How old is tickling?

[Moses25]

From what I've read, a guesstimation perhaps, reported known tickling is b/w 4-5000 years old. Which leads to a couple of interesting questions...

(1) Maybe we are so interested in tickling, partly, is b/c it is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of mankind. Perhaps so new, in fact, that we are still in the inital stages wherein peeps respond to being tickled by laughing and spasmodic movement.
Perhaps in another couple of thousand years, there will new responses to tickling seen in humans, or perhaps tickling will even fall of the map as a viable sensation (say it ain't so!);

(2) Is a major response to tickling due to the fact that most of us were tickled during childhood? Some more than others, I know.
What I mean to say, is that do any of you know ticklish peeps today who were never tickled as children? And, more importantly, are their ticklish responses as pronounced as someone who was tickled during childhood?

Phew...now where did I leave that dissertation?

Cheers.

 

[amk714]

When did we evolve nerve endings? 😀

 

[Novus]

Re, How old is tickling?

I would say tickling is about as old as mankind has been around. Though it takes more then nerve endings to be ticklish. A better question to ask would be how long tickle torture has been around. Tickling as a not so innocent form of play has likely only been done for 3 or 4 thousand years.

 

[Haltickling]

Beginning much earlier

1) There aren't any older historical reports about anything; I tend to believe that tickling is just as old as mankind, if not older. Studies about other primates like chimps and gorillas have shown that they seem to enjoy tickling as well, so it may well trace back to the origin of primates in general. Just a guess, and hardly possible to prove, since you can't tickle fossils...

2) As far as I know, scientists still don't even understand half of our behaviour's reasons, what is learned and how much is in our genes. There are new genetic discoveies all the time, but as nowaday's science shamefully neglects the phenomenon 'tickling', we might have to wait quite a bit until someone deals with it.

Personally, I believe that we have got some latent 'tickle' gene, and that it's brought out either by both our parents having it, or by learning in early childhood.

I don't remember ever having been tickled during childhood. My mother died when I was still very young, so I don't know if she had tickled me. But I developed my taste for tickling rather early, in primary school. No relevant info there, sorry.

 

[amk714]

You weren't tickled as a child, Hal? What's this world coming to? 😛

 

[milagros317]

Both young chimpanzees and young gorillas like to be tickled, so I would guess that tickling is _much_ older than the human species. (The common ancestor of humans and chimps lived about 5 to 7 million years ago.)

 

[tickledorange]

Tickling has probably been around since there has been life on earth. Little one celled organisms tickling each other. Young caveparents tickled their children just to play with them and theyve passed it on, so tickling has probably been around forever.

 

[amk714]

Tickledorange, you're Stacy, right? What does kjelk, your sig, mean? BTW, I totally agree with you! 😀