The Oldest Joke: Is Humor Timeless?

It's right behind me, isn't it?

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:19 Origins
7:59 The Anatomy of a Joke
11:01 Timeless Jokes
17:51 Old Jokes That Got Old
27:55 How to make a joke last centuries

Thumbnail and art by @sanstitre2000

Endless Thread Article about the Sumerian Dog Joke:

Special Thanks to:
@sanstitre2000
Miles Greb (the voice of Xanthias)
Seth Richardson PhD
Paul McDonald
Jordan Pickett, PhD

Citations:
Richardson, Seth. (2022) Polishing some Sumerian Jewels.
Sidebottom, H. (2023). The mad emperor: Heliogabalus and the decadence of Rome. Oneworld.
Townsend, C. (2019). Fifth sun: A New History of the Aztecs. Oxford University Press.

[TREYtheExplainer]

Ok, I'll watch City Slickers, sorry to all the Millennials out there

[MoeNinjaCat]

The fact the world's oldest living joke might have been a young scholar saying "I had sex with your mom" really goes to show how much humans haven't changed

[AlternateHistoryHub]

The oldest joke is the copper sold by Ea-nasir

[rojopantalones]

One of my favorite ancient jokes is a fart joke.
The Chinese poet, Su Dongpo, wrote a poem that reads,
"I bow my head to the heaven within heaven,
Hairline rays illuminating the universe,
The eight winds cannot move me,
Sitting still upon the purple golden lotus."
He was so impressed with it that he sent a copy to Fo Yin. In response, he wrote one word on the manuscript: "Fart." Su Dongpo was so furious at this that he left his house and got on a ferry to confront him. Upon arriving at Fo Yin's house, he found a letter nailed to the door that read, "The eight winds cannot move me, yet one fart blows me across the river."

[edslushie]

I feel like you're leaving out one important detail: the reason why it became so popular to have character say "he's right behind me, isn't he" was probably because that was once very subversive on its own. Like, everybody was used to the simpler form of the joke, so having the character be aware of the scenario was a sort of fourth-wall-break.

[devonova_animation]

I think a good example of a joke that future historians may find completely unintelligible is the classic "Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9"

[codofwar]

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks "Would you like something to drink?" The horse says, "I think not, " and ceases to exist. This is in reference to the famous phrase "I think, therefore I am." I would have lead with that, but then I'd be putting Descartes before the horse.

[AndreAmpueroLeon]

I was expecting the first “he is right behind me” joke have been expressed by a shocked Australopithecus before he was eaten by a Dinofelis

[TREYtheExplainer]

ᶦᵗ'ˢ ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵇᵉʰᶦⁿᵈ, ᶦˢⁿ'ᵗ ᶦᵗˀ

[MissYomotsu]

Absolutely obsessed with dionysus' design here, it's adorable

[codycigar]

Love that humor hasn't changed much in a few thousand years,
I worked in Japan as a government contractor, and decided to show Borat to my Japanese coworkers. A lot of the humor just didn't hit with them, but the naked fight scene really killed it. Farts, dicks, and crude humor is really universal.

[sirArcticfox]

imagine being a historian 3000 years after the internet collapses trying to figure out an abstracted loss meme

[shookshibe]

Now I want to see people 2000 years from now trying to decipher the "E" meme

[olenickel]

If the Sumerian dog joke is to be understood as a funny proverb, more than as a joke, I think the dog asking if they should just open their eyes makes the most sense out of all interpretations. "If it's too dark to see, maybe try opening your eyes first".

[farfa]

Average ancient egyptian school:
- Did you know Tutankamon died of ligma?
+ Who's Tutankamon?
- Ligma balls.

[CarlosAdrianAguirre-hpfv]

I once saw a "she's right behind me isn't she?" Momment where during online classes our German Teacher placed us in small zoom chatrooms for every team, and one of our Team members starts going off about how our German class is stupid, how it is a giant waste of time, how German is a very difficult language that takes forever to understand and that there are languages far more useful than one only spoken in Germany, to which we heard the teacher respond "actually, its also spoken in Austria" as she had apparently joined the team's chat room without us noticing.

[Jamal-xjvk]

I always thought the modern use of RBM was an anti joke. Like the expected set up and pay off is that a monster appears behind a character, and that character screams or freaks out. And the twist with modern RBM jokes are that the character is so familiar with this set up, that they expect the punchline, and aren’t shocked at all when a monster has appeared right behind them

[MysteriousAuthor]

Ancient humor is really fascinating for how similar it is to the modern. One of my favorite examples is the Old Norse Lokasenna, a poem in which Loki crashes a party and insults everyone there, which includes a section where Odin and Loki go back and forth with accusations that the other one is gay (it's literally worded like "You became a mare and bore foals, I dunno sounds pretty gay to me").

Another good repository of ancient humor are the clown stories of Southwestern native tribes. Coyote is a similar character from the same region. The whole shtick is "these guys are so dumb, check this out." There's even a story about the clowns trying to learn to fuck and not being able to find the right hole.

Humans really have always been like this, and I think that's good and endearing. Nice to know that someone 500 to 1000 years ago might actually enjoy a Marvel movie or a dumb low brow comedy.

[swapdisc]

We complain about people who overly explain jokes, but now that I think about it, these people are gonna be a massive help for future archeologists to understand our humor

[tiagotiagot]

17:24 His feathered-serpent wants none unless she got spans hun