How did the tradition of shaking hands originate as a greeting?
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We do not know. In a lot of the early arts we have it appears as if handshaking is already an established practice. So the Bronze age civilizations shook hands with each probably before they invented writing. It is a bit hard to say if shaking hands were used as a form of greeting as most of the art would presumably depict it as a form of agreement, for example when signing peace treaties. However as we have more arts from the early Iron age for example from ancient Greece, these do also depict people shaking hands in more casual settings as well. But without a huge amount of art from the Bronze age depicting casual settings we can not tell if the hand shake was used only when showing agreement or also as a greeting.
What is also curious is that the handshake is not a fully universal form of greeting. There are still a lot of cultures where they do not shake hands in greeting. And in other cases we have written history of when and how hand shakes was introduced to a culture. But this is similar to other gestures from pre-history, such as shaking or nodding your head.
I believe it started as a way to show you were not hostile in a time when people carried weapons. Presenting your empty hand instead of a hand holding a sword showed friendship vs. hostility.
Not only did it show you were unarmed but it showed you recognized the other man as roughly an equal in terms of class and status. A peasant would not shake hands with a King for example, they would bow. And nobody would shake hands with a slave.
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