Sam Cadman: The Origins of Comedy

What first made us laugh? I’ve often wondered about this, what the origins of comedy were, the very first joke ever experienced on Earth.

Was it potty humour? Imagine three Stone Age men sat round a fire, quietly eating meat. Puncturing the silence, one of them lets out a short, sharp fart. The caveman sat closest notices, snorts and then burps a pungent, meaty belch in response. They both giggle.

Feeling left out, the third caveman cracks a much bigger, voluminous fart that makes all three of them start to guffaw. Caveman One burps heartily, overlapped by a whining fart from Caveman Two.

More laughter. Caveman Three manages several rhythmic farts as he cranks his leg just as Caveman One points and burps at each of them in turn. Caveman Two starts doing squats, farting each time his haunches hit his heels.

Together they are all doubled up with laughter, cackling with every extra guff and burp. Backing up to the fire, Caveman One produces a particularly long whistling fart that suddenly catches alight creating a lengthy flame that lights up the cave and reduces all three them to absolute hysterics.

Or maybe it was an impersonation? Our three Stone Age men are once again sat around the fire. One of them grunts dramatically as he tosses a well-gnawed bone over his shoulder.

The other two look up and after a beat, one of them copies the grunt exactly, matching the same over-the-top action as he throws his bone to the back of the cave.

The two cavemen chuckle, which Caveman One finds confusing. He grunts again, irritably shrugging his shoulders. Caveman Two immediately mimics this grunt and shoulder shrug perfectly, making Caveman Three laugh all the more.

Feeling confused and left out Caveman One stands up and starts grunting loudly, slapping his hairy chest with his leathery hands. Caveman Two can’t resist and mimics this Neanderthal frustration exactly; Caveman Three is literally crying with laughter (for the very first time).

Taking the Pratfall

Or was it the classic pratfall? A fourth Stone Age man comes padding into the cave, trips on a rock and tumbles headfirst into the fire. The others immediately and instinctively burst into laughter at this Neanderthal’s misfortune.

As he leaps up out of the flames, the others can clearly see his thick shaggy coat of hair is alight as he screams and howls in pain, which only makes them laugh all the more. As the clumsy caveman collapses into the dirt, writhing around in the dust, trying to put the body-fire out, his friends continue to whoop and howl. It’s only when he’s stopped moving, his body a singed, smoking heap on the floor that they share a concerned look. Silence.

Suddenly, he leaps up onto his feet and immediately they all start laughing together, although he can’t help but wince with pain as they happily slap his back.

Maybe there are cave paintings somewhere that record scenes like these, in some dark and as yet undiscovered chamber. Crudely painted stick men with clouds coming out of their bottoms or their bodies clearly on fire whilst all the other images of cavemen and wild animals around them laugh. Who knows.

Maybe we should re-create these scenes, commit them to film to be stored at the Natural History Museum until conclusive evidence can be found – this at the very least would be a voice-over call to David Attenborough that I’d love to make.