Ella Al-Shamahi

Some people have argued that it might have been observation.

It might have been that people are nosing on each other, basically, spying on neighbouring communities.

Yes, I'm so glad that you're pronouncing his surname, not me.

He was a fascinating archaeologist with just one of the most fascinating sites.

Yes.

I know this sounds bonkers, but I have thought about it and looked into it extensively.

And I do think the handshake is probably biological.

Okay.

And I argue this because chimps are bloody shaking hands.

Like we know this now, researchers who observe wild chimps, because it has to be wild, right?

Because if they're in a zoo, they might just be copying what some keepers are doing.

But wild chimpanzees have been observed shaking hands and the meaning being broadly similar.

So it's basically, it was actually some researchers out of St.

Andrews, they showed that these two male chimps are kind of fighting each other.

And after the fight, they come up to each other to shake hands to work out.

And the thing is, if chimps are doing something and we're doing something,

it's a pretty obvious argument to argue that is by descent.

And the thing is, because we do the handshake and we like to see ourselves as being these fancy people, we assume that the handshake is just like a purely cultural thing.

But a number of hidden camera experiments have shown that actually handshakes are a really good way of passing on chemo signals.

I don't know how familiar the audience is with chemo signals or the listeners are with chemo signals.