Between the ages of six and fourteen, I amassed a rather large collection of yellowing vintage Mad Magazine books and dumb joke collections. My mother started me on this collection to keep me from complaining during her long "sale-ing trips" (garage sale-ing). I took to it instantly. I didn't really understand the humor of the 60's-topical Mad Magazine satires or appreciate the social deviance of the 1950's collections of Helen Keller jokes, but I read each book cover to cover. To this day I have a weakness for moldy garage sale novelty books and I love to think about the history of The Joke. What sort of jokes can withstand time and cultural barriers? My father has proven time and time again that jokes from his day (50's England) just aren't funny anymore. On the other hand, my Hungarian friend Andras told me the following translated joke from his childhood in Budapest and I think that it is quite relevant:

There was a head -- no body, just a head. It was his birthday so he rolled into the kitchen to open his present. He rolled into the chair and his mother handed him a box that he opened. "Hat again, NO!!!!" (This is how Andras told it, I swear.)

But what about ancient jokes? The earliest existing jokebook, the Philogelos, dates back to 4th Century C.E. Greece. It contains 264 jokes, none of which are Helen Keller jokes. Here are a few examples:

'How shall I cut your hair?' a talkative barber asked a wag.
'In silence!'

A scholastikos was on a sea voyage when a big storm blew up, causing his slaves to weep in terror. 'Don't cry,' he consoled them, 'I have freed you all in my will.'

'I had your wife for nothing,' someone sneered at a wag.
'More fool you. I'm her husband, I HAVE to have the ugly bitch. You don't.'

A recent New Yorker article by Jim Holt surveys the history of jokes. Holt has this to say about a Philogelos joke that will be unfunny indefinately:

"The most haunting joke in the Philogelos, however, is No. 114, about a resident of Abdera, a Greek town whose citizens were renowned for their foolishness: "Seeing a eunuch, an Abderite asked him how many children he had. The eunuch replied that he had none, since he lacked the means of reproduction. Retorted the Abderite . . ." The rest is missing from the surviving text, which goes to show the strange potency of unheard punch lines."

A few more from the Philogelos.

Ukiah thinks this Ebay auction is funny.

Jason thinks the 50 Worst Artists In Music History is funny.