Falling in love is both beautiful and mysterious. And now if studies are to be believed, it is pretty scientific as well. Scientists believe this strange feeling could be key to our evolutionary success.
According to researchers, evidence has been discovered showing ‘election promoted love in human evolution' as it increased the chances of us having families.
Scientists studied Hadza people of Tanzania, who don't use modern contraception, and found passionate partnerships were associated with having more children.
It follows previous research that found love may have evolved to stop male primates from killing their infants.
While modern societies are fettered with distractions, the hunter-gatherers are believed to have changed little in the last ten thousand years and for this reason they could provide insight into the early evolution of love among our prehistoric ancestors.
Speaking about the study, researchers say that the study may shed new light on the meaning of love in humans' evolutionary past, especially in traditional hunter-gatherer societies in which individuals, not their parents, were responsible for partner.
The research conduced at the University of Wroclaw and led by Dr Piotr Sorokowski looked at three components in order to measure the depth of love - intimacy, passion and commitment, also referred to as the Sternberg Triangular Theory of Love created in 1985 by psychologist Robert Sternberg.
Researchers compared these measures of love with how many children couples had.
Researchers found there was a positive association between passion and reproductive success in both sexes.
This could be because passion increases the number of sexual encounters and is particularly high in the early stages of a relationship.
This means if a couple cannot have children they will realise that quite quickly and could decide to search for alternative mates.
They deduced that commitment helps people maintain stable relationships and people often decide to stay together in order to have children.
Furthermore, in species where males and females bonded strongly, the chance of their offspring surviving was much higher as the males had to help with parenting.
