But, said Dr. Jankowiak, "There is romantic love in cultures around the world." Last year Dr. Jankowiak, with Dr. Edward Fischer, an anthropologist at Tulane University, published in Ethnology the first cross-cultural study, systematically comparing romantic love in many cultures.

In the survey of ethnographies from 166 cultures, they found what they considered clear evidence that romantic love was known in 147 of them -- 89 percent. And in the other 19 cultures, Dr. Jankowiak said, the absence of conclusive evidence seemed due more to anthropologists' oversight than to a lack of romance. What's the Evidence?

The survey demanded a careful reading of the records, since anthropologists often paid no systematic attention to whether the people they studied had romantic involvements, or failed to distinguish between lust and love.

Some of the evidence came from tales about lovers, or folklore that offered love potions or other advice on making someone fall in love.

Another source was accounts by informants to anthropologists. For example, Nisa, a Kung woman among the Bushmen of the Kalahari, made a clear distinction between the affection she felt for her husband, and that she felt for her lovers, which was "passionate and exciting," though fleeting. Of these extramarital affairs, she said: "When two people come together their hearts are on fire and their passion is very great. After a while, the fire cools and that's how it stays."

Much of the evidence for romantic love came from cautionary tales. For example, a famous story in China during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) was that of The Jade Goddess. Similar in its description of romantic love to the European tale of Tristan and Isolde, it recounts how a young man falls in love with a woman who has been committed by her family to marry someone else, but who returns his love. The couple elope, but end in desperate straits and finally return home, in disgrace. A Question of Chemistry

Indeed, from the Kama Sutra to the poems of Sappho, tales of romance are found in ancient literatures throughout the world, though largely ignored by anthropologists and Western social historians. This is one clue that romance is a universal human trait, Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, contends in "Anatomy of Love," published this month by W.W. Norton.