I’m surprised noone has brought up what I recall being told was the oldest known joke. Not sure about the specifics, but IIRC it’s from a mesopotamian cuneiform tablet and goes something like “Name something that never happened — A wife has never farted in her husband’s lap”. Supposedly a reference to the common knowledge at the time that everyone involved (or maybe just the wife) would vehemently deny it if it did happen, or perhaps awkwardly pretend it didn’t happen, knowing well that everyone noticed and politely joins in the pretense.
I don’t like it when people act as if these were objectively bad jokes. Many jokes are very dependent on a specific cultural moment as well as carefully crafted wording. Lots of current jokes fall can flat if you slightly change the phrasing, even if they aren’t word play. And then there’s delivery, pacing, knowing your audience…
Surely widespread literacy and technology allow modern people to develop comparably sophisticated tastes just by the sheer wealth of entertainment we consume, but people 5000 years ago were still people and I’m sure they found humour in similar places as we do.
edit: here’s a source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-joke-odd-idUSKUA147851200... Again, I would take issue with the reduction to “toilet humour”. Clearly the comedy of manners aspect plays the larger role, even if farts are somehow eternally funny.
I would suggest that humor itself evolves. That we enjoy flavors of humor which are novel and new and specific to our cultural moment.
Internet humor is big on surreal non-sequiturs. I suspect that while it may have existed as a style of humor before the internet, that it may not have existed 3000 years ago as a style of humor.
I suppose that must be true in as much as technology and culture influence each other, but while the term “meme” is fairly new, the phenomenon is quite universal. Like, what’s funny about Kilroy Was Here [0] or drawing that constructivist S-shape in elementary school [1]?
Another thing to consider apart from cultural differences and translations is that a lot can go wrong betwen a hit joke being told and a scribe getting around to immortalising it. It’s obviously a game of telephone. Comedy is a craft and written comedy is different from stage comedy. I can imagine a joke absolutely killing at the end of a stand-up set, but falling flat when told in isolation, because it was a call-back or otherwise profited from a primed audience. It’s quite likely that someone might naively retell only the bit that got the laughs and only then realise their mistake. Or the shared experience of the audience might elevate a bit to an in-joke that is only funny to them because they know the rest. Decades later, only the devolved memes that obliquely reference this shared knowledge survive in writing and future generations are left wondering what was wrong with their ancestors’ odd humour.
Here’s hoping future generations will be aware of Douglas Adams’ work, but it seems entirely possible that in a thousand years, people will speculate why our we found towels or the number 42 so funny.
>Many jokes are very dependent on a specific cultural moment...
Oh, that is so true... here in germany there is (or better was) the category of the "Mantawitze" (Manta jokes... the Opel Manta was a car that was liked in the late 80s early 90s by...special... people with a taste for mullets, western boots and -allegedly- low IQs), that people who werent there at this time simply doesn't understand.
Like the shortest joke of this category: "Steht ein Manta vor der Uni"
I don’t like it when people act as if these were objectively bad jokes. Many jokes are very dependent on a specific cultural moment as well as carefully crafted wording. Lots of current jokes fall can flat if you slightly change the phrasing, even if they aren’t word play. And then there’s delivery, pacing, knowing your audience…
Surely widespread literacy and technology allow modern people to develop comparably sophisticated tastes just by the sheer wealth of entertainment we consume, but people 5000 years ago were still people and I’m sure they found humour in similar places as we do.
edit: here’s a source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-joke-odd-idUSKUA147851200... Again, I would take issue with the reduction to “toilet humour”. Clearly the comedy of manners aspect plays the larger role, even if farts are somehow eternally funny.