They say that the sense of humor is something inherent to the human being, and perhaps it is true, since Archeology has found abundant samples of man's desire to take things with good vibes and fun.
In Sumer, we come across some of humanity's oldest examples of humor. The Sumerians were fond of writing moral treatises which also constitute the most primitive forms of philosophy found to date. One of the most famous is the Treatise on the Just Suffering , in which a good guy is harassed by the gods who inflict all kinds of misfortunes on him, while he suffers them with patience and submission to the divinity (We already started with the damn déjà vu! What does that story sound like to me?) . In this case it is not very clear if the sense of humor is in the poor devil or in the gods themselves. In general, in these types of treatises, sensible and moral phrases are combined with others in which a fine irony is perceived:“They lend money to the poor and worry s”, or this one:“It would be better for the poor man to die; if he has bread, he has no salt; if he has salt, he has no bread; if he has meat, he has no lamb; if he has a lamb... he has no meat .”
Other times we find proverbs and sayings of the most humorous:“It is so dirty, that you do not know who is the ass and who is the groom ”, “The servant always wears a dirty skirt ”, or “Tell lies, or tell truths, others will count them as lies ”. In a popular fable, a fox stomps on an ox. He turns to him and says:“Oops, sorry! Did I hurt you? ”. It should be specified that in Sumerian fables, the fox plays the role of the cunning, cocky, braggart and, sometimes, a bit of a coward.
A field where we see samples of humor, and that is the most modern, is that of weddings. In any Sumerian wedding party, apart from a good treat, the guests had to recite poems in honor of the newlyweds. When the attendees had already had a good consumption of beer, the poems became humorous:“For pleasure, marriage... on second thought, divorce ”, or “A joyful heart:the bride; a heavy heart:the groom ”.
And finally, we come to the most shameless field of jokes. In other civilizations, such as the Egyptian, jokes written by bored students and scribes have been preserved in papyrus. The bad thing is that the Sumerians wrote on clay tablets and in schools they reused those tablets. Unfortunately, only one joke has survived to this day, but this piece of humor enjoys the honor of being the oldest joke of mankind. Its text is as follows:
The never seen in the lands of the black heads (Sumerians); that a tender young lady winds herself sitting on the legs of her lover.
It's the oldest joke... and it's scatological. Who said that humanity has changed in 4000 years?
Contributed by Joshua BedwyR author of In a Dark Blue World