A closer look
Archaeologists discovered a 3500-year-old Babylonian stone tablet that contains a series of riddles, including what scholars universally agree is the oldest recorded yo-mama joke in human history; the text is highly fragmented and the punchline is deeply confusing to modern readers, but the sheer fact that ancient Mesopotamians were cracking juvenile insults about each other's mothers while inventing written language is profoundly comforting, showing us that despite millennia of technological progress, the rise and fall of empires, and the development of complex societies, humanity's default setting has always been to expertly roast our friends' moms during moments of extreme boredom, making it the most enduring cultural legacy of the ancient world
