The oldest known joke is a fart joke.
A Sumerian proverb from about 1900 BC calls it unheard of since time immemorial for a young wife never to have broken wind in her husband's lap.
More amazing facts
- 2000 BC The oldest known noodles are about 4,000 years old. The thin yellow strands were found in 2005 in an upturned pot at Lajia on the Yellow River, a village buried by mudflows.
- 2000 BC At Dholavira in India archaeologists found a three-metre 'signboard' of ten Indus signs — and no one can read it. The Indus script is still undeciphered: not a single bilingual inscription has been found.
- 1800 BC The oldest beer recipe was written as a hymn to a goddess.
- 1800 BC · 530 BC Babylonians tabulated 'Pythagorean triples' more than a thousand years before Pythagoras.
- 1754 BC · 44 BC · 313 About 1,710 years passed between Hammurabi's laws and Caesar's assassination — nearly as long as separates us from the Edict of Milan of 313.
- 1754 BC · 1700 BC As Hammurabi was carving his laws, North Americans were piling up giant earthworks.