some of the
foremost experts on human behaviour. We’ll get advice from etiquette coaches
and body-language gurus who have made a career out of telling the rest of us
how to behave. But to get at some of the bigger questions we’ll need to bring in
the academics. We’ll meet a pioneer of the study of human interaction, as well as
leading sociologists and anthropologists who can explain what connects us, as
well as our differences. In searching for the origins of our greetings, we’ll be
helped by zoologists and palaeontologists who have spent their lives studying
different animals and our earliest ancestors – people who have changed our view
of what it means to be human. We’ll also meet pioneering neuroscientists who’ll
show us what’s going on inside our brains, revealing aspects of our behaviour
that we’re not even aware of. And to get a sense of what’s changed and where
we’re heading, we’ll see what the historians have to say and meet someone who
claims to predict the future.
As far as my own background goes, while I studied history, I don’t have any
formal training in any of these areas. But, in some ways, this works to my
advantage. Coming to the subject of greetings without any specialisation or
academic loyalties, I wanted to use it as a chance to look across all of the fields,
as much as possible pulling their insights together. Starting out, the only
conviction I did have was that, when it comes to explaining human behaviour,
there can be no other way.
As well as drawing on the experts, though, I’ve also done some of my own
primary research, even if only to test their conclusions. Here, I’ve been inspired
by the notions of ‘small science’ and ‘armchair anthropology’. Spurning the
need for big laboratories, vast teams and pots of money, ‘small science’
embraces the study of the everyday. It’s science at its most democratic – armed
with enough curiosity and a critical eye, anyone can have a go. After all, when it
comes to human behaviour, we’re all scientists trying to work out its causes.
As for ‘armchair anthropology’, it goes back to the days of the early
Victorian anthropologists and their tendency to rely on the second-hand accounts
of explorers, traders and colonialists to explain different cultures. Today, though,
I think it can be used in a more positive way. With the invention of television
and the internet, it really is possible to explore the world and different cultures in
a meaningful way without leaving the comfort of your armchair. I might not be
able to meet tribes for the first time, but I can watch people who have. And the
explosion of reality TV, however tedious at times, gives us the chance to watch
people going about their daily lives.
But I’ve also got out of my chair and followed the example of modern
anthropologists, using their key method: ‘participant observation’. Essentially,
this is understanding different cultures by experiencing them. Typically, the
intrepid researcher would head off to stay with some remote tribe, spending
months, even years, recording and experiencing all aspects of their lives. Having
originally had grand ideas about travelling the world to try all the different
greetings, I’ve had to limit my horizons. In this respect, though, I’m lucky to live
in London, since I have the world on my doorstep. Today, with its 8.7 million
inhabitants speaking more than 300 languages, it’s one of the most multicultural
cities in the world, allowing me to explore and experience customs from all
corners of the globe, as well as my own.
What follows, then, is the story of my search for answers to some basic
questions. Inspired by my own travels and struggles, it describes my journey
across different disciplines, meeting the experts and collecting insights from
around the world and everyday life. All this will shed light on our greetings,
helping us to understand what makes them important and how to get them right,
but it will also open up some bigger questions – questions about what it means to
be human and our place in the world. The Scottish naturalist John Muir best
captures the spirit in which I have approached the book: ‘When we try to pick
out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.’
When it comes to greetings, I hope that, by the end, you will know what I mean.