from "The Ministry of Silly Walks."

[gordonartist]

The falling-over gag is now thought to be man's original joke, writes Roger Dobson

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May 01, 2006
THE old ones really are the best. Evolutionary biologists have traced the origins of laughter back four million years to pre-humans slipping and stumbling in their first faltering attempts to walk on two legs.
According to the theory, when they saw a member of their group lose his footing they would laugh as a sign to each other that something was amiss, but nothing too serious.

The theory could explain why, to this day, the ungainly walk remains a staple element of slapstick humour from Monty Python's "Ministry of Silly Walks" to Rowan Atkinson's accident-prone Mr Bean.

"Becoming bipedal means there was a greater chance of tripping and falling. Essentially, the suggestion is that slapstick and humour evolved from that time," said Matthew Gervais, an American evolutionary biologist who led the study.

"When we laugh at slapstick, we are laughing at the same things that amused our early ancestors. That's why we find them funny."

According to the study, the next basic elements of human behaviour that sparked laughter were flatulence and mild sexual mischief. Language appeared only two million years after the first laugh, enabling people to combine laughter and words into numerous refinements, from amusement at a joke to sneering at a rival.

There is a very good section on humour in Wikipedia.

Gordon.

[Richard Bell]

Second oldest joke : When the female hominid guffawed at the the male hominid's fall, he was heard to exclaim "Take wife...please !!"

This was the prototypical species Hennius Youngmanus Erectus, highly concentrated in the area of the Catskill Mountains. Anthropologists theorise that this line evolved into the modern, almost human species known as Comedians.

R.B.