The Earliest Known Dick Joke Is Thousands of Years Old
Dick jokes are having a bit of a moment right now, thanks to former President Barack Obama. Despite reports of his past aversion to penile humor, Obama recently spoke at the Democratic National Convention and took the opportunity to poke fun at Donald Trump’s presumably minuscule genitals, using a not-so-subtle hand gesture.
Amazingly, this wasn’t even the first time that Trump’s tiny dong has been the subject of an election season news cycle. Back in 2016, Marco Rubio made a similar jab at the Home Alone 2: Lost in New York star (albeit far more inelegantly) during a Republican primary debate. This led CNN to publish what we can only assume is the most cursed headline in the history of journalism.
CNN
Before it became the focal point of a political convention, the dick joke was mostly looked down upon by our modern society, but its origins are older and classier than you think.
According to some, the earliest evidence of a straight-up dick joke can be found in the Ancient Greek joke book Philolegos, which was “probably put together in the fourth or fifth century A.D.” and features an apparent “double entendre” involving the Greek word for flask, which was also slang for penis back then, apparently.
From a dramatic standpoint, Aristophenes’ classic comedy Lysistrata, about a female sex strike launched to end the Peloponnesian War, was positively full of dick jokes, and it was first performed in 411 B.C. But somehow, Aristophenes never thought to have one of his characters hump an apple pie.
Meanwhile Ancient Roman toilets, not unlike most modern gas station restrooms, were reportedly “full of penis jokes” — at least per one discovery that reportedly “stunned” archeologists.
Older still, in 2021, archeologists in Turkey discovered an 11,000-year-old carving, believed to be the “oldest narrative carving on record.” The narrative? A dude surrounded by leopards holding his junk. While there’s no evidence that it’s a joke exactly, it is a pretty funny scenario. If the Jackass crew ever travel back in time to the Neolithic period, this will all make sense.
Meanwhile the U.K.’s oldest dick joke dates back to the 10th century A.D. “What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that it’s often poked before?” the “crude riddle” asks. The answer, of course, is “a key.”
In addition to all the perverts of the ancient world, later literary history is full of dick jokes, from the acclaimed boner gags of William Shakespeare to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which contains at least one choice pork-based pun.
So Obama’s quip may have seemed surprisingly uncouth for a political convention (or at least for convention being held by the party that didn’t invite the star of Mr. Nanny to participate), but clearly dick jokes have been deeply ingrained in the fabric of human history — and well before the existence of Austin Powers.
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