Another thing that appears to set us apart from other animals is entertainment. Even monkeys don't play the ape to amuse the rest of the gang - or so I suspect. So I have been wondering when did that all start? It was very well established in the evidence of the earliest of classical  times. In truth I have not looked up anything on this but others may have or can give some pointers as to ancient development. I assume nordmann will have it that religious rites prompted the first laughs.......

Perhaps I should get myself back to hospital where I have just been for a bit again; quite a lot to laugh at in hospitals.

If you're talking about dramatic performances designed to make people laugh then I imagine the roots (much like religious ritual that you refer to also) lie in the ancient requirement to impart information through dramatic means as performed by individuals to the other members of a small community with which they identify. Humour is a complicated human faculty dependent on quite a lot of other faculties which in themselves give rise to no obvious humour whatsoever - fear, empathy, curiosity, insecurity etc. It seems however that information used to allay or satisfy these motivations can somehow, in certain contexts, create temporary paroxysms which in their unexpectedness, novelty and nature make us laugh (or smile, or simply enjoy - the important thing being that they are experienced as "funny"). In the very serious business of relaying information related to the hunt, or where to forage, or what dangers lurk out there etc these paroxysms could well have been triggered unintentionally by performers, leading to the realisation that such events can in fact be triggered intentionally by artificially reproducing the elements causing them. The comic playwright was born. As was the stand-up comedian, the jester, the fool and the UKIP politician.

PS: Hope the hospital visits don't mean you or someone close are having it too poorly. Here's wishing you or them a "get well soon". There is much to laugh at in hospitals, but as with all comedy timing is everything. I won't even try ...

Interesting topic - lots of information about Greek and Roman entertainment, of course, but when did it all really start? is there any way of knowing?

Comedy especially - someone once said that humour starts with the Society of Youth versus the Society of Age. But in which early society did some cocky youngster first start using irony as an effective weapon? Irony is, after all, a particularly effective tool for those denied social power or authority - those who are forced to conform on the surface to the expectations and orders of those who rule them (see mention of Eiron, "a clever underdog" in Wiki extract below).

Starting to use language as a weapon and as entertainment - it's an interesting topic.

PS The word "irony" comes to us from the Greek eironeia which means "dissimulation" or "ignorance purposely affected". Got this from Wiki:



According to the Encyclopædia Britannica,


The term irony has its roots in the Greek comic character Eiron, a clever underdog who by his wit repeatedly triumphs over the boastful character Alazon. The Socratic irony of the Platonic dialogues derives from this comic origin.

According to Richard Whately:


Aristotle mentions Eironeia, which in his time was commonly employed to signify, not according to the modern use of 'Irony, saying the contrary to what is meant', but, what later writers usually express by Litotes, i.e. 'saying less than is meant'.


But irony is (usually) more subtle than other forms of humour, involving as it does the use of language. Presumably knockabout humour and bawdy humour came very early on - and I'm thinking about silent comedy too, always associated now with early films of course, but its roots were in mime:


Mime is considered one of the earliest mediums of self-expression. Before there was spoken language, mime was used to communicate what the primitive people needed or wanted. Instead of fading into obscurity when the spoken language was developed, mime had became a form of entertainment. It then developed into a true theatrical form in ancient Greece, where performers enacted everyday scenes with the help of elaborate gestures. The principle mimes were known as ethologues, and the scenes they would perform would teach moral lessons.

Mime used to "teach moral lessons"  - but also to make people laugh?

Crossed posts - haven't read above, but will send this anyway.

PS Re your mention of hospital - have sent you a PM. Hospitals can indeed be "interesting" places where humour can thrive - sometimes. Which makes me wonder why "black" humour ever developed - it's such an odd thing, but it seems to keep us sane in mad situations.

Some of the missives purporting to come from Gilgamesh requiring improbable amounts of various precious substances (gold, lapis lazuli etc) for an amulet for Enkidu are frequently considered to be humorous in intent - and there are cartoons (or at least a cartoon) on the rear of a school exercise roundel in Sumerian cuneiform - and the oldest known joke is also Sumerian, and features - what else? - farting.

Then there's song. I reckon wolves got that one started..... and why do they do it, I wonder?  And dance? Should we be tempted to believe in the Caveman Hand Jive?

