Handshake

[4][better source needed] Another possibility is that it originated as a symbolic gesture of mutual commitment to an oath or promise: two hands clasping each other represents the sealing of a bond.

[1][2] During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the dean of medicine at the University of Calgary, Tom Feasby, suggested that fist bumps may be a "nice replacement of the handshake" in an effort to prevent transmission of the virus.

[39] UCLA did not ban the handshakes outright, but rather suggested other options such as fist bumping, smiling, bowing, waving, and non-contact Namaste gestures.

[45] It has been discovered as a part of research at Israel's Weizmann Institute that human handshakes serve as a means of transferring social chemical signals between the shakers.

They may serve an evolutionary need to learn about the person whose hand was shaken, replacing a more overt sniffing behavior, as is common among animals and in certain human cultures (such as Tuvalu, Greenland or rural Mongolia, where a quick sniff is part of the traditional greeting ritual).

[49] Their record was broken less than a month later in Claremont, California, when John-Clark Levin and George Posner shook hands for 15 hours, 15 minutes, and 15 seconds.

The next month, on 21 November, Matthew Rosen and Joe Ackerman surpassed this feat, with a new world record time of 15 hours, 30 minutes and 45 seconds.

[50] At 8 p.m. EST on Friday 14 January 2011 a new attempt at the longest hand-shake commenced in New York City's Times Square and the existing record was broken by semi-professional world record-breaker Alastair Galpin.