Human communication is built on the usage of all our senses.
Visual and tactile communication and interaction is important in all cultures even if there are cultural differences as to the relative stress on each channel of communication, in relation to the others. The tactile, olfactory and proprioceptive dimensions of communication seem to have lost in importance in modern information society, since distance communication has grown in importance and those dimensions have been almost impossible to reproduce in distance communication so far, that is, if you don't count metaphors in literature as a tool for communication. Auditive distance communication has existed for almost a century, with technology involved. Visual distance communication has existed for even longer, at least in a limited sense. Most human cultures have developped sophisticated visual signal systems over the centuries for distance communication - smoke signals, fires, semaphors, flags etc.