Apparently the world’s oldest recorded joke, courtesy of the Sumerians, goes something like this:

Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.

It’s good to know that humanity hasn’t strayed far from it’s roots with jokes about poop and dicks and butts. I feel so relived knowing that all the men in my family are merely staying true to their ancient heritage. Those ancient Sumerians would be so proud knowing that voluminous jokes about shit have carried on…and on…and on…and on.

I never really considered that people in 1900 BC and beyond were making jokes. I thought they’d be more concerned with not being eaten by dinosaurs. I guess my knowledge of the earth and the evolution of my people is rusty because apparently they had more free time for crafting comedic routines than I would ever have thought.

I just Googled Sumeria and apparently there was an agricultural revolution in 6000BC which means that I am totally confused about when those God damn dinosaurs were eating cavemen, because I didn’t think people knew how to do much else than carry a club and grunt back then, let alone celebrate the harvest. That damn Sherri Shephard and her batshitcrazy talk about how there was nothing before Jesus is starting to rub off on me and make me stupider than I started out. Crap!

So, here’s what I’ve found out, sort of. Don’t write a term paper off of this shit, I’m paraphrasing quite liberally:

In Mesopotamia, or the Fertile Crescent, or the Birthplace of Man, or Babylonia (not to be mistaken with Tai Babilonia, the champion figure skater), there were people just like you and me trying to grow shit. Probably weed, but let’s not judge. This was the Neolithic era, when people were starting to make tools out of metal and, despite the fact that they existed so long ago, seem quite capable of doing more complex things than I am capable of, like making pottery on a wheel. When I took pottery in high school, I was allowed to use the wheel exactly once for three minutes before my teacher kicked me off because I was not doing anything right. I spent the rest of the quarter making pinch pots which, even my parents admitted, were entirely useless. Now, these show-off Neolithic people shouldn’t be confused with those of the Paleolithic era, those from whence I came, because you bet your ass I can make something out of rocks. That’s what happened in the Paleolithic era, people made tools out of rocks. Despite the fact that the Paleolithic era spans 99% of humanity, all the credit they get is – wow, they sure can tie that rock to a stick good. Also, you should be aware of the fact that in the Paleolithic era, there were no regular ass people, there were pre-humans. Here’s where it’s gets complicated, so I need to start a new paragraph.

Our first uncle, who appeared 2.6 million years ago, was Homo habilis (homo, meaning gay and habilis, steming from rehabilitation, or habilitation, meaning able to habilitate, or procreate). As far as I can tell, his skills in tool making extended only as far as banging rocks on other rocks until they broke and formed a point. With these, he poked things. Next up is Homo ergaster (homo, meaning queer, and ergaster, translated loosely to mean ergonomic, or that which provides wrist support when computing). It doesn’t appear the Mr. Ergaster was good at much except standing up straight. Somewhere along the line came Homo heidelbergensis (heidelbergensis, translated from German to mean “from Heidelberg”) along with Homo rhodesiensis (rhodesiensis, translated to mean “from Rhodesia”). Many historians believe these two homos were actually the same species and my guess is that their mother was unwed and the father ran out on her for some other, hotter, pre-human whore who didn’t give him any lip, and she needed to give up her babies because her job as a nit picker didn’t pay her nearly enough to support two children on her own. She gave each baby half of a medallion and left one with a friend in Rhodesia and another with a relative in Heidelberg, hoping that one day they’d grow up and wander the earth trying to find the other half of their medallion and each other. The tragedy is, that never happened and these two brothers never knew the other existed and died alone. Homo erectus (homo, now meaning bicurious, erectus meaning erect, or able to remain upright while making love to his wife, also known as the purveyors of the Kama Sutra) came on the scene between one and two million years ago and was probably the first hunter-gatherer society. They were the first to use controlled fire and you can check out this funny home movie of theirs, the first home movie ever in the history of pre-humans, via Netflix, called Quest for Fire. Some other shit happened and then, along came Mister Bigshot, Homo sapien, and his Great Leap Forward and penchant for cultural advancement that brought us elaborate burial ceremonies, clothes, fart jokes and Girls Gone Wild.

Now, dinosaurs, on the other hand, came far before man ever did and that’s where I was getting confused. When I was young, I’m pretty sure my social studies book showed a picture of a caveman holding a club in one hand and his wife by the hair in another hand, running wildly away from a brontosaurus. Also, if I’ve been wrong all along, then the Flintstones were all a lie and Hanna-Barbera were a couple of misleading bastards. According to my historical sources, dinosaurs roamed the earth between 230 million years ago up to 65 million years ago. There were no humans then, only dinosaurs, sharks, crabs, frogs and that mosquito drunk on dinosaur blood from Jurassic Park.

Just over 65 million years ago, suspiciously around the time those dinosaurs disappeared, was the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, a mass extinction of animal and plant species that many people will say didn’t happen despite multitudes of scientific research that is so obviously real. I know because I studied and measured things with special tools and took notes in pen. Researchers believe that what led up to the extinction of the dinosaurs was a series of asteroids. I believe it was God because he knew we’d be coming along with our fancy homo sapien cars and jets and we were gonna need all those fossil fuels to power them at $4.50 per gallon.

Anyway, back to Ancient Sumer, where they were crafting the world’s oldest recorded fart joke. Since I now know that they had time to plant a garden and make a funny, I also have put together that times must have been pretty tough because everyone knows that humor comes from pain and anguish. That’s why we laugh at these people. Since Sumerians were the first to create a written language, I think it’s only fair to give them some credit for advancing us to the point at which we now find humanity, where strangers can reach out on the Internet and touch each other with their kind words and dirty sex thoughts in anonymous chat rooms. No Paleolothic motherfucker could have accomplished that with their fancy rocks.