Referernces + Corrections: 1. Original twitter post by Depths of Wikipedia twitter.com/depthsofwiki/status/1501720705385353219 2. Meme site documenting the origins of the Sumerian Bar Joke knowyourmeme.com/memes/sumerian-bar-joke 3. twitter.com/abbyfheld/status/1501880993833054208 4. twitter.com/VocolPuh/status/1501784215121276928 5. popcrush.com/twitter-decipher-punchline-ancient-sumerian-bar-joke/ 6. r/AskHistorians thread (now archived) www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tbgetc/this_bar_joke_from_ancient_sumer_has_been_making/ 7. Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative Entry 1 cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/231595 8. Gordon EI (1958) Sumerian Animal Proverbs and Fables: “Collection 5”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol 12, pg. 1-21 9. Gordon EI (1958) Sumerian Animal Proverbs and Fables: “Collection 5” (Conclusion), Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol 12, pg. 43-75. 10. Cunningham G (2013) The Sumerian Language. In: The Sumerian World, Routledge, pg. 95-109. 11. Crawford H (2004) Writing and the Arts. In: Sumer and the Sumerians, Cambridge University Press, pg. 193-198. 12. Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative Entry 1 cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/231595 13. Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative Entry 2 cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/231603 14. Van De Mieroop M (2016) A History of the Ancient Near East, Third Edition, Wiley Blackwell, pg. 36-37. 15. Pronunication by Dr Seraina Nett, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamp: 6:06-6:18. www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-one 16. Beaulieu PA (2018) A History of Babylon (2200 BC-AD 75), Wiley Blackwell, pg. 69-97. 17. Van De Mieroop M (2016) A History of the Ancient Near East, Third Edition, Wiley Blackwell, pg. 90-127. 18. Van De Mieroop M (2016) A History of the Ancient Near East, Third Edition, Wiley Blackwell, pg. 91-93. 19. Black et al. (2004) The Literature of Ancient Sumer, Oxford University Press, pg. 40-50. 20. Gordon EI (1959) Sumerian Proverbs; Glimpses of Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, pg. 1-20. 21. Proverb Collection 5 entry on the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/proverbs/t.6.1.05.html#t6105.p77 22. Bottéro J (2001) Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamian, pg. 100-101. 23. Stol M (2016) Prostitution. In: Women in the Ancient Near East, De Gruyter, pg. 401-403. 24. Cooper J (2006) Prostituion, Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (RlA), 11, 12-21. 25. Smithsonian article on the Lagash tavern excavations www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/5000-year-old-tavern-discovered-in-iraq-180981564/ 26. 2022 Fall Season Excavation Report from the Lagash Archaeological Project web.sas.upenn.edu/lagash/current-excavations/2022-fall-season/ 27. Alster B and Oshima T (2006) A Sumerian Proverb Tablet in Geneva With Some Thoughts on Sumerian Proverb Collections, Orientalia, 69. 28. Alster B (1997) Proverbs of Ancient Sumer. CDL Press. 29. Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Proverb collection 5 transcription etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/proverbs/t.6.1.05.html#t6105.p77 30. Dr Seraina Nett, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamps: 16:22-16:32 and 10:56-10:11 www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-one 31. Richardson S (2019) Nature Engaged and Disengaged: The Case of Animals in Mesopotamian Literatures. In: Impious Dogs, Haughty Foxes and Exquisite Fish, De Gruyter, pg. 11-40. 32. Breier I (2019) Shaming by Naming: “Dog” as a Derogatory Term for Human Beings in Ancient Near Eastern Sources. In: Impious Dogs, Haughty Foxes and Exquisite Fish, De Gruyter, pg. 57-72. 33. Dr Seraina Nett, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamps: 16:22-16:32 and 10:56-10:11 www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-one 34. Correction: This is mentioned by Endless Thread podcast host Ben Brock Johnson at 12:06-12:21, not Dr Nett. www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-one 35. Dr Philip Jones, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamp: 29:26-29:47 36. Dr Philip Jones, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamp: 28:52-29:01 37. Dr Philip Jones, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamp: 30:40-31:20
your normal, non-narrator voice, is muuuch more palatable and tolerable... when you get onto that narrator voice with that speech rhythm it makes relly hard to listen. please speak to us and dont narrate. i love your subjects but some of the episodes are unwatchable for me.
in spite of not being able to understand its context, the fact that this joke has the "x walks into a bar and says" format that we still retain today is astounding
The average person hasn't changed in probably 50,000 years. Just riding coattails of advancements made by an exceptional one here and there. Kinda sad, but I keep a sense of humor about it
@@davidcolley4756 What do you mean, sad? The kinds of evolutionary pressure it would take to make any kind of noticeable difference would likely be the sort of thing to completely collapse our civilizations (do not look the climate change directly in the eyes). You're probably carrying a supercomputer in your pocket the likes of which was barely imaginable sixty-seventy years ago. You'll probably live longer than any of your forebears. If you ever find yourself sh*tting in the woods, it will be by your choice rather than out of necessity. Things are great. Imagine moping about things while the single greatest repository of human knowledge in all of history is at your fingertips. Stop wasting your time moping and go read any of the billion books available to you this very second. Also, the great man myth is... a myth. This is probably why you're so depressed all the time, buying into fairytales then getting disappointed when they turn out not to be real. We're a social species. We do everything together. No advancement lies on the shoulders of one person. "If I have seen farther it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Note the use of the plural there? Things are great, we're great. Did you know that, as you read this, you could be looking at naked people? So many naked people you could spend your whole life and never see the same naked person twice. How can you be sad about that? The ancient Sumerians would have heard about the riches at your command and come up with some new slur just to describe you. Possibly something relating to a dog.
@@davidcolley4756it's more like all of us are human, no matter how exceptional or not. A genius can have the same sense of humor as Dipshit Dan from accounting.
@@davidcolley4756 In essence, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." People will always be people, and people are really fuckin weird and complicated, except for when they're not, which is the complicated part.
I think it probably had to do with what 'dog' sounded like in the spoken language. If 'dog walked into a bar ' sounded like 'person with both eyes closed' in ancient Sumerian, it is brilliant. Particularly if you tell the joke with both eyes closed, and open one eye as you give the punch line.
I like to think it might've been a direct equivalent to the classic pun: "A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks: Why the long face?". Without knowing the idiom, it makes as much sense as the Sumerian dog joke.
My favorite type of this joke is this: An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The barman looks at them and says "What is this? Some kind of joke?"
That is a good example of a joke only being funny if you know the background and that it is the format of many jokes we are familiar with. If all the other jokes in the format are lost in time the joke above makes no sense. Maybe thats the problem with the Sumerian jokes in that we dont understand the context
“An Irish man walked out of a bar….. it could happen!” I think the dog joke may be like the “two guys walked into a bar, which is silly because you figure the first guy would walk into it and the second would see it.”
The bit about the verb for "to open" being close to a word for "vulva" makes me hope that 4,000 years from now, there will be archaeologists struggling to find the exact correct interpretation for "ligma" jokes.
"Foremost experts understand ligma to be a kind of bean grown around the world... the word bean... blah blah... deez nuts were only grown by young men..."
Good point and that happened with a lot of hand copied documents... a lazy student making his 5th copy uses a word of similar meaning to the copiest. 1000 years later religions are going to fists over the literal meaning of a "God's incorruptable words".
I love interpreting that saying in the context of “dogs as bawdy gentlemen” because then it’s a proverb on the general trend of indulging in a behavior that you’re *definitely* gonna regret in the morning. 😂
The dog talking to its anus legitimately made me laugh and I think it's so great people from 4000 years ago can make us laugh today. It's some timey whimey stuff
My first thought was that the door to the tavern was closed and that's why the dog couldn't see inside, so it suggested opening the door. Basically it's a precursor to "two men walk into a bar, you'd think one of them would've seen it"
My personal take on the proverb: It's a variation of, "A man walked into a bar. He should have ducked," suggesting the dog collided with the tavern instead of entering. The teaching moment is something along the lines of, "Don't get so lost in the task at hand that you lose sight of the goings on around you." Either that, or it's some witty wordplay that's lost on us. Which leads me to the mental image of the original scholar (the one who added the proverb to the list, not the student who scribed the tablet) laughing and commenting about how this joke is so timeless that it needs to be on the list.
The first theory is assuming the same wordplay in English was present in Sumerian thousands of years ago. "Walk into" can have a double meaning of "enter" and "collide with" and bar has the double meaning of "tavern" and "long piece of metal", but those meanings don't translate directly to other modern languages, let alone ancient ones.
If you take the word dog as a slang word for a guard/cop and the bar as a brothel establishment ( which most of the so called "bars" were back in the era) the joke makes sense. A guard/cop walks into an inn/bar/brothel. He doesn't see anything sexual happen there and then he says. OK ... I'll open it. ( I'll run the brothel)!
@@creativecolours2022 Doesnt that explanation still depend on contemporary ideas of legality tho? Ancient Sumerians probably did not have the same idea of police, legality, or corruption
@@cazicazi1940 They didn't have the same ideas about police or legality but I bet that they had the same ideas about corruption.The/any guards were always employed by the governing establishment whatever that was at any given time. The guards were always the king's/ruler's security. His "dogs". So the king's security, his dog, wants to run the entertainment establishment that is among other things a brothel. And that concept is funny. IMHO that is what this joke is all about.
@@ronj9592Right with the word open being a sexual pun, and inn and brothel also being puns I think you could easily see what the intention of the joke was.
I know a Greek joke . There are three islands. On the first there is a Greek. He decides to measure the island, explore and investigate the local flora and fauna. He then writes a book about it. On the second island is a Roman. Having ascertained that he doesn’t need to conquer it, he then proceeds to make laws, creat roads and aqueducts and raises a statue to himself. On the third island is Celt. He starts a fight.
Now its the opposite....Celtic polite nations successfully thriving and then angry aggressive Mediterranean states in a constant fight for instability.
7:51 - A dog gnawing on a bone says to his anus: "This is going to hurt you!" This is by far the best quote in the video. And my god, it was masterfully delivered!
Here’s a pre-security cam joke, ER nurse runs up to the doctor and says, “Doctor doctor that guy you said was fine… he walked outside and fell over dead!” Dr says, “Well turn him around make it look like he was walking in!”
Wow that’s an old one, but I may have you beat. A man goes to see his doctor and says, “I keep having these weird dreams. One night I think I’m a wigwam, the next night a teepee. Wigwam, teepee, wigwam, teepee.” The doctor says, “Isn’t it obvious, you’re too tense.”
A guard dog opening the front door of a brothel to the public is definitely the funniest interpretation, and it makes the most sense as a joke. It also acts as an allegory about doing one's job effectively (i.e., you can't guard the streets from inside a brothel).