Priscilla wrote:

Then there's song. I reckon wolves got that one started..... and why do they do it, I wonder?  And dance? Should we be tempted to believe in the Caveman Hand Jive?

Not quite Wolves - North Bank Choir, perhaps. Why? To annoy the Baggies. And the gestures aren't precisely "jive".

Formal dancers have long been with us. One famed artifact from the Indus civilization circa 2500 BC is a bronze dancer wearing beads and amulets  standing in a provocative manner and of course formalised Hindu dances are ancient.  Dance originated of course from mime - and is still an important part of it. Royal Ballet exams have a section on it at all levels. Modern dance has moved away  a tad - currently it seems to be like a sweaty 3D version stream of party  Twisters; I digress. Suffice to say I am not wholly entertained by it. And entertainment covers pathos so it is also about exercising our emotions. This may well have begun with death rites in the earliest of times; some animals have been observed showing grief. For some reason it is more compelling to watch a familiar tragedy than comedy cf how many times in a lifetime does one really want to se 'A Midsummer night's Dream? (the last time I did it was set in a bus station.... so curtains on that, thanks) On the other hand, Macbeth, Hamlet and Lear can stand a few more repeats for me. And at the end of each I have been entertained. I can also ramble a lot on most things, of course.

I suggest that dance and mime, as in ritualised body movement to communicate a meaning, has always been with us, or at least as far back as we have been hominids. I'll wager that well before language developed, dance and mime were used to communicate practical things like where food resources were, what they were, what the dangers might be etc, as well as more esoteric communication such as 'doing the ostrich dance' in appropriate anticipation or celebration of the hunt.

Many animals appear to dance in that they do specific body movements as a means of communication. I don't think I am being overly sentimental or unsuitably anthropomorphic when I say my dog does very specific dances - bouncing side to side on his front paws when he's pleased to see me after being alone for a while, and a bounding anti-clockwise waltz when in pleasurable anticipation of being fed. These two dances are very specfic to the occasion and he never does them at any other time. Of course lots of animals, birds, reptiles, even insects 'dance' in display to attract potential mates ... and bees do very specific dances to tell their fellows in which direction and how far away flowers are to be found. So again I think dance as communication using stylised signs and movement has long been with us.

Priscilla wrote:

Then there's song. I reckon wolves got that one started..... and why do they do it, I wonder? 

Wolves howl to assemble the pack before and after a hunt, to locate each other during bad visibility or when in unfamiliar terrain, to establish their territory to other neighbouring packs, and probably just to bond together as a group. My dog also howls just like a wolf, but only in his dreams. He's never howled when awake and indeed rarely barks - maybe that is because he doesn't live in a pack and so never needs that form of communication (choral singing just doesn't work if one's not actually in a choir!). But when he does howl .... I wonder what he's dreaming of.

And presumably there are different types of howl. Howling to locate members of the pack, or as a territorial warning, or simply for bonding, certainly; but isn't there also a very definite howl to indicate pain - both physical and emotional? The physical pain howl is pretty obvious, but dogs howl when they are deeply unhappy or feel abandoned - just as we do. Dogs do grieve.

I remember one friend, who was undergoing severe emotional trauma following a tragic loss, telling us how - in the privacy of her own home - she would "howl, like a wounded animal". Such howling is not for communication, simply for release of some kind.

But back to entertainment. The ostrich dancing remark made me smile: I wonder when did silly dancing - dancing to make others laugh, to entertain them, rather than to impress or scare them - begin?

PS Indeed, when did our brains develop the ability to recognise absurdity?  And why do some people seem not to have a sense of humour - or a sense of the absurd - at all? Is that a defect or an advantage? We warm to people who obviously laugh at the same things we do, and rather despair (well, I do) at those who just cannot see the absurdity of things. But my sense of humour (or what I like to think of as my sense of humour) has often got me into trouble. "Keeping a straight face" can sometimes be very difficult, but is often necessary for survival and/or success.

Is it true to say that different nationalities are amused by different things? Or is that me stereotyping again? Genuine question, so please don't pounce on me and pummel me, ID.

