9 of the Oldest Jokes and Brainteasers from History
Вставка
- Опубліковано 5 лип 2024
- The oldest recorded joke in history is a Sumerian quip dating back to 1900 BCE. And naturally, it's a fart joke.
In this episode of The List Show, host and Mental Floss editor-in-chief Erin McCarthy shares 9 jokes and brainteasers from history, including puzzling riddles and puns that transcend time.
Website: www.mentalfloss.com
Twitter: / mental_floss
Facebook: / mentalflossmagazine
Discord: discord.io/mentalfloss
0:00 An ancient fart joke
0:43 Intro
1:10 A 4000-year-old dog walks into a 4000-year-old bar
2:55 The sphinx's riveting riddle
3:29 Samson's scam
4:21 Philogelos funnies
5:11 Three men and some cattle
6:32 Joe Miller’s Jests
7:06 Puns from the past
8:10 A classic cat joke
The joke about the funeral genuinely made me laugh out loud
Me too!
Sounds like a good dad joke...
I reckon that the Sumerian "Dog walks in to a bar" joke is the earliest version of "Two blondes walk into a bar, you'd think at least one of them would have seen it"
Two men walk into a bar. The third one ducks.
Exactly what I was thinking...
My dad loved puns. He told one of Redd Foxx's naughty pun jokes when I was a kid, but I didn't get it but the adults thought it was hilarious. I made a point to remember the joke so that when I got older I would understand it. Yep, 15 years later, I got the joke! Here it is:
What's the difference between a pickpocket and a Peeping Tom?
~
~
A pickpocket snatches watches!
My dad would have loved that! 🤣
I couldn't tell you why but the beehive vs potato joke absolutely killed me.
The king wanting his haircut in silence did make me laugh
The ox + cow + wagon joke's punchline might have something to do with the fact that oxen are castrated.
A lecher (or hornDOG if you will) walks into a place of ill repute and finds it empty, so he says: Maybe I'll start this one.
I was working on putting barcodes on naval ships for the Royal British navy, I’m glad I watched this. It’s not to be like the American navy, it’s benefitting how they do their Scandinavian operations.
I always heard it as:
Why do Swedish warships have barcodes on the sides?
So that when they return to port, they can Scan-Da-Navy-In.
I always like this channel's sense of humor.
Here's a joke from around the American Civil War era, possibly earlier: An old soldier is shot in the leg. He tells the young soldier to bring him to the medic. While the young soldier is looking for the medic, a cannonball takes off the old soldier's head. The young soldier returns with the medic. The medic says, "I can't help him. His head's been blown off." The young soldier says, "But he told me it was his leg."
Mark Twain wrote about this one as an example of a classic joke.
A+ video!
Great video!
"Experts are pretty sure this was supposed to be humorous."
Love the wooden cat! 😻😻😻
6:53 That a great one too!
7:31 - 7:43 Those are great too!
8:19 I had a joke published when I was 10 or so, it was in a local publication called Happiness.
My cat's names are Mojo (tortoiseshell), Charm (tortoiseshell), Lisa (calico), and Ginger Spice (orange tabby).
2:40 chicken joke explanation in Texas: To prove to the Armadillo is could be done. Lots of smushed armadillos on Texas highways.
Great video!
I long for the day when the motives of chickens crossing the road are not questioned
I'll be honest, the idea of the punchline referring to the afterlife never once occurred to me. I always just thought it was funny because it wasn't funny. That makes it a big dark though if you think about it.
But why did the chicken cross the park? To get to the other slide.
It going from a silly kids’ joke to the first suicide joke was, indeed, a loss of innocence.
For those wondering about the Samson story, the guests went to the bride (who was a Philistine like them) and badgered her into giving them the answer. Samson got so angry that they answered a riddle that was meant to scam them that he stormed off, and they decided to marry the bride to the best man.
Of course, when Samson came back after calming down he was even more angry that they had married off his finacee to someone else, so he captured some 'foxes' (or weasels), tied torches to their tails and let them go in the middle of the guest's crops. I think it eventually led to war.
Samson was a bit of a jerk tbh.
I used to smoke. I still di but i used to also Mitch Hedberg
5:03 - 5:10 Those are great!
The podcast Endless thread tried to solve the dog one. The closest they got to a answer was that the dog is a security guard who is tasked with stopping people from looking into a brothel. With the door closed he now can't see if there is anyone outside trying to sneak a peak, so he opens a different door to check, defeating the purpose of closing the first door.
Interesting, I thought it was more that he walked into it.. hense why he says maybe I should open the door...
@@MisaelMatute76 That was just one opinion though and there is obviously no direct translation or was to tell if it way the entire joke or story. One person said that it is the equivalent of school scrap paper, so it might not have even being written correctly.
But aren't ALL farts " Blasts from the past ", they are blasts from past meals 😂.
These jokes are great. The people in the past knew what humor was.
The ancient Sumerians didn't have electricity. If a dog walks into a bar and says he can't see anything, it's because it is dark in there. To get light into the the bar the dog opens the door. Thus allowing them to see.
I've been hearing that joke for almost forty years now and never found it funny until just now when you explained it! I can't believe, in all that time, I didn't notice the alternate meaning of "the other side"... Surely that's the intended meaning of the joke, and I feel like an actual idiot.
I liked the wooden cat behind her far more than any of the jokes.
The beehive joke is pretty funny
The dog walked INTO the bar, it did not say ENTERED a bar. Suggesting that the dog is blind.
A man was talking to a eunuch and asks "How many kids do you have?"
The eunuch replied, "I'm a eunuch duh, I don't have any."
So the man retorted, "How many grandchildren then?"
That first one seems like a pretty ‘loose’ translation. Replace “fart” with “lady fart,” and suddenly it becomes apparent that we’re not talking about a lady casually sitting on her husband’s lap…
*The Number One Oldest Joke in History ?* 🤔
*Kushim :* "Pull my finger." 😏👉
*Narmer :* "Okay." 👉🤏🥴... 😆💨🎶💩... 😳🤧
*"NUFF SAID"™️*
It's's right behind me, isn't it?
the Ox, cow, wagon thing doesn't seem so much as a joke joke, but more of an anecdote. Similar in form and structure to midevil "jokes" about "who owns the church, who owns the land, and who owns the people/farm." Where in two people through marriages (usually through two different cultures or religion) have a child. one parent is from a culture that is patriarchal, the other is matriarchal. Does the child/land/farm/taxes/church/etc go to or follow the culture of the father or mother. Is the child "owned" by the father or mother.
Bars often double as psudo-brothels, it was dark so the dog opened her other eye. Much like in Rome where the term lupa and wolf are very similar, this is saying the dog is a whore, opening her legs.
Its very lewd.
😂😂
OK but, that “dog walks into a bar” one is kind of a banger.
Or like the one about the moron who flooded the football field because he thought the coach might put him in as a sub
looketh yonder?
Philogelos are all actual good jokes, I just assumed proper joke structure was cemented in the past few hundred years.
Turns out most sources after it just sucked at humor.
Those puns were pretty funny, even if they were published in a less politically-correct time period ^^