Watching though this video I was thinking something was off like his interpretation is incomplete, since this talks about the opening of the bar... There's another joke that goes something like this - _But to preface: Sumarian taverns were dark, their beer was drank in communal Vases covered with cloth and with straws, and the men were shorter, and wore long garments with no underpants. _ *A dog walks into the tavern and says "I'm parched, do you have something to drink?" The Keep says "Find a straw and drink your fill." the dog replies, "I can't find one, it's dark." The Keep replies back "Just pull over a cloth, grab one and suck." in which the dog finally says "Nevermind, I found one."* In the interpretations, no form of payment was ever described, though beer as per the vases were in some permutations of the joke. But yes it is a dick joke and a bestiality joke... all rolled into one.
I think this is the correct way to read it: 1. The dog is a loyal guard dog and does the right thing by opening the inn 2. In a more abstract sense the rough and not-to-be-messed with character sees his chance and takes it. e.g. no one is around and here is my chance to... (I think that makes it more of a proverb) 3. It could simply play on the idea of inn keepers expressing the Babylonian characteristics of a dog. (loyal and rough)
@@ThatGuyNamedRick If that was it, I can laugh my arse off and then laugh at all the moralists and reactionaries going "back in my day there were morals". I mean, if the Sumerians really had a joke about a dog sucking dick at a dark tavern, then I feel like they were shitposters just like us.
@@cocopus You wrote "destiny is done" WTF. Why can you write sumerian? Also you being an immortal sumerian implies you are Gilgamesh, that's the only immortal one, no?
Maybe at some moment, when the original language was no longer spoken, but the texts were still used as copying exercises, an inexperienced student skipped a line of text and ruined the punchline. Following generations continued reproducing the error, assuming it made sense in the old language, just like we still do today.
My favorite way this was described to me was that because the tavern is dark the dog cant see anything inside of it, and the casks at the time had taps that you could drink right out of, while at the same time Sumerians had loose open clothing. Combining all of this together and the height of the dog it leads to a semi funny penis joke. A dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one.'
if "dog" was a euphamism for penis and the listener was not supposed to realise this was what was meant by "dog" until the hint, " can not see", ( like a one eyed snake that does not see) and "I shall open this one" was meant "I chose this prostitute to "open", then the joke is a bad pun.
The adventures of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and others were a favourite of mine as a child. I probably read the Enid Blyton versions though it goes back to African/American oral tradition. It's no accident Disney chose a fox to be Robin Hood.
@@avaggdu1 African-American? NO, flemish medieval "Reynard the fox" already has the cunning fox, long before Columbus. [It's also a minor plot point in season1 of Bosch. ] And Aesop in classic greek has "Fox and crow" where he cunningly gets crow's cheese.
@@SenselessUsername And? I was referring to the Brer Rabbit stories that had an oral tradition before Enid Blyton wrote them down. The other "cunning fox" tropes were none of my concern.
It's always important, when dealing with translations, to think about the differences between 'horse play' vs 'pony play' or 'cabin in the woods' vs 'cottage in the forest' in our own language. So yes, context, so desperately important.
@@Schell3092 But when translating one might only understand those connotations because one understands the context. A translator far removed from our current time and culture reading a comment in some letter about how they got something that translated directly in their language to "contacting someone by phone involving ones posterior" could vastly change the narrative. A fragment of a story that starts with a person going to a "domicile in a heavily treed area" might be misread because they don't know how the connotation changes the context. And we are probably doing this ALL THE TIME when translating ancient writings. Especially when we add in our own prejudices (or stick with the prejudices of previous translators).
this reminded me of a joke about two soldiers drinking some awful moonshine heavily while they're being surrounded by the enemy. After finishing the bottle and being incredibly drunk, one says to the other: - Do you see me? - Nope! - I don't see you either. We're so good at camouflage, they'll never find us!
A possible meaning i had and actually fits better with the older translation is that a dog is looking for a place to sleep, he walks into a bar (which would normally be busy at night but in this case is closed), and decides to sleep there (probably using a phrase someone would use to normally order a beer with but in this case referencing the building). This would explain the context for the darkness and why he would be choosing something. It functions more like a proverb that in modern day would translate more like "The dog has no sense of value for the lively accommodations of night life, but rather the accommodation itself." If i were to translate my idea while keeping it in joke form it would be along the lines of "A Dog walks into a bar and sees its dark and nobody is there, he then says "this is the perfect bar for me"". It also fits much more with the idea of dogs in proverbs as something that would rather not be or shouldn't be bothered.
“A dog walks into a bar and says ‘hmm, yes… I think I’ll have this one… it’s warm and dark, and very quiet too!’” (I’ve kinda flipped the setup and the punchline, but it’s possible that “I’ll open this one” is a stronger bait-and-switch when said in Sumerian.)
The idea that the joke is even older than the scribe who wrote it down and he didn't get the joke either is kinda hilarious. Imagine a bunch of scribes having the same conversation that we are having today trying to figure out what this means.
Imagine someone thousands of years in the future trying to understand current meta-humor. The dog joke was probably related to the Sumer way of life and it's meaning has been lost to time.
Or a language joke. I can imagine that in Sumerian the word "dog" meant something else too not just the animal. A synonym, or a similar formed word with different, non-related meanings. But also fascinating that the Sumarians knew the bar jokes :-) This is more than 5000 years old tradition now :-)
yeah my take is that the prostitution were illegal activities in the taverns, and the cop was being all like "man i just cannot see anything wrong in this tavern." and then taking a whore. the whole "sexual connotation to the word open" thing can be supporting that. its like those old russian jokes about how corrupt and unfair the world is. depending on how cops were viewed in sumerian society it might be either a shock joke or a depricating joke.
Every part of the joke is intelligible except for what the "one" is. "I'll open this one." What if the "one" is the tavern itself. What if it's basically... "An alcoholic walks into a bar. The bar is dark and closed. The alcoholic says 'Welp, guess I'll open the bar myself."
Okay, the 'one' removes some vagueness. If you say "I'll open" it could be either "myself" or "something else" - if you use a "I'll open one" - it is clear you're not about to open yourself. So the joke becomes *more* intelligible due to the word 'one'.
With information later in the video that "dog" apparently refers specifically to a guard dog, along with the hints that this might not be a joke but perhaps a proverb that uses animals to illustrate questionable human behavior, I came to a similar conclusion: seems to me it's basically something like: "A guard dog at the inn starts his shift by saying 'I don't see anything out here, I guess I'll go back in and help myself to the comforts of the tavern!" Basically, like someone said in the video, it's possibly a "joke" about a bad guard dog - or, more accurately, a proverb about what happens when you let your bored, lazy guards help themselves to whatever it is they're supposed to be guarding. Almost all those other animal proverbs mentioned as examples in the video were in virtually the same kind of style and format!
@@pietrayday9915 A good proverb can be many things at the same time: The dog eating the bone telling his anus "This will hurt you tomorrow" carries several interpretations: Sometimes you have to do what you have to do without worrying about the consequence - is a positive interpretation, the dog distancing himself from his own anus is the humourus interpretation - and humans don't tend to consider the consequence of their action properly the negative interpretation.
@@pietrayday9915 I'm a bit baffled by the guard-dog concept put forth. The saying starts with the dog entering the bar. a guard doesn't enter, he stays outside or right at the entrance. so right off the bat I don't think it (guard-dog idea) can shed light on the rest. I think it's better to assume the dog enters the bar (and "walks into" as in bumps into is the obvious first meaning, but not the ultimate) just like any patron and for the same purposes (find a mate). he sees nothing (no potential mates), but being a (horn)dog approaches the first one(female) to "open." ;)
@@SuperMurxus Rick and Morty snake episode: "eff those guys" present guy (dog) receives the current reward and leaves the consequences to future guy (anus). Who is really the A**hole?
My take: The dog can't see anything because his face is against the tavern door. He 'walked into it'. Also, these jokes are so timeless. \o/ Awesome video.
That's exactly what I was thinking, kinda like the modern "2 guys walk into a bar, one says ow" joke; you expect a typical setup but the punchline comes unexpectedly from the setup's literalness.
Or it's funny because the interior of their bars back then were too dark without enough windows? I know these days if someone is in a dark room some people like to make a joke about why they are doing that.
The last suggestion makes a lot of sense. It also suggest the saying is a proverb, not a joke. Taking the dog as an analogue of the watchman, it amounts to something like, “if you want privacy, don’t bring the watchman in.”
I agree. Most commenters want it to be a joke but we can't really know if it is meant to be funny or not. Also to understand either a joke or a proverb sometimes you have to know the language and the cultural background very well.
I do love the idea of an Assyrian student sitting down and copying out a (to him) 2,000 year old Sumerian text, not getting it and now 3,000 years later we are trying to interpret his homework.
This terrifies me that someone is going to read my old homework thousands of years from now and go "what?" And then bring it into the focus of hundreds of thousands of people
@@sagiren What makes you think your homework would see that kind of preservation? Most of mine was on paper, most of that I haven't seen in years to even decades now. The stuff that was done online, would just be unimportant scripts in a sea of unimportant scripts for a few schools which are just unimportant droplets in the ocean of schools, which only make up a small amount of the entire collection of waters that make up the internet.
My guess is that it may have something to do with what might have been a common experience at Sumerian taverns. I don’t know much about how taverns were built in ancient Sumer, but I’d guess they might have been enclosed spaces with low-lighting at all hours of the day. The joke may then be pointing fun at how dogs, which I assume mag have travelled freely around town, would enter into taverns and knock open doors to the outside, letting in natural light that flashes everyone in the tavern. The joke would therefore be pointing fun at how dogs do this, under an assumption that the dog can’t see and opens to door to let more light in.
I was thinking something along the same lines, but that maybe the dog is supposed to represent the kind of person who walks into a place and immediately starts trying to change stuff. If you've ever gone to a restaurant with a person who starts complaining that it's too cold, the music is too loud, the lights are too bright etc etc etc you know how annoying this is haha.
The "guard dog can't see outside because he's inside" version is the funniest. To rephrase and modernize, "A traffic cop walks into a bar. He says, I don't see anyone speeding in here, guess I should go back outside." That's way funnier IMO than some idea of a dog wanting to see people getting it on in a brothel.
What if the dog just "walked into" as in "collided with" the bar, and can't see anything because he has yet to open the door? It's hard to see much when your face is pressed up against a door.
Could be meaning something on the line of "we have a problem, we need a solution, we can't find it. We found it, the solution was so simple a dog could resolved it." The room is dark, we can't see, a dog opens a window. The joke is we are dumber than dogs, not the bar part for me.
I think it's more along the lines of, someone who is inquisitive, maybe a dog, is curious to know what goes on behind closed doors in an establishment that has a poor reputation. But when the dog... I mean person, goes in and closes the door behind them, it's dark, and they can't see anything. So they wonder, should I open the door that I just closed? But it's implicit that if the door is open, allowing the light to enter, you can no longer see what goes on behind closed doors. The light entering through the door, would illuminate the intimacy of the establishment, which can only be preserved in darkness. It's a joke about quantum mechanics. The observer changes that which observed.
I saw an explanation that I really liked. It explained that the drink "jugs/bottles" were of a phallic shape and being in the dark, he opened the first object of the shape he could find.
yes, I came here to comment this exact thing. Note also that the drink jugs have long straws attached, and it makes it quite funny. He looked for a straw and found it wasn't connected to his beverage container but rather another patron.
