Let us pause for a moment to consider ... the kiss.
So simple a gesture; so overpowering, sometimes, the effect. Who doesn't remember his or her first kiss — and remember it with pleasure? First sex can be a painful memory; a first kiss rarely is. Sex is a wrenching initiation into a messy adult world. A kiss? Why, it's innocence itself.
Legend attributes mankind's first kiss to the ancient Phoenicians, circa 3000 B.C. Sunday Mainichi magazine tells the story: a dying child too weak to drink from a cup was saved by his mother passing water from her mouth to his. And so the kiss originated in maternal love. How it passed from there to Eros is a subject for another day.