Randy Bronze men created herpes by inventing snogging - then Romans tried to ban it

dailystar.co.uk:

Scientific research into the origins of cold sores has shed new light on kissing.The HSV-1 strain of the herpes virus, which causes cold sores, currently infects some 3.7billion people worldwide.Now scientists at the University of Cambridge have uncovered and sequenced ancient genomes of the virus that cause the unsightly blemishes. READ MORE: Monkeypox 'could be in the UK forever' if pets catch it, worried officials warn Research suggests the HSV-1 strain of the herpes virus arose in the wake of vast migrations of people from Eurasia to Europe around 5,000 years ago.The migration led to both denser populations, which drove up rates of transmission, and “new cultural practices being imported from the east,” including kissing, according to the study.Facial herpes is spread orally, and the researchers point out the earliest-known record of kissing comes from a Bronze Age manuscript from South Asia.The custom may have spread westward along with migration and coincided with the spread of HSV-1, according to the study, published in the journal Science Advances.Centuries later, the Roman Emperor Tiberius would try to ban kissing at official functions to prevent disease spread - a decree that researchers believe may have been herpes-related.However, for most of human prehistory, the strain would have been passed down "vertically" - from infected mother to newborn child.Co-senior author Dr Christiana Scheib, research fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, and head of the ancient DNA lab at Tartu University, said: "Every primate species has a form of herpes, so we assume it has been with us since our own species left Africa."However, something happened around five thousand years ago that allowed one strain of herpes to overtake.