Everyone does it. Job interviews, meeting someone new, closing a deal. But nobody stops to ask — where did the handshake actually come from?

The common answer is "it showed you weren't holding a weapon." That's partly true, but it's way more interesting than that.

The oldest evidence of a handshake dates back to a 9th century BC Assyrian relief showing the King of Assyria shaking hands with a Babylonian ruler. It wasn't casual — it was a power transfer. The Babylonian king was literally receiving authority from the god Marduk through physical touch.

In ancient Greece, the handshake (called dexiosis) showed up on gravestones. It symbolized the bond between the living and the dead — a final unbreakable agreement.

The Quakers in the 17th century popularized the handshake as we know it. They saw bowing and hat-tipping as too hierarchical. A handshake was radical — it meant "we're equals."

So next time you shake someone's hand, you're performing a 3,000-year-old ritual that started as a transfer of divine power, became a pact with the dead, and was reinvented as a statement of equality.

That's the kind of stuff I break down every week at How It Started. The real origin stories behind things you never questioned.