the common language

A language has more to say...

With the same ethological methods they have long used in studies of animals, scientists are turning their attention to the nuances of human courtship rituals-otherwise known as flirting.

By turning the ethologist's lens on human courtship, scientists are finding striking similarities with other species, suggesting that the nonverbal template used by Homo sapiens for attracting and approaching a prospective mate is to some extent part of a larger, shared animal heritage.

A woman parades past a crowded bar to the woman's room, hips swaying, eyes resting momentarily on a likely man and then coyly looking away just as she notices his look. This scenario exemplifies a standard opening move in courtship, getting attention, said Dr. David Givens, an anthropologist in Washington who is writing a book about evolution and behavior.

"In the first phase of courting, humans broadcast widely a nonverbal message that amounts to 'notice me,'" said Dr. Givens.
"They'll do it through movement, through their dress, through gesture."

From hundreds of hours of observations in bars and at parties, Dr. Givens discovered that women, more than men, tend to promenade, making numerous trips to the woman's room, for instance, both to scout and to be seen.

A second nonverbal message in this earliest stage is "I am harmless," Dr. Givens has found. The gestures and postures humans use to send this message are shared with other mammals, particularly primates. Charles Darwin, who noted the same gestures in his 1872 book, "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," called them "submissive displays

Perhaps the first serious study of flirting was done in the 1960's by Dr. Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, an eminent ethologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Dr. Eibl-Eibesfeldt traveled to cultures around the world with a camera that took pictures from the side so he could stand near couples and take their pictures without their realizing they were being observed.
In research in Samoa, Brazil, Paris, Sydney and New York, Dr. Eibl-Eibesfeldt discovered an apparently universal human vocabulary for flirting and courtship.

In humans, one such gesture is a palm-up placement of the hand, whether on a table or a knee, a reassuring sign of harmlessness.