Somewhere along the way, humans decided that handing another human an object could mean:
I love you.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
I respect you.
I come in peace.
Please marry me.
And, occasionally:
Please don't invade my kingdom.
We give gifts so naturally that we rarely stop to wonder why we do it at all.
Animals don't celebrate their birthdays. There were no gift shops in the Stone Age. And yet humans have been giving things to one another since long before anyone invented wrapping paper, birthday cards or the dreaded office Secret Santa.
So why do we gift?
Turns out, we've been at it for a very long time.
Long before there were shops
We can't put a date on the first gift.
Nobody left us a note saying:
"Gave Thog a particularly nice rock today. He seemed pleased."
But sharing and exchanging food, tools and useful objects goes deep into human prehistory.
For early communities, cooperation wasn't merely pleasant. It helped you survive.
Food wasn't always plentiful. Hunting wasn't always successful. People became ill or injured. Children needed caring for. Sharing resources and helping one another strengthened relationships within a group.
Giving therefore had practical value.
But humans also appear to have been attaching meaning to objects for an extraordinarily long time. Beads, shells, pigments and decorative objects travelled considerable distances in prehistoric societies, suggesting that objects weren't valued only because they could keep you warm or help you catch dinner.
We liked things.
And apparently we quite liked giving them to other people too.
We're not the only ones
Here's where it gets even more interesting.
Some of our primate relatives share food, groom one another and exchange favours within their social groups.
Chimpanzees, for example, have been observed sharing food and forming long-term cooperative relationships.
That doesn't mean a chimp is going to remember your anniversary.
But it does suggest that giving and sharing may have very deep roots in the social behaviour of primates.
For animals that survive in groups, relationships matter.
For humans, they became everything.
Then gifting got political
Once humans started building kingdoms, cities and empires, the humble gift acquired considerably more responsibility.
Rulers exchanged valuable objects with other rulers.
Gold.
Jewellery.
Fine cloth.
Weapons.
Spices.
Horses.
Exotic animals.
A spectacular gift wasn't merely something nice arriving at the palace.
It could be a statement.
Look how wealthy we are.
We recognise your importance.
We would like an alliance.
We'd like access to your trade routes.
Or possibly:
Here are twelve excellent horses. Could we reconsider the war?
Diplomatic gifting became an important part of relationships between rulers and states.
The gift itself mattered, but so did what it represented.
Trust.
Respect.
Power.
Obligation.
Peace.
Humans had discovered that sometimes an object could say considerably more than a conversation.
We gave gifts to people who couldn't give them back
If gifting were purely about getting something in return, one of our oldest gifting habits wouldn't make much sense at all.
For thousands of years, humans have made offerings to gods, spirits and the dead.
Food, drink, animals, jewellery, precious objects and other offerings appear throughout ancient cultures.
The Egyptians placed objects in tombs.
Ancient Greeks and Romans made offerings to their gods.
Across many cultures, valuable possessions accompanied the dead.
Depending on the belief, a gift might ask for protection, give thanks, honour an ancestor, seek favour or provide something needed in the next life.
Nobody was expecting a thank-you note.
The act of giving itself carried meaning.
And perhaps that's one of the first clues to why gifting has survived.
Gifts created bonds
There is a wonderful complication in gift-giving that anthropologists have studied for generations.
A gift isn't always just an object changing hands.
It can create a relationship.
If I give something to you, something has happened between us.
You received it.
You know I chose to give it.
You know I gave up something that belonged to me.
And now the relationship is ever so slightly different.
In many societies, gift exchange helped build and maintain connections between individuals, families and communities.
Anthropologists often describe this in terms of reciprocity — giving, receiving and returning.
That doesn't mean:
I gave you three chickens, therefore you owe me three chickens.
It is much broader than that.
Giving could say:
We have a relationship.
And returning generosity at some point could say:
Yes, we do.
Which was rather important in a world where your relationships with other people could determine whether you traded together, helped one another, married into one another's families — or hit one another over the head.
Gifts could also show power
Of course, humans being humans, we couldn't leave a nice idea alone.
Gifts also became a way of displaying wealth and status.
A ruler who could give away something extraordinarily valuable wasn't only being generous.
He was demonstrating that he could afford to give it away.
That's quite a statement.
Lavish gift-giving became part of royal courts, political relationships and ceremonies in many parts of the world.
The recipient mattered.
The giver mattered.
The witnesses mattered.
And sometimes the entire point was that everybody else saw what had been given.
So even centuries ago there were gifts that were less:
"Saw this and thought of you."
And rather more:
"Please make sure everyone sees what I bought you."
Some things really haven't changed.
Then there's love
Somewhere amongst survival, religion, diplomacy and showing off, humans also used gifts for something much more familiar.
Affection.
People have given tokens of love and courtship across cultures and centuries.
Jewellery, flowers, handmade objects, love tokens, keepsakes and personal possessions have all been used to say something remarkably simple:
You matter to me.
And that is perhaps where ancient gifting starts feeling very modern.
The object doesn't have to keep anybody alive.
It doesn't have to prevent a war.
It doesn't have to impress an emperor.
Its purpose is the message attached to it.
So why are we still doing it?
This may be the most interesting bit.
Most of us no longer need to exchange gifts to secure an alliance with the neighbouring kingdom.
We don't generally send livestock when negotiating business deals.
And if someone arrives at your front door with twelve horses, you probably have a completely different problem.
Yet gifting survived.
Thousands of years of changing religions, governments, economies, technologies and social customs — and we're still handing things to one another.
Perhaps because the thing was never really the point.
A gift can make something invisible visible.
Affection.
Gratitude.
Respect.
Friendship.
Love.
Connection.
You can't wrap any of those.
So we wrap something else and let it speak for us.
From a shared piece of food thousands of years ago to something chosen for somebody today, the objects have changed enormously.
The reason behind them?
Perhaps not nearly as much.
We give because people matter to us — and sometimes it's rather nice to put that feeling in their hands.