In the "There is nothing new under the sun" dep't

[dianeduane]

Like you didn’t already suspect this:

In an Anglo-Saxon book of poetry kept at Exeter Cathedral, researchers from Britain's Wolverhampton University have unearthed a joke that suggests the clichéd ribaldry of a millennium ago is awfully similar to what passes for humor today. The translation, as cited by the Telegraph, reads: "What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? Answer: A key."

Hur hur hur hur!  (wheeze)

And they have found evidence of Egyptians laughing at similar versions of wit. Researchers at Wolverhampton say the jokes they have found in delicate manuscripts and carved on stone tablets thousands of years old demonstrate a common idea of what's funny across the ages of humanity: flatulence, sex and "stupid people," as one academic tells the Telegraph.

So when the Doctor tells you that the only thing he can depend on on Earth is human nature… better believe him. 

 

Comments

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

The Doctor would be well aware of the fact that Sumerians enjoyed fart jokes.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

A key... oh boy. That's right up there with:

Q. What's brown and sticky?

A. A stick.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I love how these things are "unearthed" -- particularly when I read and translated the first one myself in graduate school two decades ago, out of Craig Williamson's Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Someone has kindly put the whole set, with translations and solutions, up on the net here (http://www2.kenyon.edu/AngloSaxonRiddles/texts.htm). Unearthed, [snort].

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the old "90 feet long and full of seamen" joke, myself. (One of those homonym-based things that only works if you say it out loud.)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I couldn't get to the article, but I was thinking the same thing. (Well, except that I translated that poem in graduate school five years ago.)

I wonder if the Wolverhampton University scholars just learned Old English. I mean, the poem's in Mitchell and Robinson's standard first-year Old English textbook.

[eyemage.livejournal.com]

there seems to be more than a few similar posts going around these days...

most recently siting the graffiti at Pompeii.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

From the BBC version (which I now can't find, mainly because I haven't time to look thoroughly), the news is that someone has found what is claimed to be the oldest known joke. It's apparently Sumerian, and a good bit older than the Anglo-Saxon or the Egyptian ones, both of which seem to have been included only as other examples of 'old jokes', rather than presented as recent discoveries.

[snowydragon1776.livejournal.com]

Any English major knows no story or joke is new. :)

Yes, Star Wars was nothing new. *gasp*

[cholma.livejournal.com]

But have they also unearthed WWII's infamous Killing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World) Joke (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhmnOpoGAPw)? ;D

[kayshapero]

Thomas Cahill, in How the Irish Saved Civilization cites a marginal verse on a manuscript, presumably done by the copyist.
Quoting from memory:

All are keen
To know who'll sleep with the fair Aideen
All Aideen herself will own
Is that she will not sleep alone.

Some things never change. :)

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Times change people don't and our ancestors were human too.
Why is this a surprise?

You only have to look at what all children find funny to know that toilet humour is universal and "built in".

[raisedbymoogles.livejournal.com]

Well, let's face it. Fart jokes are hilarious.

[batyatoon]

I'm now thinking of the you-dirty-minded-creature-you riddle in Stephen King's Dark Tower series:

What lies in bed, then stands in bed
First white, then red
The plumper it grows
The better the old woman likes it?

Answer: A strawberry.