The Coffee Place's Joke Stack
In Search of Ancient Comedians
by Erich von Daniken (a.k.a. Robert Hankins)
On an island in the South Pacific known as Easter Island, the remnants of the first civilization are the giant gods carved in rock and stone. Strolling among these huge pagan objects, one can only think of a race long dead and so totally separated from us by time, it is though they never existed. But if these so-called "giant god formations" are viewed from the air, they take on a new meaning. One of the gods, it appears, has slipped on a banana peel, and the other gods seem to be laughing at him. Shortly before his death, comedian Stan Laurel was interviewed by Richard Perkins. When asked about the famous "banana routine" of Laurel and Hardy which inspired director David Lean and countless others, Laurel said he had once seen it happen to a milkman in York, then nervously tried to change the subject. When Perkins pressured him about it, Laurel said, "I can neither deny nor confirm the routine's origin as being that of the rock formations on Easter Island, but I understand it is a very old joke." He needn't have said more, the answer was crystal clear. What is not clear is how the pagans of Easter Island could have conceived of such a sophisticated "bit" during their time. Could it be they were given such knowledge by ancient visitors from the heavens, who not only possessed physical knowledge of space travel but also a keen sense of humor?
In the year 312, shortly before their victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine The Great's troops were camping one night. Late into the evening a stranger approached and began to tell the men a fantastic tale about a nomadic seller of wares who was without lodging. The nomad found refuge with a local peasant who told him, "We've no guest room, so you can sleep in my daughter's bed --- but be warned, you must resist her charms lest you will surely die." When the morning came, the nomad informed the peasant that he gave in to temptation and had his way with the girl. As a penance, he granted the peasant his belongings, including all of his wares and both of his oxen. When the nomad was gone, the daughter emerged from her room. "How'd we do this time?" she asked. The peasant replied, "Well, if we sell only the oxen, I figure we won't need jobs for the next fifteen years!" Constantine's army went into an uproar, and there was much rejoicing and mirth. They invited the stranger to partake of food and drink with them, and he continued his fabulous stories, such as the fable about the fat man who sat "around the house." Constantine was so impressed that he asked the stranger to join them and become their master story-teller. "I cannot," he replied. "My work here is done. Now I must travel due west to see a man about a goat." And with that he vanished into the night.
Even the skeptical have to give a nod to the cave drawings at Altamira, Spain. There on the underground walls, our Cro-Magnon ancestors rendered images of herds of bison, mammoths, and evidence of early practical jokes. In one famous scene, one man is bending to sit in a chair when it is pulled out from under him by a second man. The first man then retaliates by throwing a pie at the second man, but the second man ducks and the pie hits a third man, not the intended victim. Another scene shows a man tying a sleeping man's shoe laces together. When matches came along the shoe lace bit was dropped entirely in favor of the more popular "hot-foot". Of course, we can only interpret these drawings, which are at best, primitive stick figures. One controversial scene in the Lascaux cave in France shows two men who are apparently shaking hands. We think that either the man on the right is asking the man on the left to "pull his finger", or that the man on the left is the victim of one of the first crudely built "joy-buzzers" of the time: a primitive rubber band with a sharp thorn tied around it, easily concealed in a prankster's palm. Sometimes these ancient joy buzzers could be lethal when the stinger of an asp was
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