The most important information relayed by a handshake isn’t conveyed through touch at all. Rather, according to a team of neurobiologists from Israel’s Weizmann Institute, the original handshake was all about smell. In a paper published last week in the journal eLife, the researchers argue that the custom of shaking hands may have evolved primarily as an excuse for people to judge each other by way of scent, gleaning information from the chemicals passed from palm to palm.
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