One of the earliest examples of a joke is Sumerian (c. 4500-1900 BC), and it features a vegetable: "Pickle Usi-watar: Come on, flip the pickle, Igešauš. You're not gonna regret it. The payoff is huge. [Igešauš hesitantly picks up the chisel and turns the pickle over. The pickle has Usi-watar's face on it] I turned myself into a pickle, Igešauš! Boom! Big reveal: I'm a pickle. What do you think about that? I turned myself into a pickle! W-what are you just staring at me for, shesh. I turned myself into a pickle, Igešauš!". The humour of it is probably related to the Sumer way of life and has been lost, but the words remain.[1]
What if it was just not funny and happened to be the only surviving joke record
It's not a joke, the dog has obviously gone blind from drinking/eating to much methanol laced fermented cereal mush becuase they didn't know how to test for methanol back then. But the dog needs to keep drinking since it's the only time in human civilization when you could get addicted to 1% ABV sour porridge.
It's acutally high-key gross to imply it's a joke when so many people struggle with this.
Wait is there a specific methanol yeast or something because I thought that was only a problem with distilled drinks.
All yeast will produce mostly ethanol with trace amounts of methanol. Its really not an issue with beer becuase the trace methanol is diluted in so much water it won't cause a problem. Even with distilled drinks, its only the first couple jugs that come off the still that has enough methanol to do damage becuase the methanol boils off first. Also the treatment for methanol poisoning is to drink more ethanol becuase it dilutes the methanol in your system.
I'm sure even with whatever weird yeast varieties they were using in Sumer no one got methanol poisoning becuase all they could make was beer mash.
Its not the yeast that produces the methanol, its from the breakdown of other organics in the mash.
Mfs be like “yeah I’m gonna write that a dog was talking about opening another cold one” then say “wtf this isn’t a joke bro”
The top Ask Historians answer talks about this in more depth.
A possible explanation seems to be that people also had sex at taverns. So the dog thinks its dark and decides to open a door (probably more relatable pre-electricity), but the door opens into a room where people are fucking. Some miming and facial expressions as part of the delivery could help, but wouldn't be written down.
Also a problem is that a lot of existing Sumerian texts come from after it had died out as a spoken language, so any slang or subtle meaning may have been lost
come from after it had died out as a spoken language
It could just straight up be a pun and we would have no idea.
That was my first thought too, like maybe tavern was also slang for seeing something.
Chad Sumerian: How many layers of irony are you on?
Virgin millenial/zoomer: Like, maybe 5 or 6 right now my dude, haha
Chad Sumerian: You are like a little baby. Watch this:
I strongly believe the gist of it is a play on words between tavern and door somehow, that (because it is dark) he walks into the tavern/door and bumps his snout thus prompting with hindsight to open the door but I am no expert on ancient sumerian humor structure
for all we know it could be a pun that only works in the sumerian language. Like "Why did the doctor get mad?" "Because he was losing his patience." doesn't work in other languages. :grillman:
I feel like if it were a pun, it would be decipherable by people who study the language.
There are some cases where ancient languages have had the meanings of words deciphered, but the pronunciation of certain things is still up in the air. Especially with abjads and logographies, and logosyllabaries, where the rules are very context-sensitive. And so, in a situation like that, the pun might still a shaky thing. Also, idioms. "It's raining cats and dogs" "naked as a jaybird" etc. might be hard to make sense of millenia from now.
True, language really determines alot when it comes to these things it's still fun to speculate
if your translated poems don't preserve the ancient sumerian double entendres, what are you even doing?
you might be transferring too much from english. its possible that whatever is translated as "walked into" can't mean both "entered" and "collided with"
This reminds me of the graffiti found in ancient Egyptian pyramids “the drunks of Menkaure”.
the ancient sumerian word for tavern sounds like "being gay with [my/our] dad" while "open this one" has connotations like "clappin' cheeks".
trust me, I'm Anthony Lonliano, the Halkias-Friedland [well] Endowed Chair of Ancient Bits at SUNJ-Secaucus
As long as we're on about Sumerian stand-up comedy:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-joke-odd/worlds-oldest-joke-traced-back-to-1900-bc-idUSKUA14785120080731Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.
Okay so this is a little late but I tried translating the cuneiform myself and this is what I got:
73 A dog entered a tavern
74 "My eyes cannot see"
75 "I will open this later"
It doesn't really make any more sense but when I see Sumerian stuff around the net I like to translate it myself to see if I get something similar.
A termite walks into a bar and says "I s t h e b a r t e n d e r h e r e?"