The most interesting thing I found in this video is the fox already being cunning, a trickster. Would love to see someone analyze the role of the fox in old tales until now.
I love that you have such a wholesome proverb, "A heart did not create hatred, speech created hatred." Following a proverb about women farting when their husbands hug them
Yes!! As someone who has learned 3 foreign languages, this happens a lot. It's especially strange when you speak the language fluently, and suddenly there's a joke or a pun, and despite knowing all the words, you just don't get it? There's some piece of context that you're missing due to not growing up there, or an obscure word that's not in your vocabulary yet, small things like that. Worse is when you don't realize it's supposed to be a joke. There are some English jokes that took me years to understand. Scientific papers no problem, but a simple pun? Utter confusion
This reminds me of an old Spanish proverb "el perro del hortelano, que no come ni deja comer". The first half of it is the title of a play by Lope de Vega (from the 1600s). It means "the dog of the horticulturist (vegetable grower), who doesn't eat and doesn't let others eat". It is obviously about a guard dog who doesn't let people steal the vegetables that the owner is growing but won't eat the veggies either, cause it's a dog. But that's only obvious if you know what the word "hortelano" means. My parents worked in horticulture so for me it was a normal word, but apparently in everyday modern Chilean Spanish people don't know what it means anymore. I found out the hard way when I was studying Drama and, on a class about Lope de Vega, we watched a film version of that play, which is about a noble woman who has a crush on a servant. She can't marry someone that's so far below her station, but she won't let him marry another servant. But when another student asked what did that have to do with a dog, all the lecturer could do was to repeat the saying "el perro del hortelano, que no come ni deja comer" and had no idea why the dog wasn't eating. I explained that it's because dogs don't normally eat vegetables and this dog was watching it's owners vegetable field against thieves. Everyone seemed annoyed that I knew what the saying meant, especially the lecturer. 😢
Some people like the air of mystery. They prefer to think that some things just are because that is the way they are (as is the case with a lot of things). Providing a rational explanation takes away the romanticism of the mystery and this often upsets people.
It amazes me that people do not know what 'hortelano' means in a spanish language country. I am dutch and even I know, or understand immediately what 'hortelano' means. It is derived from latin 'hortus' -> hortelano-> the person who has/tends for the hortus. I am not a language expert but the commonly used 'jardinero' is probably one of the few words in Spanish (and in French and Italian for that matter) taht are of germanic origin and not roman. Guess we have to thank the visigoths and vandals for that 🙂😀
Beer was the first thing I thought too, they were obsessed with beer. In their version of the flood myth a goddess was upset only because with no humans left nobody was going to make beer offerings to the gods.
My immediate thought was that the earliest cities didn't have many streets - buildings were just attached to one another or piled on top of one another, so many of them didn't have windows. If the bar was one such, it would have been dark inside except during opening hours, when presumably either the door was left open or lamps were lit - and suddenly the joke starts to make some kind of sense!
Appreciate the many illustrations of people drinking beer out of a shared vessel with long straws. It's one of the those little things that makes Sumeria really vivid in my imagination.
It's kind of funny since another history RUclipsr I watch did a video about an unrelated piece of Sumerian writing and used different illustrations of people drinking beer out of a shared vessel with long straws. We really do live in a Sumerian people drinking beer out of a shared vessel with long straws golden age.
Another couple of possibilities: 1. Since the tablets were copied by students, it's possible that this one is simply an error. 2. It's possible that this is a fragment, and there was more after it that fleshes it out.
Basically, it's the equivalent of Student 1: **copies down dog joke** Hey come here, look at this meme I found. Student 2: **snickers** Good luck, future historians.
When I was a kid, I saw a prop-gimmick comedian performing some stunt or another involving juggling ping-pong-balls while performing magic tricks to make them disappear, and telling jokes... he started to put one of the ping-pong balls in his mouth, stopped, looked at the audience, said "kids, don't try this at home! You don't want to swallow one of these. It'll hurt. TWICE!"
🤔...maybe until one smart researcher realises it uses all the alphabet letters of the then most commonly used language. From there it's not a big leap to wondering if it was a test piece for some kind of written language transmission equipment - in much the same way that analog TV test cards and short wave radio station interval "jingles" were also used during the same technological era.
@@hectorpascal you assume alot of information survives, with how apocalyptic earth is becoming with climate change its entirely possible if humanity exists another 6000 years the English alphabet and the English languages inconsistent way of spelling and pronouncing will give them a utterly alien interpretation of what English is. Say if all they had was a ancient keyboard the English language would look extremely bizarre. Would the sheer amount of writing English has make it probably easier to decipher then bronze age languages, hopefully but 6000 years is 6000 years.
@@ultra-papasmurf Naturally my comment is entirely predicated upon the survival of sufficient written examples of the English language. Who knows what may remain after millennia have passed - but the sheer amount of data we now produce and store, may well increase the likelihood of much more surviving than the ancients left for us. Considering that Sumerian was an extinct language isolate with an unknown writing system, it is quite remarkable how much scholars have already recovered over the last 200 years.
Just wanted to say that considering my diog follows my mom everywhere to the extent that she waits for her outside the bathroom door, I wouldn't be surprised if this was someone joking about how their dog would try to follow them into brothels lmfao
Just the fact that we can still access and read a joke from that long ago (even if we can't really "get" the humour) is really so impressive. Imagine any of today's digital memes surviving and remaining legible several thousand years from now... Clay tablets may be primitive info tech, but they've certainly stood the test of time!
It's also the repetition of the tradition. Junior scribes doing the hard work of learning their trade and indirectly preserving a thousands of years old joke as they practice writing Sumerian script.
At the end, it is indeed like that old version of the Wikipedia article said: "The humor of it is probably related to the Sumer way of life and has been lost, but the words remain". And I think it is beautiful
the dog goes into the tavern. it is dark, and he cannot see. he turns around to open the door from which he came in, so he can go back outside and see again.
😂 I think you may not understand how this works. It's not so much that it's universal as it is that these jokes have been around for so long and they may have been the ones to invent them.
I think the joke involves the dog, who is supposed to be doing his duty, disingenuously saying that he needs to look into the room to maximize security, even though he really just wants to see what’s going on.
I heard it as similar to the 'joke' about a man who falls into a pit, gets out, comes back with a ladder, and climbs out. So in this case the dog walks into the tavern and only then opens the door because he couldn't see anything. Who knows what kind of puns and cultural trends we are missing.
As pointed out, it might not be a joke, but an actual proverb and advice. Dog walks into a bar (presumably to guard his master). Determines he can't guard because he can't see outside, so opens the door, revealing his masters actions to everyone. Sometimes you don't want as diligent service.
Maybe he walks into a tavern the way a person might walk into a lampost on a dark night. Which would account for why he couldn't see anything. But it does rely on "walking into" having the same double meaning in Sumerian as in English, which seems desperately improbable.
Hey! First time on the channel and was pleasantly surprised to hear the delectable dulcet tones of @StefanMilo suddenly in my speakers! LOVE his channel! Will have to check out more of your channel now for sure!
I'm a Sumerologist and as soon as I saw this was about an obscure proverb thats difficult to understand my immediate thought was "Alster probably found a good solution to it" and 11 minutes later theres the article by Alster lol and btw the conclusion "theres a few solid possibilities but we dont really know" is omnipresent in the field. Theres just so many factors that can obscure these texts.
What worries me most is the author's use/misuse of the term "archaeologist". Would any of the learned sources he quotes describe themselves as archaeologists? Philologists, sumerologists, historians perhaps. Archaeologists dig things out of the ground.
@@GordonDonaldson-v1c I always assumed the big language guys had at least some dig experience. Off the top of my head I recall some pictures of Jakobsen on a dig site. Though I suppose that wouldnt always be the case. Many would be handling artefacts which could possibly qualify them? Id say at least its an understandable conflation, because I've never met a Middle Eastern archaeologist who wasnt well school in the language side of things. I remember one time I was on site and someone was helping the head archaeologist leading the dig with something and they had to wait a bit of time for something so the guy asked him "What do you want me to do in the mean time?" He replied "Sit on that rock and conjugate Akkadian verbs." lol
@@GordonDonaldson-v1c Archaeologists study past cultures by examining the material remnants left behind. It's the "studying past cultures" part that is important. So archaeologists don't have to dig, and digging stuff up isn't enough to make someone an archaeologist. The author used the term correctly.
I like the guard dog interpretation. It's almost self-contained, and it also functions as a proverb: "once you let the guard inside, you invite also the strangers"
EXACTLY! I also thought that the watchdog interpretation also revealed a self-contained proverb - I compared it to letting a fox guard a hen-house or letting inmates run an asylum, but your proverb works even better. "I think I'll open this one" is a kind of a mysterious "punch-line" for a joke, but if I assume that the watch-dog has decided that there's nothing to watch for and feels lazy and greedy and dog-like, he's going to open up the tavern and help himself to everything he's supposed to be guarding. A couple more proverbs that loosely fits the theme: "When the cat's away, the mice will play!", and "who watches the watchdog?" Your watchdog is running amok in your tavern.... "It's like a doctor who gets cancer, Lord hear my prayer - It's like a fire at the firehouse and it's not fair!" - Ludichrist
If you take the word dog as a slang for a guard/cop and the bar as a brothel establishment ( which most of the so called "bars" were back in the era. They were not actually bars but inns bars and brothels) the joke makes sense. A guard/cop walks into an inn/bar/brothel. He doesn't see anything sexual happen there and then he says. OK ... I'll open it. ( I'll run the brothel).
I never heared this joke. But there was another sumerian joke making the rounds a few years ago. I can't quite remember the wording, but it was something about the lack of(?) sexual abilities of auxiliaries. But after a couple of people commented how incomprehensible the joke was, someone who served in the army commented: "Hey, we pretty much make the same joke about the guys in the artillery."
Here's one for future archaeologists to lose their sleep over: "I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hara-Kiri Rock. I need scissors! 61!"
This English joke translates as, "your mother is so large, when she sits in the house, she really sits in the house." The ancient sense of humor really is inscrutable.
Thank you so much for having proper captions! Even if I don't usually need them, it means a lot whenever I see proper captions. Some netflix shows don't even have accurate captions, it's awful
I have three theories on the meaning: 1) The dog walks into a bar/brothel, and says "nothing to see here..." as he goes about his business either opening a jug of alcohol or possibly opening a woman's legs or something of the sort... 2) The dog walks into a bar and says "I don't see anyone watching me" and opens a drink on the sly maybe? 3) Maybe the dog walks into a bar/brothel originally being uptight and "closed off" and then "opens his eyes" to the world of fun and sin inside. As if to say "maybe I'll just take a peek". I think with translations, there is a lot to read in between the lines and many of these interpreters seem to be reading it too literally instead of thinking that the words could be slang or idiomatic for the time.
I think it probably is a slang for "opening jug of beer" and "opening a window/door", and is related to somehow seeing better. Kinda like people in 4000AD might get confused by us calling all the interesting stuff "cold", if they lack context for use of cool.
