Really Old JOW

I have been working weekends at the Texas Renaissance Fair. This got me thinking about the age old concept of laughter. Although humans have certainly had a sense of humor the things that make us laugh are not always funny to us today. Researching for ancient jokes I found most of them unamusing; some were completely incomprehensible. There are a number of topics which seem to have been thought of as funny throughout the ages. Much as it pains us politically correct westerners, we have always laughed at other people's infirmities or idiosyncrasies. The blind, hunchbacks, dwarfs and retarded have been butts for our jokes. Schadenfreude, the pleasure of delighting in somebody else's misfortune, may not be quite as cruel as it used to be, but we still laugh at somebody slipping on the proverbial banana skin. Bodily functions too have tickled our funny bone. The world's oldest joke at least according to the University of Wolverhampton dates to before 1600 BCE; it is a rather unfunny reference to flatulence. Apparently toilet humor is even older than toilets. Not quite as down to earth has been satire, the art of poking fun at the powers that be; and rarest of all has always been the gentle flower of self-mockery.
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I found an ancient version of Monty Python's ‘dead parrot’ sketch which has a man buy a slave, who dies shortly afterwards. When he complains to the seller, he is told: "Well he didn't die when I owned him."
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There is a very old joke about a man, just back from a trip abroad, who went to a fortune-teller. He asked about his family, and the fortune-teller replied: "Everyone is fine, especially your father."
When the man objected that his father had been dead for ten years.
Thinking fast the fortune teller replied "You have no clue who your real father is."

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The Greeks seemed to have something of a modern sense of humor; they certainly enjoyed puns.
For example in the Odyssey, Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his real name is ‘nobody’. When Odysseus instructs his men to attack the Cyclops, the Cyclops calls out to his allies: "Help, nobody is attacking me!"
So no one comes to help him.

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The oldest known joke book, written in Greek, by Philogelos, or The Laughter Lover, dates to the third or fourth century AD, and contains some 260 jokes. Some are almost repeated almost identically as if the author was giving you a nudge and saying “Get it? Get it?” There are some jokes that concern eunuchs, slaves, and such that are lost on a modern audience. Overly intellectual men who have no common sense are a common theme that resonates today. Some of these ancient jokes could work on the current TV show, “Big Bang Theory.”
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When an intellectual was told, "Your beard is now coming in," he went to the rear-entrance to wait for it.
Another intellectual asked what he was doing.
When told he said: "I'm not surprised that people say we intellectuals lack common sense. How do you know that it's not coming in by the other gate?"
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An intellectual was on a sea voyage when a big storm blew up, causing his slaves who were with him to weep in terror.
‘Don’t cry,’ he consoled them, ‘If the boat sinks have freed you all in my will.’

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Sometimes royalty was credited with humor:

A Greek king was asked by the court barber how he wanted his hair cut; the king replied: "In silence."

Even the first Roman emperor had a sense of humor.

The Emperor Augustus was touring his Empire and noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself.
Intrigued he asked: "Was your mother at one time in service at the Palace?"
"No your Highness," the man boldly replied, "but my father was." (Credited to Augustus 63 BC – 29 AD)
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The oldest British joke, that I could find (it is actually a riddle) dates back to the 10th Century and reveals the bawdy face of the Anglo-Saxons –
"What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before?”
Answer: “A key."

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Various jokes written by Leonardo da Vinci in his notebooks have survived to us, such as the following:

It was asked of a painter why he could paint beautiful figures, which were but dead things, while his children who were alive were all so ugly; to which the painter replied that he made his pictures by day and his children by night.



Tom