Priscilla wrote:

Another thing that appears to set us apart from other animals is entertainment. Even monkeys don't play the ape to amuse the rest of the gang - or so I suspect. So I have been wondering when did that all start? It was very well established in the evidence of the earliest of classical  times. In truth I have not looked up anything on this but others may have or can give some pointers as to ancient development. I assume nordmann will have it that religious rites prompted the first laughs.......

Perhaps I should get myself back to hospital where I have just been for a bit again; quite a lot to laugh at in hospitals.

Priscilla,

hope that you are the old one again after hospital.

And yes entertainment in whatever way is also a kind of survival therapy for people in distress. When I first read your text I immediately thought at a history that I read through a thread on a French forum: "les pontons anglais"
The unbelievable story of some thousands of French on an island without resources during the Napoleontic wars and their struggle for survival by organisation from the very base of the community.And among all this misery the start of a theatre...
I know there is in the recent history a lot more horror and unbelievable stories, but for some reason reading that story told by a contemporary had a great impact on me.

Perhaps it is worth a new thread, but as I have done now the research yesterday and read the story again I will try to summarize it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_ship
BTW: I read a gripping description on the prison ships in Colleen Mc Cullough's novel of the founding of Australia: "Morgan's Run".
And further:
http://elpais.com/m/elpais/2014/07/30/inenglish/1406721559_385896.html
http://www.napoleon-series.org/reviews/military/c_denis.html
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pujol

And now my story how I for the first ime read about Cabrera in a French thread "Les pontons anglais" thanks to my friend Rapentat...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrera,_Balearic_Islands
http://www.passion-histoire.net/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=10121&hilit=cabrera&start=30
Message from Rapentat 30 Mars 2010 12h54
For those who understand French...Meles meles?...Caro?
http://goo.gl/MGMV46
About the theatre see pages 73 till 76
But the rest of the book is in my eyes also very interesting as the existence of duels still in Napoleontic times...perhaps also a subject for a thread...?
Read yesterday again the whole story...
as cannibalism...
as hours and hours sitting and waiting at the hole of a rabbit to catch it when it leaves it's hole...
as the chosing of some leading comité that will judge on the crimes commited on the island and whose ordeal is without appeal...

Kind regards and with esteem,

Paul.

Paul - you might find this an interesting comparison.

The Hotel Tacloban - Douglas Valentine

Absurdity, Temps, interesting. The Etruscans bankrupted themselves in an effort to outdo each other in high fashion to parade about in and having  possession of odd curios to impress visitors. Tho' mocked by outsiders at the time they took it very seriously. Absurdity comes from observing seriousness I suggest - either in ignorance; watch people looking at modern art or because of pointlessness. Some years on, I still wonder about the old lady we saw sitting at a bus stop with a cardboard box over her head. My friend and I walked on by and then giggled but wondered if we should really have been concerned and intervened in some way. However, perhaps I am reaching the age when a boxed head has appeal.

As for entertainment, people of yore were drawn to awful spectacle - and I have been told that's why many go to see motor racing. Could that be true? Watching cars zoom by surely needs something else - bridges over the M25 have free standing room for that alone. What then defines entertainment?

Not any easy one, but there I've never quite understood the urge to take up pole vaulting, either.

Answers on a box , please.

Paul, same old me? [email=I@m]I'm[/email] uncertain. I can now hobble about and do things that
 appeal but  limp convincingly enough to dodge things that don't.

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

Paul - you might find this an interesting comparison.

The Hotel Tacloban - Douglas Valentine

Gil,

prepared an answer already the day before yesterday...but as usual so busy, as for instance yesterday till half past ten in the evening working (physically!) at some furniture for a tenant...

Did some quick research about Hotel Tacloban.
http://rodhall.filipinaslibrary.org.ph/items/show/773
Yes must be a thrilling read...
And it remembers me of a true story of some Australian nurses kept in a Japanese camp during WWII...
http://www.ww2australia.gov.au/behindwire/found.html

And read the book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Darling
And an interview with the nurse:




But the interview is a bit boring, contrary to the thrilling book that I read...I wonder now even if it was the same book..."Portrait of a nurse" 2001 and only 96 pages...mine was certainly more than 200 pages and the title was "Behind wires" and it was exactly the same story...perhaps another nurse has written also a book about the event...I can't check it any more as the book isn't available anymore in our local library...