My guess is there's a dual meaning to one of the words that has been lost to the ages. One possibility is that the "bar" could also refer to the drinks inside it. With the dog being a guard, the interpretation would be something like "A cop walks into a bar (looking for criminals). He says "I don't see any in here. Let's check this one (he opens a bottle)." Essentially, the cop is drinking on the job. Just a guess though. I'm probably miles off, and the original meaning will probably never be understood.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether that explanation is possible or not, but it suddenly make a lot of sense the way you explain it with very simple and believable context.
Even if it's not the perfect interpretation it's a pretty funny joke all on its own! It definitely sounds like an interpretation that would have been funny then too
i like this explanation, and to make it more similar to the joke in the video it could go "a pig (cop) walks into a bar, but he doesn't see anything (illegal) so he opens a cold one" i feel like these expressions are relatively similar to the original joke since you'd only get it if you know that some people call cops pigs and beer cold ones, which wouldn't be self explanatory in like five thousand years
Could it be that the dog enters the brothel expecting to see people openly enjoying sex the way that dogs do but seeing nothing of the kind considers opening a door to find out if humans require privacy?
I am not sure whether people in ancient times had required privacy that much. I have read somewhere that up until black plague and then onset of puritanism, and advent of syphilis, society was more open about nudity and sexual behaviour than e.g. society in 19th century or than society today.
I'm probably wrong, I'm not an historian, but I was a bartender and something like this actually happened to me. A dog (a low person) walks a bar and finds no one there and says "should I open it" (open the business for trade that day). The owner of a small restaurant I worked for was going through some personal problems and the business was in chaos. One day after my weekend off, I went in to the bar and found someone else behind the bar, he had set up the tables and set up and stocked the bar ready for business. The owner had let the cook in earlier and then left. I was told that this was no longer my shift and I'd have to take it up with the owner who I couldn't find till well into the evening shift. So this guy, who apparently had knowledge of this neighborhood restaurant and knew that it was chaotic at the time took advantage to not only steal my tips and wage for the day, but all the sales he made and the contents of the day till. This isn't that uncommon in badly run businesses, st least not in this particular city in the early 90's, people took advantage of neighborhood businesses frequently to line their pockets for a day...or longer if there was an absentee owner. Like I said, I'm probably wrong, but it was the first thing I thought of when hearing this joke.
😆same here @liverpooluk 👑 establishment have for closed/& or shutdown most of our pub & taverns 🙄 and turned them in too housing for immigrants, who are mostly getting here *illegally* 🤨 Who says crime doesn't pay!!!?
I wasn’t ready for the dog speaking to it’s rear opening so I laughed out loud at a 3000 year old joke. This is why history is so great, it’s us, but from long ago.
I've seen some article about an ancient Roman wall graffiti with dicks carved into it.Its hillarious how people found the same basic things funny back in those days. Or maybe not even funny,but thinking about all the dick graffiti we have today in random walls...Thousands of years and we do the same thing
Just goes to show human beings have not really changed all that much through the ages. This is why Greek tragedies from 2500 or more years still resonate with us.
I like the idea that it's the outside door that the dog's going to open, letting passers-by see things/acts that the participants inside don't want those outside to see. The joke then would be the dog pretending it's not seeing anything and exposing the punters to view.
Or as the scholar said, that the dog's desire to be an efficient guard makes him a terrible or redundant guard. Basic irony, slice of life, sexual innuendo, tint of wisdom... that's a routine right there.
From my experience the seediest bars are the hardest to see inside, implying that whatever goes inside is best left unseen from prying eyes. A dog that is either a man of passions (drunk,lustful) or a guard might be interested in opening the door to see what's happening. Perhaps the joke is that the dog is both.
If you read it as the dog being a servant/slave then you could interpret it as the servant entering the tavern and upon finding it empty, helps himself to some beer. A "who watches the watchmen" sort of thing.
The best one for me was one I read in a Jean Bottero book, which went like so: "The more cows you own, the more crap you have"... mo money, mo problems 😂
Among my friends, I am somewhat notorious for messing up jokes. I once butchered a joke that several of my other friends knew well. They later reported that the person I told the joke to repeated my butchered version which they found hilarious - funnier than the actual joke itself. The idea that someone messed it up appeals to me.
It could be an abstract joke. Example (Polish): "Było dwóch braci, jeden był w trampkach a drugi w szkole". The proper translation to English looses the zing: "There were two brothers, one wore sneakers, the other was in school". The thing which makes it work in Polish is the word "w" (English:"in") which you can use to describe what a person wears but also wherein the person is. Kinda if you could say: "One was in sneakers, the other in the school".
@@BogdanBaudis Hmmm... So like: The necktie said to the hat: "You go on ahead, I'll just hang around." Where "ahead" in English is cognate with "a head". You'll find many, many more like it in the pun section.
Interpretations: "A schlub walks into a bar and says 'maybe THIS beer will CURE my blindness'. " "A guard walks inside and says 'It's too dark outside, I'll just do my job in here' " "A friendly idiot walks into a private room with his eyes closed, wondering why he can't see" "OWO WHATS THIS!?!"
if "dog" was a euphamism for penis and the listener was not supposed to realise this was what was meant by "dog" until the hint, " can not see", ( like a one eyed snake that does not see) and "I shall open this one" was meant "I chose this prostitute to "open", then the joke is a bad pun.
I got a joke. An sumerian walks into a pharmacy , he ask ,”do you have any cream for this butt rash i just got?” the phatsmcist replies ,” we’re out of cream, but i know where you can go to get some “ the man ask,”where?” the pharmacist says,” ASSYRIA.” (insert drum rim shot)
wait until they find the messed up ones where people like. randomly generate text or whatever. some of those are only funny because the context is that it is a Garfield strip
@@the_hiroman I think there’s a certain beauty to a series deciding they’ve made their point and stopping strong. Especially in a world utterly infested by soulless sequels, remakes and reboots
As an ex-anthropologist, I was assuming that the familiar interpretation must be based on knowledge that dogs were used to represent licentiousness in Sumerian folklore. That's how you would decode something like this, by reference to the mythological value of the animal. On hearing the last chap's claim that dogs were used to represent guardianship and watchfulness, it seemed that the sex joke fell apart. Also, none of the other sayings is a joke. Some have a mild wryness to them, but they are mostly expositions on the characteristics to which they allude. In that sense, it seems to me unnecessary to look for humour. It's a mini folk tale that tells us about dogs - they are ever watchful, ever on guard. Having walked into a dark room, he wants to open a door so he can still see what's going on back at the flock. The little moral for us humans is "never drop your guard, even when you're having fun". Act like a dog, he's always on the lookout. If it were shown that there were some other animal that Sumerians used to discuss sex, then certainly that interpretation for the dog phrase would lapse.
This made me think of an anti drink driving ad that was popular here in Aotearoa New Zealand a decade or so back. In the ad, one character is thinking about his responsibility towards his friend who wants to drive but, is probably too drunk. He is trying to think of ways to stop his friend but, doesn't want to look stupid in front of a girl he likes and, at the same time is also running through scenarios of what will happen if he doesn’t stop his friend and his friend dies. One of the scenarios has the first character walking along the road being followed by his - now ghost - friend who is eating hot chips and offering them to the first character who, answers irritatedly, "you know l can't grab your ghost chips!". It doesn’t sound like it but, the ad was clever and funny and parts of it were often quoted. "You know l can't grab your ghost chips!", became a bit of a meme and, l can imagine a scenario where many years from now, someone will discover this scrawled on a fragment of wall - realise it was meant to be funny and have absolutely no idea why. BTW. It was so popular, that even a decade later, if you google "ghost chips", the ad comes up. 😊
Beer was also stored in jars, so it could mean he’s going into the bar to open a jar of beer, implying he’s going to drink an entire jar of beer. This would be the equivalent today of drinking a whole keg of beer. Similar to the saying, I am going to crack one open. There could also be the implication that the dog is already in the bar, and is unaware of it because, they are blind drunk. I really think this joke was told with several different meanings (double entendres) intended in it’s day to cater to the audience. Which was and is often done today. Look at the Brother’s Grimm fairy tails. We tell a greatly censored version to our children today, because the original version are far too violent to tell our children today. I also feel this joke was so common, that everyone (at the time), would know what it means immediately with no explanation. So much so, that many people would cringe at hearing it.
In terms of sheer grossness and brutality, Grimm's fairy tales pale in comparison to the "educational" "child-appropriate" fare of their day, like Struwelpeter.
Crazy thought; Is it possible that this is the ancient equivelent to "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"? Remember that old typing exercise that had you using every key on the keyboard so you'd get used to finding them without looking? Since these tablets were transcribed by students, could it be that the statements contained lettering and combinations for practice without concerning themselves with having to make any particular point? Simply speed exercises to improve accuracy and reduce production time? Anyway, just a thought. Great video, interesting topic. Now that I've discovered your channel, be sure to check out your other videos. A man walks into a history RUclips channel with squinted eyes and says, "Shall I click on that?"
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Referernces + Corrections:
1. Original twitter post by Depths of Wikipedia twitter.com/depthsofwiki/status/1501720705385353219
2. Meme site documenting the origins of the Sumerian Bar Joke
knowyourmeme.com/memes/sumerian-bar-joke
3. twitter.com/abbyfheld/status/1501880993833054208
4. twitter.com/VocolPuh/status/1501784215121276928
5. popcrush.com/twitter-decipher-punchline-ancient-sumerian-bar-joke/
6. r/AskHistorians thread (now archived) www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tbgetc/this_bar_joke_from_ancient_sumer_has_been_making/
7. Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative Entry 1
cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/231595
8. Gordon EI (1958) Sumerian Animal Proverbs and Fables: “Collection 5”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol 12, pg. 1-21
9. Gordon EI (1958) Sumerian Animal Proverbs and Fables: “Collection 5” (Conclusion), Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol 12, pg. 43-75.
10. Cunningham G (2013) The Sumerian Language. In: The Sumerian World, Routledge, pg. 95-109.
11. Crawford H (2004) Writing and the Arts. In: Sumer and the Sumerians, Cambridge University Press, pg. 193-198.
12. Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative Entry 1
cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/231595
13. Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative Entry 2 cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/231603
14. Van De Mieroop M (2016) A History of the Ancient Near East, Third Edition, Wiley Blackwell, pg. 36-37.
15. Pronunication by Dr Seraina Nett, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamp: 6:06-6:18. www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-one
16. Beaulieu PA (2018) A History of Babylon (2200 BC-AD 75), Wiley Blackwell, pg. 69-97.
17. Van De Mieroop M (2016) A History of the Ancient Near East, Third Edition, Wiley Blackwell, pg. 90-127.
18. Van De Mieroop M (2016) A History of the Ancient Near East, Third Edition, Wiley Blackwell, pg. 91-93.
19. Black et al. (2004) The Literature of Ancient Sumer, Oxford University Press, pg. 40-50.
20. Gordon EI (1959) Sumerian Proverbs; Glimpses of Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, pg. 1-20.
21. Proverb Collection 5 entry on the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/proverbs/t.6.1.05.html#t6105.p77
22. Bottéro J (2001) Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamian, pg. 100-101.
23. Stol M (2016) Prostitution. In: Women in the Ancient Near East, De Gruyter, pg. 401-403.
24. Cooper J (2006) Prostituion, Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (RlA), 11, 12-21.
25. Smithsonian article on the Lagash tavern excavations
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/5000-year-old-tavern-discovered-in-iraq-180981564/
26. 2022 Fall Season Excavation Report from the Lagash Archaeological Project
web.sas.upenn.edu/lagash/current-excavations/2022-fall-season/
27. Alster B and Oshima T (2006) A Sumerian Proverb Tablet in Geneva With Some Thoughts on Sumerian Proverb Collections, Orientalia, 69.
