This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. The story appears in podcast feeds under the title, "Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not." Listen to part two here.

"The tablets are given either in copy or in transcription." "The mass of the ... collection come from Umma and Drehem." - Introd. "Revised transcription of Bedaleś 'Sumerian tablets from Umma'": p.

There is no more interesting episode in human civilization than our origins, the level of achievements that were just so advanced, and the mystery of how they declined. Nobody has the answers, but ...

A federal court ordered the forfeiture of an ancient Sumerian tablet bearing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh in cuneiform script after it determined that the artifact was illegally imported, the Justice ...

Nobody at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad knows exactly how the stolen Sumerian tablets ended up in Peru. All that authorities in Lima could tell museum officials was that the three hand-size ...

This paper discusses two Sumerian incantations against headache (s a g ̃- k i - d a b - b a ) preserved on cuneiform medical tablets from the Neo-Assyrian and Late Babylonian period, as well as on two ...

A newly analyzed cuneiform hymn accompanied a drinking song dedicated to a female tavern-keeper Peter Smith Soak grain in water and a seed begins to sprout. Dry out that tiny protoplant, or acrospire, ...

This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. Listen to part two here. This episode originally aired on August 5, 2022. In the late 1800s, archeologists in Iraq ...