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

Re entertainment - was startled to find Variety show 'Sunday Night at the Palladium' back on the TV menu after decades. And we enjoyed it. I was entertained by two lads with bath towels and a lady who kept changed her frocks every 15 seconds. And I am hard put to explain just why. Must get a life.

I don't when absurdity was recognised by humans as a species but very very young children recognise it.  I remember being quite amazed when my four-month-old son giggled at his brother's antics which involved doing something upside down.  I thought it was quite incredible that a very young baby could realise what was usual, knew that what he was seeing was not what usually was, and understood that that made it funny.  It wasn't all that far from people finding the John Cleese walks hilarious.  

I have noticed the same ability to find humour in the absurd in other young babies too.  So it would seem by now to be pretty much ingrained.

Temperance wrote:

PS Indeed, when did our brains develop the ability to recognise absurdity?  And why do some people seem not to have a sense of humour - or a sense of the absurd -  at all? Is that a defect or an advantage? We warm to people who obviously laugh at the same things we do, and rather despair (well, I do) at those who just cannot see the absurdity of things. But my sense of humour (or what I like to think of as my sense of humour) has often got me into trouble. "Keeping a straight face" can sometimes be very difficult, but is often necessary for survival and/or success.

Is it true to say that different nationalities are amused by different things? Or is that me stereotyping again? Genuine question, so please don't pounce on me and pummel me, ID.

In the US there has been much ado about stereotyping by the police. I think stereotyping is a very natural thing to do. The first thing one does when their paths cross with someone else is evaluate everything...gender, color, height, build, how they are dressed and a host of other things, automatically. Therefore, it is ludicrous to assume this natural behavior can simply be turned off by forbidding it. It is a natural self defense mechanism.
I'm not sure that I should be replying to this post due to it's age. If I've made an error...sorry, I'm new but I'll learn from this attempt:)

Threads can go dormant for months and then get lively again, Parallax.  My understanding is that as long as a thread is open it's okay to make a comment, though of course it's  Nordmann who  runs the  site.

Thank you...I'm glad I didn't step on the forum's toes.

Behold! It is His Foot.

Is that the Monty Python foot, Temperance (or is Temperance thinking "talk about stating the obvious") when reading this.  I did have a laugh at it I must admit.

That seems to be the inspiration for
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in1eK3x1PBI

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Is that the Monty Python foot....?  I did have a laugh at it I must admit.

I think the "real" Monty Python foot came from here (bottom left corner):



which is fairly risible (and risquée) too .... whatever are they all up to and why is Cupid about to stand on a dove?

Temperance wrote:

Behold! It is His Foot.

I'm glad I didn't step on that foot. Even gladder it didn't step on me.

Sasquatch?

How did you change that, Parallax? Or did the Magister Pedis do it?


"My toes, my toes!"
— Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time

The Agony of Defeet is a trope particular to Amusing Injuries, I believe. Others' pain is such a good laugh. How nasty we humans can be. I blame Looney Tunes.

Temperance wrote:

Sasquatch?

How did you change that, Parallax? Or did the Magister Pedes do it?


"My toes, my toes!"
— Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time

The Agony of Defeet is a trope particular to Amusing Injuries, I believe. Others' pain is such a good laugh. How nasty we humans can be. I blame Looney Tunes.

How did I change what? I'm not fully awake yet.:)

I used to laugh at others pain also but I've grown away from it. Laughing got me into too much trouble and with the best of friends. I think it's just impishness. You laugh at their minor injuries but your mind is probably thinking, oh you dummies. Can't help it.

Huh? Oh dear - I could be in trouble again.

Looney Tunes is possibly on topic - they certainly entertained most of us here, I think. And they are very violent. But funny. When did violence first become a subject for humour? Quite early on, I should think. Certainly for entertainment, if not actual laughs: "A little throat-cutting in the meantime, so that there may be still something going on".

Trying to make Tweetie Pie appear - no success. Where's Trike?

Parallax wrote:

How did I change what?

Sorry, Parallax, wasn't trying to be all mysterious. Look at the "Subject" bit at the top of your posts.

Temperance wrote:

Looney Tunes is possibly on topic - they certainly entertained most of us here, I think. And they are very violent. But funny. When did violence first become a subject for humour?