28. Alster B (1997) Proverbs of Ancient Sumer. CDL Press.
29. Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Proverb collection 5 transcription
etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/proverbs/t.6.1.05.html#t6105.p77
30. Dr Seraina Nett, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamps: 16:22-16:32 and 10:56-10:11 www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-one
31. Richardson S (2019) Nature Engaged and Disengaged: The Case of Animals in Mesopotamian Literatures. In: Impious Dogs, Haughty Foxes and Exquisite Fish, De Gruyter, pg. 11-40.
32. Breier I (2019) Shaming by Naming: “Dog” as a Derogatory Term for Human Beings in Ancient Near Eastern Sources. In: Impious Dogs, Haughty Foxes and Exquisite Fish, De Gruyter, pg. 57-72.
33. Dr Seraina Nett, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamps: 16:22-16:32 and 10:56-10:11 www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-one
34. Correction: This is mentioned by Endless Thread podcast host Ben Brock Johnson at 12:06-12:21, not Dr Nett.
www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/08/05/sumerian-joke-one
35. Dr Philip Jones, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamp: 29:26-29:47
36. Dr Philip Jones, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamp: 28:52-29:01
37. Dr Philip Jones, Endless Thread Podcast, ‘Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not’ Timestamp: 30:40-31:20
Mesopotamian mythology please!
What's the meme about the sub-par copper delivery? I am intrigued.
3 legged dog goes into a saloon and hobbles over to the bar.
He looks up and says: I'm looking for the man that shot my pa.
If this is from training tablets is it possible we are trying to analyse the equivalent of the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog?
your normal, non-narrator voice, is muuuch more palatable and tolerable... when you get onto that narrator voice with that speech rhythm it makes relly hard to listen. please speak to us and dont narrate. i love your subjects but some of the episodes are unwatchable for me.
in spite of not being able to understand its context, the fact that this joke has the "x walks into a bar and says" format that we still retain today is astounding
The average person hasn't changed in probably 50,000 years. Just riding coattails of advancements made by an exceptional one here and there.
Kinda sad, but I keep a sense of humor about it
@@davidcolley4756 What do you mean, sad?
The kinds of evolutionary pressure it would take to make any kind of noticeable difference would likely be the sort of thing to completely collapse our civilizations (do not look the climate change directly in the eyes). You're probably carrying a supercomputer in your pocket the likes of which was barely imaginable sixty-seventy years ago. You'll probably live longer than any of your forebears. If you ever find yourself sh*tting in the woods, it will be by your choice rather than out of necessity. Things are great. Imagine moping about things while the single greatest repository of human knowledge in all of history is at your fingertips. Stop wasting your time moping and go read any of the billion books available to you this very second.
Also, the great man myth is... a myth. This is probably why you're so depressed all the time, buying into fairytales then getting disappointed when they turn out not to be real. We're a social species. We do everything together. No advancement lies on the shoulders of one person. "If I have seen farther it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Note the use of the plural there?
Things are great, we're great. Did you know that, as you read this, you could be looking at naked people? So many naked people you could spend your whole life and never see the same naked person twice. How can you be sad about that? The ancient Sumerians would have heard about the riches at your command and come up with some new slur just to describe you. Possibly something relating to a dog.
@@davidcolley4756it's more like all of us are human, no matter how exceptional or not.
A genius can have the same sense of humor as Dipshit Dan from accounting.
@@davidcolley4756 In essence, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." People will always be people, and people are really fuckin weird and complicated, except for when they're not, which is the complicated part.
I think it probably had to do with what 'dog' sounded like in the spoken language. If 'dog walked into a bar ' sounded like 'person with both eyes closed' in ancient Sumerian, it is brilliant. Particularly if you tell the joke with both eyes closed, and open one eye as you give the punch line.
Imagine if Sumerians were into non-jokes that intentionally had no punchline and we're just grasping at straws because of that.
More layers of irony than our feeble modern brains can comprehend. Ya had to be there.
Modern day memes are just as nonsense, it goes full circle. Likely the punchline of this one though that people who go into bars are dogs lol
This is called an "anti-joke"
@@megumuu-i feel like we've been past peak nonsense by now
that’s all i gathered from this entire half hour video
I like to think it might've been a direct equivalent to the classic pun: "A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks: Why the long face?". Without knowing the idiom, it makes as much sense as the Sumerian dog joke.
Reminds me of Bojack.
@@al-imranadore1182 Isn't that that horse from "Horsin' Around?"
Personally, the more amazing thing to me is that "X walks into a bar" jokes have been a thing for so long.
I wonder if they knew the one about the traveling merchant and the peasant's daughter?
Ya, but where's The Aristocrats?!
Almost as old as _The Evil Eye_ belief system -- which likely also originates in the Sumer folk.
Right? That was my thought too!
Yo
My favorite type of this joke is this:
An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The barman looks at them and says "What is this? Some kind of joke?"
That is a good example of a joke only being funny if you know the background and that it is the format of many jokes we are familiar with. If all the other jokes in the format are lost in time the joke above makes no sense. Maybe thats the problem with the Sumerian jokes in that we dont understand the context
An Englishman, a Scotsman, and a Rabbi walk into a bar. The barman says, "covering for Patrick again, eh, Asher?"
“An Irish man walked out of a bar….. it could happen!” I think the dog joke may be like the “two guys walked into a bar, which is silly because you figure the first guy would walk into it and the second would see it.”
RIP Welah
RIP Welsh*
As a Sumerian I find this absolutely hilarious
I didn't know that the ancient Sumerians played Fallout
@@beacondude5000They did, but only the pre-Bethesda ones
@@guanglaikangyi6054 That would explain the Sergeant Dornan profile picture
Hey, sumerian dude. Explain the joke to use, please.
Ur, I dunno.
The bit about the verb for "to open" being close to a word for "vulva" makes me hope that 4,000 years from now, there will be archaeologists struggling to find the exact correct interpretation for "ligma" jokes.
or who is "Yo Mama"
I'm not an archaeologist from the future and I already don't understand wtf is a ligma joke.
"Foremost experts understand ligma to be a kind of bean grown around the world... the word bean... blah blah... deez nuts were only grown by young men..."
@@Minarchisteligma balls
@@AlmondFisk The dog joke is funnier.
I love the idea that some Sumerian student copied this wrong and now we’re struggling with it all these years later.
Hehe 😊
😂
Yes, or maybe there is an additional line that just didn't get copied.
I'm wondering if it's like "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog", or is similarly a writing exercise of some sort instead of a joke.
Good point and that happened with a lot of hand copied documents... a lazy student making his 5th copy uses a word of similar meaning to the copiest. 1000 years later religions are going to fists over the literal meaning of a "God's incorruptable words".
The dog chewing a bone anus joke nearly made me cry that was so unbelievably funny
😐 really?
I completely agree I audibly laughed (are we children)
@@frankthepug-bx8qgyes we are
I love interpreting that saying in the context of “dogs as bawdy gentlemen” because then it’s a proverb on the general trend of indulging in a behavior that you’re *definitely* gonna regret in the morning. 😂
I swear it caught me off guard so bad😂
The dog talking to its anus legitimately made me laugh and I think it's so great people from 4000 years ago can make us laugh today. It's some timey whimey stuff
Reading the dogs line in a redneck accent was the best possible read for that joke 🤣🤣🤣
Legit made me laugh too. I suppose it helps we could understand the joke.
Made me cackle and say WTF.
Timey whimey wibbly wobbly indeed good sir
Dog: ...ta-daaa!
Tavern keeper: jeez, that's quite an act. What do you call it?
My first thought was that the door to the tavern was closed and that's why the dog couldn't see inside, so it suggested opening the door.
Basically it's a precursor to "two men walk into a bar, you'd think one of them would've seen it"
😂
Maybe the dog is drunk and loves to party. So he's cracking open another brewski (invented in Sumeria)
My personal take on the proverb: It's a variation of, "A man walked into a bar. He should have ducked," suggesting the dog collided with the tavern instead of entering. The teaching moment is something along the lines of, "Don't get so lost in the task at hand that you lose sight of the goings on around you."
Either that, or it's some witty wordplay that's lost on us. Which leads me to the mental image of the original scholar (the one who added the proverb to the list, not the student who scribed the tablet) laughing and commenting about how this joke is so timeless that it needs to be on the list.
The first theory is assuming the same wordplay in English was present in Sumerian thousands of years ago. "Walk into" can have a double meaning of "enter" and "collide with" and bar has the double meaning of "tavern" and "long piece of metal", but those meanings don't translate directly to other modern languages, let alone ancient ones.
If you take the word dog as a slang word for a guard/cop and the bar as a brothel establishment ( which most of the so called "bars" were back in the era) the joke makes sense.
A guard/cop walks into an inn/bar/brothel. He doesn't see anything sexual happen there and then he says. OK ... I'll open it. ( I'll run the brothel)!
very compelling take@@creativecolours2022
@@creativecolours2022 Doesnt that explanation still depend on contemporary ideas of legality tho? Ancient Sumerians probably did not have the same idea of police, legality, or corruption
@@cazicazi1940 They didn't have the same ideas about police or legality but I bet that they had the same ideas about corruption.The/any guards were always employed by the governing establishment whatever that was at any given time.
The guards were always the king's/ruler's security.
His "dogs".
So the king's security, his dog, wants to run the entertainment establishment that is among other things a brothel. And that concept is funny.
IMHO that is what this joke is all about.
A dog walks into a brothel and says, "I can't see a thing, I'll have this one".
Okay, I could see that as a crude joke.
I think the dog walked into the bar with his eyes closed. He can't see a thing. "I'll open this one?"
How about a blind man looking to get some action walks in and announces that it doesn't matter what she looks like he'll take the first one available.
@@ronj9592Right with the word open being a sexual pun, and inn and brothel also being puns I think you could easily see what the intention of the joke was.
@@ronj9592 Spot on! I think that's it. 'Any port in a storm' is a similar concept.
This interpretation deserves way more upvotes
I know a Greek joke .
There are three islands.
On the first there is a Greek.
He decides to measure the island, explore and investigate the local flora and fauna. He then writes a book about it.
On the second island is a Roman.
Having ascertained that he doesn’t need to conquer it, he then proceeds to make laws, creat roads and aqueducts and raises a statue to himself.
On the third island is Celt.
He starts a fight.
Okay, that's still funny.
