“When I began to travel overseas I always had to learn the country’s tradition of greeting. Then I started to try and understand the origins of each salutation and this is what I found out about the shaking of hands greeting.
The history of the handshake dates back to The 5th century B.C. in Greece. They did not trust each other and looked for hidden weapons by grabbing each others forearms showing that neither person was carrying a weapon.
They slip or slide their hands down palm to palm and shake the hands vigorously or not depending of their trust, so that if there happen to be more hidden weapons they will fall by the excessive shaking.
We do not look for weapons anymore but we inherited the handshake as a greeting gesture when we meet. It will be hard to suddenly stop.
I can still see a politician who last month on TV, after warning everyone not to shake hands because of the Covid-19, when stepping down from the podium, shook hands with another man who was close to him.
Should we invent another salutation? In my opinion the best one which I feel confident with is to place a hand, right or left on the chest, (my heart) look into the eyes of the person and while smiling make a small waist bow without losing the eye contact.
With the warning from authorities [1] that a hug, a kiss on the cheek, or a handshake can no longer be longer practice, if we do change the hand shake, it will mean that Covid-19 destroyed a 7,000-year old tradition.”
This is just a suggestion.
Anthony Zammit,
Gozo.