The Handshake Was Never About Friendship — It Was About Checking for Knives

Somewhere right now, two people are shaking hands. Maybe it's closing a business deal in a Chicago conference room. Maybe it's a first introduction at a backyard barbecue in Tennessee. It feels warm, instinctive, almost universal — one of those human gestures so natural it seems like it must have always meant exactly what it means today.

It didn't.

Trace the handshake back past the boardroom, past the founding fathers, past the Renaissance, and you land somewhere considerably less friendly: two armed men, each desperately trying to determine whether the other one was about to kill them.

When Your Greeting Was a Weapons Check

In medieval Europe, meeting a stranger was a genuinely dangerous proposition. Swords, daggers, and knives were standard equipment for anyone who could afford them, and the line between a social encounter and an ambush wasn't always clear. Travelers, knights, and noblemen developed a practical habit when approaching someone they weren't sure they could trust: extend the right hand — the weapon hand — open and empty, and invite the other person to clasp it.

The logic was straightforward. If your hand was being held, you couldn't draw a blade. If the other person's hand was being held, neither could they. The extended arm also made it difficult to conceal a weapon behind the back or under a cloak without the movement being obvious. For a few seconds, both parties were physically committed to not attacking each other, which was apparently enough time to establish whether a conversation was worth having.

Some historians point to ancient Greek and Roman records showing similar gestures, and there are depictions of handshakes on Greek funerary art dating back to the 5th century BC — often shown between the living and the dead as a symbol of farewell. But the specific mechanics of the modern handshake — the full grip, the vertical clasp, the occasional pump — seem to have solidified during the medieval period as a practical peace signal between armed men.

The Quakers Who Made It Democratic

For most of the medieval and early modern period, the handshake existed alongside a more elaborate system of bowing, hat-tipping, and kneeling that communicated social rank as much as goodwill. The deeper your bow, the higher the status of the person you were greeting. Your body language announced the hierarchy before anyone said a word.

In the 17th century, the Quakers — the Religious Society of Friends — pushed back against this system hard. Their theology held that all people were equal before God, which meant the performative deference of bowing and scraping to social superiors was, in their view, a form of dishonesty. They refused to bow. They refused to remove their hats as a mark of deference. Instead, they greeted everyone the same way, regardless of rank: with a handshake.

This was genuinely radical. It was also, over time, genuinely influential. The Quakers were active in commerce, particularly in England and colonial America, and their business networks were extensive. The handshake spread through trade as a practical, egalitarian greeting that didn't require either party to signal submission. By the time the American colonies were establishing their own cultural norms — deliberately distancing themselves from European aristocratic traditions — the handshake fit perfectly with the ideals of a republic where, at least in theory, no man bowed to another.

How Politics Sealed the Deal

The founding generation of American leaders were deliberate about their public gestures in ways that are easy to underestimate. George Washington, famously, refused to shake hands during his presidency — he bowed instead, partly to maintain a presidential dignity he felt the young country needed. But as democratic ideals deepened through the early 19th century, the bow began to feel aristocratic, European, and out of step with American self-image.

Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828 as the champion of the common man, was an enthusiastic handshaker. His inaugural reception at the White House became legendary — and chaotic — partly because he shook hands with what seemed like every person in the building. The gesture carried a political message: this president was not above you. He would grip your hand like an equal.

By the mid-1800s, the handshake had largely replaced the bow in American public life. It appeared in business contracts, political campaigns, and formal introductions. The weapon-check origins were long forgotten. What remained was the symbolism: two people meeting as equals, each making themselves briefly vulnerable to the other, each trusting the other not to take advantage.

The Ritual That Refused to Retire

The 20th century threw a few curveballs at the handshake. The flu pandemic of 1918 prompted some public health officials to discourage it. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 led to widespread predictions that it was finally finished — replaced by elbow bumps, waves, and nods. Etiquette writers declared it obsolete. Hygiene experts called it a germ vector.

It came back anyway.

There's something about the physical commitment of the gesture — the grip, the brief mutual vulnerability, the eye contact it tends to require — that no wave or nod has managed to replicate. Behavioral researchers have found that handshakes increase trust and cooperation in negotiations, that they signal sincerity in ways other greetings don't, and that people rate interactions as more positive when they begin with one.

None of that was the original point. The original point was to make sure the person across from you wasn't hiding a dagger.

But somewhere along the way, the gesture outlived its paranoia and kept only the trust. That might be the most human thing about it.