Stands the test of time.
Now its the opposite....Celtic polite nations successfully thriving and then angry aggressive Mediterranean states in a constant fight for instability.
This one’s still funny
I love it. 😊
"A bull with diarrhea leaves a wide trail" A timeless truth, lol
7:51 - A dog gnawing on a bone says to his anus: "This is going to hurt you!"
This is by far the best quote in the video. And my god, it was masterfully delivered!
I laughed so freaking hard at that one.
It read like a shitpost, and I'm here for it
If that one was said 5 seconds earlier I would have squirted beer out of my nose.
Bone sharts
I feel like that one was the real joke
Here’s a pre-security cam joke, ER nurse runs up to the doctor and says, “Doctor doctor that guy you said was fine… he walked outside and fell over dead!”
Dr says, “Well turn him around make it look like he was walking in!”
Wow that’s an old one, but I may have you beat.
A man goes to see his doctor and says, “I keep having these weird dreams. One night I think I’m a wigwam, the next night a teepee. Wigwam, teepee, wigwam, teepee.”
The doctor says, “Isn’t it obvious, you’re too tense.”
A guard dog opening the front door of a brothel to the public is definitely the funniest interpretation, and it makes the most sense as a joke. It also acts as an allegory about doing one's job effectively (i.e., you can't guard the streets from inside a brothel).
Maybe it's cuz dogs can't open doors🤷
My fan theory about the meaning:
A dog walks into a bar and sees no customers and no staff, so he thinks...
"I will open the bar myself,"
Watching though this video I was thinking something was off like his interpretation is incomplete, since this talks about the opening of the bar... There's another joke that goes something like this - _But to preface: Sumarian taverns were dark, their beer was drank in communal Vases covered with cloth and with straws, and the men were shorter, and wore long garments with no underpants. _
*A dog walks into the tavern and says "I'm parched, do you have something to drink?" The Keep says "Find a straw and drink your fill." the dog replies, "I can't find one, it's dark." The Keep replies back "Just pull over a cloth, grab one and suck." in which the dog finally says "Nevermind, I found one."*
In the interpretations, no form of payment was ever described, though beer as per the vases were in some permutations of the joke. But yes it is a dick joke and a bestiality joke... all rolled into one.
I think this is the correct way to read it:
1. The dog is a loyal guard dog and does the right thing by opening the inn
2. In a more abstract sense the rough and not-to-be-messed with character sees his chance and takes it. e.g. no one is around and here is my chance to... (I think that makes it more of a proverb)
3. It could simply play on the idea of inn keepers expressing the Babylonian characteristics of a dog. (loyal and rough)
@@ThatGuyNamedRickThe video has got to be a permutation of that. It would make total sense with that context + pantomime.
@@ThatGuyNamedRick If that was it, I can laugh my arse off and then laugh at all the moralists and reactionaries going "back in my day there were morals". I mean, if the Sumerians really had a joke about a dog sucking dick at a dark tavern, then I feel like they were shitposters just like us.
@@trinegludmunksgaard4623 to me it seems like your interpretation has more steps and assumptions than mine.
In Sumerian is much funnier...
You had to be there.
Only 4100 BCE kids understand 😂😂😂‼️‼️‼️💯💯💯
Please tell me in SUMERIAN!
That was most likely the point. I bet it was a word play.
It must be told in the Emesal dialect to work.
Any Sumerians that happen to be immortal and watching this are probably bawling and howling in laughter right about now.
𒃪𒂧𒁲𒂽𒁵𒀕𒂤😂😂😂
@@cocopus You wrote "destiny is done"
WTF.
Why can you write sumerian?
Also you being an immortal sumerian implies you are Gilgamesh, that's the only immortal one, no?
Maybe at some moment, when the original language was no longer spoken, but the texts were still used as copying exercises, an inexperienced student skipped a line of text and ruined the punchline. Following generations continued reproducing the error, assuming it made sense in the old language, just like we still do today.
I like that idea
yeah, its like that Lorem Ipsum text, that now used just for text font checking
My favorite way this was described to me was that because the tavern is dark the dog cant see anything inside of it, and the casks at the time had taps that you could drink right out of, while at the same time Sumerians had loose open clothing. Combining all of this together and the height of the dog it leads to a semi funny penis joke.
A dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one.'
this is the best one ive heard yet
Third eye, pineal gland
This 'one' eye
if "dog" was a euphamism for penis and the listener was not supposed to realise this was what was meant by "dog" until the hint, " can not see", ( like a one eyed snake that does not see) and "I shall open this one" was meant "I chose this prostitute to "open", then the joke is a bad pun.
this actually makes sense@@michaellewellyn9080
The dog and bone one actually drew a laugh out of me
deserves more fame
This inspired me to start talking to my anus more often
True
I laughed severely and am now ashamed
The accent made the joke.
A fox being cunning, funny and a menace is a trope that as old as time it seems which brings me joy.
The adventures of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and others were a favourite of mine as a child. I probably read the Enid Blyton versions though it goes back to African/American oral tradition. It's no accident Disney chose a fox to be Robin Hood.
Our perception of foxes like that may descend from this period like how saying that there are 360 degrees in a circle does.
Cunning linguists
@@avaggdu1 African-American? NO, flemish medieval "Reynard the fox" already has the cunning fox, long before Columbus. [It's also a minor plot point in season1 of Bosch. ] And Aesop in classic greek has "Fox and crow" where he cunningly gets crow's cheese.
@@SenselessUsername And? I was referring to the Brer Rabbit stories that had an oral tradition before Enid Blyton wrote them down. The other "cunning fox" tropes were none of my concern.
It's always important, when dealing with translations, to think about the differences between 'horse play' vs 'pony play' or 'cabin in the woods' vs 'cottage in the forest' in our own language. So yes, context, so desperately important.
Or, in an example I saw recently about our difficulty in understanding some of the Bible, the difference between butt dial and booty call.
Not to mention how quickly words can change meaning. Compare the use of "dude" in 1958's The Big Country and 1998's The Big Lebowsi.
Those aren't examples of context, they're examples of different connotations
@@Schell3092 But when translating one might only understand those connotations because one understands the context. A translator far removed from our current time and culture reading a comment in some letter about how they got something that translated directly in their language to "contacting someone by phone involving ones posterior" could vastly change the narrative. A fragment of a story that starts with a person going to a "domicile in a heavily treed area" might be misread because they don't know how the connotation changes the context. And we are probably doing this ALL THE TIME when translating ancient writings. Especially when we add in our own prejudices (or stick with the prejudices of previous translators).
@wartgin
Butt dial and booty call 🐎🤙 🐴🤳 cold be the same in emoji and possibly in sign language too.
this reminded me of a joke about two soldiers drinking some awful moonshine heavily while they're being surrounded by the enemy. After finishing the bottle and being incredibly drunk, one says to the other:
- Do you see me?
- Nope!
- I don't see you either. We're so good at camouflage, they'll never find us!
Lol! Good one
A dog walks into a tavern and says to the bartender, "I'll have a beer".
The bartender just stares at him and says "Blimey. A talking dog."
What, no brand?
The barmaid ties a leash and collar around him and says, "Come to my bed chamber."
@@alvarogoenaga3965 He's a dog, how's he supposed to know about brands ?
@@martineldritch trying to spoil my joke? Well, I will spoil yours: dogs don't drink alcohol.
@@alvarogoenaga3965 Of course they don't drink straight alcohol. That's why you have to dilute it with malt and hops to about 5% by volume.
The dog gnawing on the bone and talking to his anus had me laughing out loud for a while. The way it was read definitely helped.
I'm still giggling days later
Me too. That one hit me and the reading had something to do with that.
That joke definitely still holds up.
@@heywhatsthatsmell The fuck? People make jokes about their pain all the time, where are you getting that from?
@@heywhatsthatsmell I respectfully disagree, I laughed off my donut pillow
A possible meaning i had and actually fits better with the older translation is that a dog is looking for a place to sleep, he walks into a bar (which would normally be busy at night but in this case is closed), and decides to sleep there (probably using a phrase someone would use to normally order a beer with but in this case referencing the building). This would explain the context for the darkness and why he would be choosing something. It functions more like a proverb that in modern day would translate more like "The dog has no sense of value for the lively accommodations of night life, but rather the accommodation itself." If i were to translate my idea while keeping it in joke form it would be along the lines of "A Dog walks into a bar and sees its dark and nobody is there, he then says "this is the perfect bar for me"". It also fits much more with the idea of dogs in proverbs as something that would rather not be or shouldn't be bothered.
“A dog walks into a bar and says ‘hmm, yes… I think I’ll have this one… it’s warm and dark, and very quiet too!’” (I’ve kinda flipped the setup and the punchline, but it’s possible that “I’ll open this one” is a stronger bait-and-switch when said in Sumerian.)
The idea that the joke is even older than the scribe who wrote it down and he didn't get the joke either is kinda hilarious. Imagine a bunch of scribes having the same conversation that we are having today trying to figure out what this means.
Imagine someone thousands of years in the future trying to understand current meta-humor. The dog joke was probably related to the Sumer way of life and it's meaning has been lost to time.
I swear, a lot of the 'absurdist' online memes I see don't even make sense to me now!! 😅
🗿🗿🗿😂🗿🗿
E
A man walks into a tavern. He said “ouch!”
Could be missing a homonym (bar in example case above, obv.)
Or a language joke. I can imagine that in Sumerian the word "dog" meant something else too not just the animal. A synonym, or a similar formed word with different, non-related meanings.
But also fascinating that the Sumarians knew the bar jokes :-)
This is more than 5000 years old tradition now :-)
The bit about the dog being a guard dog made me think it's either a joke or a proverb about turning a blind eye
Yup i think this one is very possible
yeah my take is that the prostitution were illegal activities in the taverns, and the cop was being all like "man i just cannot see anything wrong in this tavern." and then taking a whore. the whole "sexual connotation to the word open" thing can be supporting that. its like those old russian jokes about how corrupt and unfair the world is. depending on how cops were viewed in sumerian society it might be either a shock joke or a depricating joke.
Every part of the joke is intelligible except for what the "one" is. "I'll open this one." What if the "one" is the tavern itself. What if it's basically... "An alcoholic walks into a bar. The bar is dark and closed. The alcoholic says 'Welp, guess I'll open the bar myself."
Okay, the 'one' removes some vagueness. If you say "I'll open" it could be either "myself" or "something else" - if you use a "I'll open one" - it is clear you're not about to open yourself. So the joke becomes *more* intelligible due to the word 'one'.
With information later in the video that "dog" apparently refers specifically to a guard dog, along with the hints that this might not be a joke but perhaps a proverb that uses animals to illustrate questionable human behavior, I came to a similar conclusion: seems to me it's basically something like: "A guard dog at the inn starts his shift by saying 'I don't see anything out here, I guess I'll go back in and help myself to the comforts of the tavern!"
Basically, like someone said in the video, it's possibly a "joke" about a bad guard dog - or, more accurately, a proverb about what happens when you let your bored, lazy guards help themselves to whatever it is they're supposed to be guarding.
