> If the heavens ever did speak. > What would they say? > Who would they say it to? > And would we be able to hear it? > > -_On the Lamb, Ch 8: The Water of Life_ --- Hi there, Welcome to Earth. It's fucked up here but it's also really beautiful and fun. There's lots of interesting things here on Earth. But definitely the most interesting one is humans. ![[sumer-map-1.png]] This is Sumer. The first time we made cities, we made them here. ![[sumer-cities-ur.png]] The first one was somewhere near those three dots that say Ur. ![[sumer-map-2.jpg]] We didn't start being humans in Sumer. We were humans before. But Sumer is where we started doing something called civilization. It's in between two rivers, called the Tigris and Euphrates. You may have heard those words while you were half asleep, long ago, inside something called a school. I heard them there too. I remember thinking back then "Sumer is boring." I was wrong. Sumer isn't boring. Sumer is funny. Here are a few words, written in the oldest version of the Sumerian writing system. ![[old-sumerian-1.jpg]] That's the oldest version of the oldest writing system of the oldest culture on Earth. So right out of the gate, humans were funny. Back in 3000 BC. That's 5000 years ago! Humans were hilarious, even back then. But soon after we invented cities, we invented other things too. Serious adult things, like professionalism, accounting, bureaucracy, desks, and paperwork. Before there was paper, there was paperwork. It's true. Life got more serious and less funny for people like me and you. It happened slowly. By 2800 BC, life was still funny, but you had to turn your head sideways to see it. ![[old-sumerian-2.jpg]] By 2500 BC, the funny parts of life got harder and harder to hear. Life was still funny. But the Serious Adult Things of civilization made the funny bits harder to hear and less clear. These days, the old things are almost impossible to hear, until we learn to listen closely. > A dog walks into a bar. That's how the first joke in human history (at least the first one we have a record of) begins. It's from almost 4000 years ago, around 1700 BC. In Sumer (you know Sumer). During the Old Babylonian Empire. And it's a bar joke. Here's the joke. > _A dog entered a tavern and said:_ > _"I can't see a thing. I'll open this one!"_ That's it. That's the first joke ever. (Like I said, civilization can make it harder to hear the old things.) Apparently the joke was all the rage back when it was written. About 4000 years after that, just a few years ago, the old Sumerian Dog Joke got popular again. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-01.png]] No one understands it. No one knows why it was funny. But we humans love trying to make sense of things. So naturally, humans came up with lots of theories about the joke. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-19.jpg]] None of the theories were very satisfying. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-24.jpg]] Not one of the theories had the real ring of truth. Some humans even hypothesized a lost "physical gesture" that was supposed to be performed alongside the joke. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-13.jpg]] No one really understood. But that which is mysterious is revered. So humans made many tributes to the joke. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-04.jpg]] Mostly they did this to pass the time, while they sat around hoping that someone would come along and tell them what this odd joke was about. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-10.jpg]] The joke took on a life of its own. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-22.png]] Some thought the joke had "gone stale," Or that maybe humor had just changed a lot since back then. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-03.png]] This was surely not so. Humans have always been funny. And humor (and humans) have always been the same. Because 1300 years _before_ the Sumerian dog joke, When humans first invented writing, and had to explain this new idea of "writing" to people who'd never heard of writing before... When they were asked by their friends _"What is this new writing thing?"_ and _"How does it work?"_ and _"Can you explain it simply?"_ The inventors of writing smiled, and nodded, and wrote this. ![[old-sumerian-3.jpg]] We can't know much about the ancient past. But I'd bet my life the ancient readers laughed. The Sumerians had sophisticated visual arts. They could depict entire human beings, not just disembodied parts. And a stick figure of a human female is hardly more complex or less clear. A stick figure with arms, legs, a head, and dignity! They didn't choose the stick figure. They were humans. They chose this. Because, well... it was simple, it was elegant, it was obscene, & it was true. But most important: Because it was funny. As funny to them five thousand years ago as it is to me and you. And it was funny 1300 years before the Sumerian Dog Joke So no. We can not explain the joke away by waving our hands and saying "humor has changed since then." But where could we possibly find anything timeless in a joke like this, let alone something funny? What was the joke again? ![[sumerian-dog-joke-29.jpg]] Curiously, one thing that many humans agreed on was that the joke was "probably something about sex." ![[sumerian-dog-joke-09.jpg]] They didn't know how or why it would be "something about sex." They just agreed it probably was. Because, you know, humans are like that. That's one part of human life that's always been with us, after all. I mean seriously, we humans even put this picture in the Louvre: probably the best museum on Earth. This. ![[ishtar-vase-in-the-louvre.jpg]] That's in the Louvre! Right there in Paris, under the same roof as Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Why? Because despite it being little more than a crude doodle of lady parts, it's also ancient, and timeless. That one's from Sumer too. So is this one here. Same deity, same pose, but better this time, and less crude. ![[ishtar-statue.jpg]] So given all that, it's at least worth considering that maybe humor (and humans) have always been the same. So back to the joke. The first joke we humans ever wrote. What the hell was it about? We don't know much. Here's all we know for sure: Humans have always been the same. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-12.jpg]] So armed with their modern tools, and with the vague idea that the joke was "probably something about sex," the modern humans analyzed the ancient Sumerian text. They learned its verbs and its nouns, in search of hints and lost context. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-06.jpg]] Experts in Scandanavian archaeology chimed in, with evidence from Nordic history, to corroborate the theory that it was "probably about sex." ![[sumerian-dog-joke-14.jpg]] Distinguished scholars in linguistics argued the joke must have been funny enough to be worth carving into rock, or at least a clay tablet. A convincing point. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-11.jpg]] And but so... If humor hadn't changed since Sumer. Maybe something else had changed. Maybe Dogs? Unlikely. Maybe Beers? Not enough to explain the joke. Maybe Bars? What were those like, back then? Let's go see... ![[sumerian-dog-joke-33.png]] Interesting. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-16.jpg]] Not so different from bars today. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-17.jpg]] Just different enough. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-18.jpg]] Most striking of all were the long tubes. Clearly straws of some kind. But much longer than the straws of today. Thicker too. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-20.jpg]] It was then that a voice arose out of the confusion, a voice of one crying in the wilderness of the modern town square and the voice said: ![[sumerian-dog-joke-15.jpg]] > _A dog walks into a bar._ > _He says: I can't see a thing._ > _Ah! Here's one._ That's it. That's our species' first joke. Had the anonymous prophet known on the internet as "Hot Larry Summers" unraveled the 4000 year old mystery? That's not for me to say. But that's the oldest joke. It's only a few lines. And it doesn't matter much, at the end of the day. But the story of it matters, to get us thinking about the Old Things in a timeless, and human, and irreverent sort of way. Now, I should explain the gift. Because it's another human first. ![[prose.jpg]] The first prose our species wrote. That was something called J. --- ## The Book of J TODO: - Cut your yammering short here and mention "Tigris and Euphrates" in Genesis as soon as possible. - Mention Abraham and Ur. - Mention Gilgamesh and the Flood. - Mention Enkidu and Eden. - Then yammer whatever yammering you do, but only after that.