The visual trope in cartoons and comics whereby someone who has received a blow to the head is depicted as seeing stars and/or circling birdies and/or hearing cuckoos etc seems to be a 20th century phenomenon. The earliest depiction (as far as I know) came in the 1912 comic strip Old Doc Yak by Sidney Smith in the Chicago Tribune:



The use of stars to depict someone experiencing an altered consciousness pre-dates that (again as far as I know) by 10 years, coming also in the Chicago Tribune, with the comic strip Hugo Hercules. In this, the eponymous hero assists a young couple of lovers in their tryst by lifting a car up with one of them in it so that they can kiss each other thru a window. While kissing they are depicted as having stars flying around their heads:



Hugo Hercules was the work of cartoonist Wilhelm Koerner who was born in Schleswig-Holstein and it’s possible that the German concept of 'sternchen sehen' (seeing little stars) is what influenced him here. One wonders also if later depictions by cartoonists of circling and tweeting birds and calling cuckoos etc also had their origins in terms from German and/or other languages.

80 years before Koerner, the English caricaturist George Cruickshank used little devils and monkeys around the head to suggest a stunned person in a state of stupor, or else being hungover or having a headache:



(Caricature of Napoleon Bonaparte being led to exile in Elba in 1814)



(Cruickshank’s ‘The Headache’ from 1819)

Interesting. But how does one illustrate pain or other sensory symptoms? Gillray certainly made a good stab at it (pun unintended) with his cartoons, such as The Headache and The Gout, and having occasionally suffered from gout myself he depicted the stabbing, needle-like pain and the prickling, crawling sensation very well:



And given your comments above about circling stars, birds or little devils etc, after a blow to the head, the caricaturist Richard Newton (a contempory of Gillray) also depicted gout, but as a band of blue devils dancing around the sufferer:



Little devils tormenting the sufferer seems to have been a common 18th century device for depicting pain. Here are George Cruikshanks's depictions of a self-indulgent man afflicted with gout (yet again) and of a woman suffering the abdominal pain of colic.





I'm surprised there aren't earlier depictions of seeing lights or stars following a blow to the head as they are real phenomena, called pressure or deformation phosphenes (the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye) and were known since antiquity. I think Plato and other pre-Socratic philosophers used the phenomenon to support their, erroneous, idea that a beam of light is emitted from the eye for the purpose of vision.

Meles meles wrote:

I'm surprised there aren't earlier depictions of seeing lights or stars following a blow to the head as they are real phenomena, called pressure or deformation phosphenes (the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye) and were known since antiquity.

The writer of this article has found examples from 6 years before 1902. He mentions 'pain or impact stars' being used in The Yellow Kid cartoons in the New York Journal in 1896:

The Creation of the Comic Strip as an Audiovisual Stage in the New York Journal 1896-1900 (see paragraph 33)

He also shows an example of stars used in a cartoon in The Journal Kinetoscope in 1897. He goes on to suggest that the advent of moving picture film at that time is likely to have inspired/assisted contemporary cartoonists in making such innovations.

P.S. Further to my earlier suggestion regarding Wilhelm Koerner's German heritage being a possible factor in this, Richard F. Outcault, the creator of The Yellow Kid, was all-American having been born in Ohio in the 1860s.

I was actually thinking of a great deal earlier than that, perhaps something like this early 16th century woodcut by Hans Weiditz the Younger.



It depicts a man being bled and rather forcibly given a large drink, probably strongly alcoholic, to thin the blood, dull the pain or even render him unconscious. So it's not directly to do with seeing stars after being hit on the head, although the chap on the right does look like he's about to crack the patient on the noggin - somewhat bizarrely with what appears to be a leg of pork - and with his black eye it seems likely a previous patient took offense at such rough treatment. However note particularly what appear to be flies, or more likely bees, buzzing around the patient/victim's head. Do these denote intoxication from the drink, light-headedness from the vigorous blood letting, or do they maybe even presage the coming knock-out blow on the bonce? Also bear in mind that the image might very well be just a general illustration to show the various means available (at that time) to anaesthetise a patient: alcohol, blood-letting, a cushioned blow on the head and soothing music from the minstrel at left. Unfortunately, as it's an Alamy stock picture, I can't find any details to explain what it's really all about, nor indeed why one of the 'surgeons' has a cat on his head.