Almost all those other animal proverbs mentioned as examples in the video were in virtually the same kind of style and format!
@@pietrayday9915 A good proverb can be many things at the same time: The dog eating the bone telling his anus "This will hurt you tomorrow" carries several interpretations: Sometimes you have to do what you have to do without worrying about the consequence - is a positive interpretation, the dog distancing himself from his own anus is the humourus interpretation - and humans don't tend to consider the consequence of their action properly the negative interpretation.
@@pietrayday9915 I'm a bit baffled by the guard-dog concept put forth. The saying starts with the dog entering the bar. a guard doesn't enter, he stays outside or right at the entrance. so right off the bat I don't think it (guard-dog idea) can shed light on the rest. I think it's better to assume the dog enters the bar (and "walks into" as in bumps into is the obvious first meaning, but not the ultimate) just like any patron and for the same purposes (find a mate). he sees nothing (no potential mates), but being a (horn)dog approaches the first one(female) to "open."
;)
@@SuperMurxus Rick and Morty snake episode: "eff those guys"
present guy (dog) receives the current reward and leaves the consequences to future guy (anus). Who is really the A**hole?
My take: The dog can't see anything because his face is against the tavern door. He 'walked into it'.
Also, these jokes are so timeless. \o/
Awesome video.
That's exactly what I was thinking, kinda like the modern "2 guys walk into a bar, one says ow" joke; you expect a typical setup but the punchline comes unexpectedly from the setup's literalness.
Exactly, this is what I was going to say.
i agree totally!
Or it's funny because the interior of their bars back then were too dark without enough windows?
I know these days if someone is in a dark room some people like to make a joke about why they are doing that.
This makes sense lol
The last suggestion makes a lot of sense. It also suggest the saying is a proverb, not a joke. Taking the dog as an analogue of the watchman, it amounts to something like, “if you want privacy, don’t bring the watchman in.”
I agree. Most commenters want it to be a joke but we can't really know if it is meant to be funny or not. Also to understand either a joke or a proverb sometimes you have to know the language and the cultural background very well.
I do love the idea of an Assyrian student sitting down and copying out a (to him) 2,000 year old Sumerian text, not getting it and now 3,000 years later we are trying to interpret his homework.
I know right its great
This terrifies me that someone is going to read my old homework thousands of years from now and go "what?" And then bring it into the focus of hundreds of thousands of people
"Boomer humor." - Assyrian student, probably.
@@Dimitri88888888 Right possesses great?
@@sagiren What makes you think your homework would see that kind of preservation? Most of mine was on paper, most of that I haven't seen in years to even decades now. The stuff that was done online, would just be unimportant scripts in a sea of unimportant scripts for a few schools which are just unimportant droplets in the ocean of schools, which only make up a small amount of the entire collection of waters that make up the internet.
My guess is that it may have something to do with what might have been a common experience at Sumerian taverns. I don’t know much about how taverns were built in ancient Sumer, but I’d guess they might have been enclosed spaces with low-lighting at all hours of the day. The joke may then be pointing fun at how dogs, which I assume mag have travelled freely around town, would enter into taverns and knock open doors to the outside, letting in natural light that flashes everyone in the tavern. The joke would therefore be pointing fun at how dogs do this, under an assumption that the dog can’t see and opens to door to let more light in.
first theory that actually makes sense
That's what I thought. It's a humorous saying about the inquisitive nature of dogs.
I was thinking something along the same lines, but that maybe the dog is supposed to represent the kind of person who walks into a place and immediately starts trying to change stuff. If you've ever gone to a restaurant with a person who starts complaining that it's too cold, the music is too loud, the lights are too bright etc etc etc you know how annoying this is haha.
Best theory I've read so far. This is makes a lot of sense, since people who go to the tavern would relate to dogs opening the door.
The pictures I have seen in books show airplane hangar fronts to taverns. Very open and lighted at the front anyways. Good guess, I hope this helps.
Perhaps simply the Sumerian equivalent of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
So basically the joke is something like "A dog walks into a whore house and asks where the bitches are"
This.
Dayum, weird seeing we have the same pfp
and asks "who let the dogs out?"
It wasn't calling the guy a dog?
No lol, we don’t know what the joke is or if it even is a joke. Did you not finish the video?
The "guard dog can't see outside because he's inside" version is the funniest. To rephrase and modernize,
"A traffic cop walks into a bar. He says, I don't see anyone speeding in here, guess I should go back outside."
That's way funnier IMO than some idea of a dog wanting to see people getting it on in a brothel.
Interesting take.
What if the dog just "walked into" as in "collided with" the bar, and can't see anything because he has yet to open the door? It's hard to see much when your face is pressed up against a door.
And possibly upsetting the clientele by ruining their privacy just so he can see outside. Kind of sounds like a proverb, too.
couldnt it be about a dog blindly opening a bottle of alcohol? like "screw it, ill drink whatever!"
Could be meaning something on the line of "we have a problem, we need a solution, we can't find it. We found it, the solution was so simple a dog could resolved it." The room is dark, we can't see, a dog opens a window. The joke is we are dumber than dogs, not the bar part for me.
Perhaps the dog was fat. Extra funny then.
When he first read the joke I took it as the dog literally walks into the side of the building without opening the door lol.
I think it's more along the lines of, someone who is inquisitive, maybe a dog, is curious to know what goes on behind closed doors in an establishment that has a poor reputation. But when the dog... I mean person, goes in and closes the door behind them, it's dark, and they can't see anything. So they wonder, should I open the door that I just closed? But it's implicit that if the door is open, allowing the light to enter, you can no longer see what goes on behind closed doors. The light entering through the door, would illuminate the intimacy of the establishment, which can only be preserved in darkness.
It's a joke about quantum mechanics. The observer changes that which observed.
@@quintrankid8045 mate you got it. Absolutely this is what it's about. :p
@@quintrankid8045 Why would it have a poor reputation? The Victorian age was yet to come.
I saw an explanation that I really liked. It explained that the drink "jugs/bottles" were of a phallic shape and being in the dark, he opened the first object of the shape he could find.
yes, I came here to comment this exact thing. Note also that the drink jugs have long straws attached, and it makes it quite funny. He looked for a straw and found it wasn't connected to his beverage container but rather another patron.
The most interesting thing I found in this video is the fox already being cunning, a trickster. Would love to see someone analyze the role of the fox in old tales until now.
The fox, by making the dogs avoid a brawl deserves a negotiator's share. Everybody wins
I love that you have such a wholesome proverb, "A heart did not create hatred, speech created hatred." Following a proverb about women farting when their husbands hug them
When you don't understand a joke it is probably a pun in a foreign language.
Best hypothesis I have seen so far.
@@titanomachy2217The older and more intelligent then the more you perceive.
That’s what I think looking at some New Yorker cartoons, like Elaine in the Seinfeld episode “Cartoon”: 🤷♀️
Yes!! As someone who has learned 3 foreign languages, this happens a lot. It's especially strange when you speak the language fluently, and suddenly there's a joke or a pun, and despite knowing all the words, you just don't get it? There's some piece of context that you're missing due to not growing up there, or an obscure word that's not in your vocabulary yet, small things like that. Worse is when you don't realize it's supposed to be a joke. There are some English jokes that took me years to understand. Scientific papers no problem, but a simple pun? Utter confusion
@@elenaherwagen3529 the gunsmiked and rear ended fester
I am brazilian. So english is my second language. I genuinely laughed about the "Black and white and red all over" joke.
This reminds me of an old Spanish proverb "el perro del hortelano, que no come ni deja comer". The first half of it is the title of a play by Lope de Vega (from the 1600s). It means "the dog of the horticulturist (vegetable grower), who doesn't eat and doesn't let others eat". It is obviously about a guard dog who doesn't let people steal the vegetables that the owner is growing but won't eat the veggies either, cause it's a dog. But that's only obvious if you know what the word "hortelano" means. My parents worked in horticulture so for me it was a normal word, but apparently in everyday modern Chilean Spanish people don't know what it means anymore. I found out the hard way when I was studying Drama and, on a class about Lope de Vega, we watched a film version of that play, which is about a noble woman who has a crush on a servant. She can't marry someone that's so far below her station, but she won't let him marry another servant.
But when another student asked what did that have to do with a dog, all the lecturer could do was to repeat the saying "el perro del hortelano, que no come ni deja comer" and had no idea why the dog wasn't eating.
I explained that it's because dogs don't normally eat vegetables and this dog was watching it's owners vegetable field against thieves. Everyone seemed annoyed that I knew what the saying meant, especially the lecturer. 😢
That's a neat saying. Nicely captures that sort of romantic protectiveness.
The student demands an explanation and that no one acknowledge his ignorance
The Spanish equivalent of a dog in the manger.
Some people like the air of mystery. They prefer to think that some things just are because that is the way they are (as is the case with a lot of things). Providing a rational explanation takes away the romanticism of the mystery and this often upsets people.
It amazes me that people do not know what 'hortelano' means in a spanish language country. I am dutch and even I know, or understand immediately what 'hortelano' means. It is derived from latin 'hortus' -> hortelano-> the person who has/tends for the hortus.
I am not a language expert but the commonly used 'jardinero' is probably one of the few words in Spanish (and in French and Italian for that matter) taht are of germanic origin and not roman. Guess we have to thank the visigoths and vandals for that 🙂😀
Here's my interpretation :
A dog walks into a bar;
"It's really dark in here." He said.
"No one will notice me open this beer, then."
that's what I thought too
open the beer jar
Nice one.
Or maybe it is a joke about the state of a tavern - it is so dark inside so even the dog dislikes it.
Oh fuck that actually makes perfect sense if someone where to pour themselves a drink while stating the punchline. Hence making them "the dog"
Beer was the first thing I thought too, they were obsessed with beer. In their version of the flood myth a goddess was upset only because with no humans left nobody was going to make beer offerings to the gods.
My immediate thought was that the earliest cities didn't have many streets - buildings were just attached to one another or piled on top of one another, so many of them didn't have windows. If the bar was one such, it would have been dark inside except during opening hours, when presumably either the door was left open or lamps were lit - and suddenly the joke starts to make some kind of sense!
Appreciate the many illustrations of people drinking beer out of a shared vessel with long straws. It's one of the those little things that makes Sumeria really vivid in my imagination.
It's kind of funny since another history RUclipsr I watch did a video about an unrelated piece of Sumerian writing and used different illustrations of people drinking beer out of a shared vessel with long straws. We really do live in a Sumerian people drinking beer out of a shared vessel with long straws golden age.
Another couple of possibilities:
1. Since the tablets were copied by students, it's possible that this one is simply an error.
2. It's possible that this is a fragment, and there was more after it that fleshes it out.
yeah, I figured the actual punchline has been lost to time
the punchline being lost to time is actually the case with the tale of the ox-drivers of Adab.
Basically, it's the equivalent of
Student 1: **copies down dog joke** Hey come here, look at this meme I found.
Student 2: **snickers** Good luck, future historians.
The dog chewing on a bone proverb makes me think about the Taco Bell jokes and memes of today.
I had the same thought and now have an urge to learn cuneiform just so I can scrawl this proverb on their stalls.
When I was a kid, I saw a prop-gimmick comedian performing some stunt or another involving juggling ping-pong-balls while performing magic tricks to make them disappear, and telling jokes... he started to put one of the ping-pong balls in his mouth, stopped, looked at the audience, said "kids, don't try this at home! You don't want to swallow one of these. It'll hurt. TWICE!"
Imagine how people of the far future will interpret the widely written "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
🤔...maybe until one smart researcher realises it uses all the alphabet letters of the then most commonly used language. From there it's not a big leap to wondering if it was a test piece for some kind of written language transmission equipment - in much the same way that analog TV test cards and short wave radio station interval "jingles" were also used during the same technological era.
@@hectorpascal you assume alot of information survives, with how apocalyptic earth is becoming with climate change its entirely possible if humanity exists another 6000 years the English alphabet and the English languages inconsistent way of spelling and pronouncing will give them a utterly alien interpretation of what English is. Say if all they had was a ancient keyboard the English language would look extremely bizarre. Would the sheer amount of writing English has make it probably easier to decipher then bronze age languages, hopefully but 6000 years is 6000 years.
@@ultra-papasmurf Naturally my comment is entirely predicated upon the survival of sufficient written examples of the English language. Who knows what may remain after millennia have passed - but the sheer amount of data we now produce and store, may well increase the likelihood of much more surviving than the ancients left for us. Considering that Sumerian was an extinct language isolate with an unknown writing system, it is quite remarkable how much scholars have already recovered over the last 200 years.
They will say the fox represents individuality while the dog represents dependence and following social norms.
Right?!
Just wanted to say that considering my diog follows my mom everywhere to the extent that she waits for her outside the bathroom door, I wouldn't be surprised if this was someone joking about how their dog would try to follow them into brothels lmfao
Just the fact that we can still access and read a joke from that long ago (even if we can't really "get" the humour) is really so impressive. Imagine any of today's digital memes surviving and remaining legible several thousand years from now... Clay tablets may be primitive info tech, but they've certainly stood the test of time!
It's also the repetition of the tradition. Junior scribes doing the hard work of learning their trade and indirectly preserving a thousands of years old joke as they practice writing Sumerian script.
At the end, it is indeed like that old version of the Wikipedia article said: "The humor of it is probably related to the Sumer way of life and has been lost, but the words remain". And I think it is beautiful
the dog goes into the tavern. it is dark, and he cannot see. he turns around to open the door from which he came in, so he can go back outside and see again.
Personally I’m just impressed they had “dude walks into a bar” jokes back then. Truly universal
😂 I think you may not understand how this works. It's not so much that it's universal as it is that these jokes have been around for so long and they may have been the ones to invent them.
Not exactly - they had to invent beer and then a bar to drink it at first…
We're only human after all
Sumerians hittin us with "no soap radio" from across the millennia.
This.
I think the joke involves the dog, who is supposed to be doing his duty, disingenuously saying that he needs to look into the room to maximize security, even though he really just wants to see what’s going on.
Having been a bartender for years...a dog walking into a bar or a brothel makes prefect sense to me.
I heard it as similar to the 'joke' about a man who falls into a pit, gets out, comes back with a ladder, and climbs out. So in this case the dog walks into the tavern and only then opens the door because he couldn't see anything. Who knows what kind of puns and cultural trends we are missing.
Underrated comment! This has been bothering me since I first heard the joke, and I like this theory!
As pointed out, it might not be a joke, but an actual proverb and advice. Dog walks into a bar (presumably to guard his master). Determines he can't guard because he can't see outside, so opens the door, revealing his masters actions to everyone. Sometimes you don't want as diligent service.
Maybe he walks into a tavern the way a person might walk into a lampost on a dark night. Which would account for why he couldn't see anything. But it does rely on "walking into" having the same double meaning in Sumerian as in English, which seems desperately improbable.
@@Ruinwyn Yes, this kind of thing
esh dam, @~9m
a ho ho ho house
Hey! First time on the channel and was pleasantly surprised to hear the delectable dulcet tones of @StefanMilo suddenly in my speakers! LOVE his channel! Will have to check out more of your channel now for sure!
I'm a Sumerologist and as soon as I saw this was about an obscure proverb thats difficult to understand my immediate thought was "Alster probably found a good solution to it" and 11 minutes later theres the article by Alster lol and btw the conclusion "theres a few solid possibilities but we dont really know" is omnipresent in the field. Theres just so many factors that can obscure these texts.
What worries me most is the author's use/misuse of the term "archaeologist". Would any of the learned sources he quotes describe themselves as archaeologists? Philologists, sumerologists, historians perhaps. Archaeologists dig things out of the ground.
@@GordonDonaldson-v1c I always assumed the big language guys had at least some dig experience. Off the top of my head I recall some pictures of Jakobsen on a dig site. Though I suppose that wouldnt always be the case. Many would be handling artefacts which could possibly qualify them?
Id say at least its an understandable conflation, because I've never met a Middle Eastern archaeologist who wasnt well school in the language side of things. I remember one time I was on site and someone was helping the head archaeologist leading the dig with something and they had to wait a bit of time for something so the guy asked him "What do you want me to do in the mean time?" He replied "Sit on that rock and conjugate Akkadian verbs." lol
@@GordonDonaldson-v1c Archaeologists study past cultures by examining the material remnants left behind. It's the "studying past cultures" part that is important. So archaeologists don't have to dig, and digging stuff up isn't enough to make someone an archaeologist. The author used the term correctly.
I like the guard dog interpretation. It's almost self-contained, and it also functions as a proverb: "once you let the guard inside, you invite also the strangers"
EXACTLY! I also thought that the watchdog interpretation also revealed a self-contained proverb - I compared it to letting a fox guard a hen-house or letting inmates run an asylum, but your proverb works even better.
"I think I'll open this one" is a kind of a mysterious "punch-line" for a joke, but if I assume that the watch-dog has decided that there's nothing to watch for and feels lazy and greedy and dog-like, he's going to open up the tavern and help himself to everything he's supposed to be guarding.
A couple more proverbs that loosely fits the theme: "When the cat's away, the mice will play!", and "who watches the watchdog?"
Your watchdog is running amok in your tavern.... "It's like a doctor who gets cancer, Lord hear my prayer - It's like a fire at the firehouse and it's not fair!" - Ludichrist
Wow. not sure its right, but the best interpretation I have found.
@@pietrayday9915 Yes, I agree. It makes a lot more sense if you read the dog's line in the voice of Dug from "Up".
If you take the word dog as a slang for a guard/cop and the bar as a brothel establishment ( which most of the so called "bars" were back in the era. They were not actually bars but inns bars and brothels) the joke makes sense.
A guard/cop walks into an inn/bar/brothel. He doesn't see anything sexual happen there and then he says. OK ... I'll open it. ( I'll run the brothel).
It's about gaining consciousness and how this is a double edged sword when we coopt another.
Very subtle and very clever.
I am a dog, and found this Sumerian joke very funny.
How many arfs out of 10 would you give it ?
Two paws up!
LOL!
you're a dog ?? that's ruff. ruff ruff ruff
Yo, Dog. ✌️
Proud to feature in a video alongside so many other great creators 😎
a dog walks into a brothel and says "i'm blind as a bat, i'll just take this one"
Anybody else 100% on board for "Druids 3: Even Longer, Somehow"?
Może importantly uncut
I never heared this joke. But there was another sumerian joke making the rounds a few years ago. I can't quite remember the wording, but it was something about the lack of(?) sexual abilities of auxiliaries. But after a couple of people commented how incomprehensible the joke was, someone who served in the army commented: "Hey, we pretty much make the same joke about the guys in the artillery."
Heh. Grunt humor is eternal.
@@ironhead2008 Exactly, thx. 👍
Here's one for future archaeologists to lose their sleep over:
"I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hara-Kiri Rock. I need scissors! 61!"
Imagine if in 5000 years people are trying to understand what a yo momma joke is and just not getting it
This English joke translates as, "your mother is so large, when she sits in the house, she really sits in the house." The ancient sense of humor really is inscrutable.
Your mom jokes are very old too
Yes, but yo momma jokes were *_never_* funny, except among goofs that have no respect for momma. The Sumerian dog-joke might have been funny once.
@@rursus8354 yo mama so snobbish she gave birth to a kid with no sense of humor
hell, the "check, please!" joke is only a few decades old and I doubt anyone below 30 remembers where it came from or what it even means...
Thank you so much for having proper captions! Even if I don't usually need them, it means a lot whenever I see proper captions. Some netflix shows don't even have accurate captions, it's awful
I have three theories on the meaning:
1) The dog walks into a bar/brothel, and says "nothing to see here..." as he goes about his business either opening a jug of alcohol or possibly opening a woman's legs or something of the sort...
2) The dog walks into a bar and says "I don't see anyone watching me" and opens a drink on the sly maybe?
3) Maybe the dog walks into a bar/brothel originally being uptight and "closed off" and then "opens his eyes" to the world of fun and sin inside. As if to say "maybe I'll just take a peek".
I think with translations, there is a lot to read in between the lines and many of these interpreters seem to be reading it too literally instead of thinking that the words could be slang or idiomatic for the time.
I think it probably is a slang for "opening jug of beer" and "opening a window/door", and is related to somehow seeing better. Kinda like people in 4000AD might get confused by us calling all the interesting stuff "cold", if they lack context for use of cool.
My guess is there's a dual meaning to one of the words that has been lost to the ages. One possibility is that the "bar" could also refer to the drinks inside it. With the dog being a guard, the interpretation would be something like "A cop walks into a bar (looking for criminals). He says "I don't see any in here. Let's check this one (he opens a bottle)." Essentially, the cop is drinking on the job.
Just a guess though. I'm probably miles off, and the original meaning will probably never be understood.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether that explanation is possible or not, but it suddenly make a lot of sense the way you explain it with very simple and believable context.
Even if it's not the perfect interpretation it's a pretty funny joke all on its own! It definitely sounds like an interpretation that would have been funny then too
I like your explanation!
i like this explanation, and to make it more similar to the joke in the video it could go "a pig (cop) walks into a bar, but he doesn't see anything (illegal) so he opens a cold one" i feel like these expressions are relatively similar to the original joke since you'd only get it if you know that some people call cops pigs and beer cold ones, which wouldn't be self explanatory in like five thousand years
The actors reading the quotes are really enthusiastic😂
Could it be that the dog enters the brothel expecting to see people openly enjoying sex the way that dogs do but seeing nothing of the kind considers opening a door to find out if humans require privacy?
Interesting theory
That makes sense, I feel like we lost a lot of our relative closeness and understanding of nature.
I am not sure whether people in ancient times had required privacy that much. I have read somewhere that up until black plague and then onset of puritanism, and advent of syphilis, society was more open about nudity and sexual behaviour than e.g. society in 19th century or than society today.
It could be a pun. A joke built upon homonyms perhaps? Some kind of double entendre based on the way certain words sound.
That's what I assumed the answer would be. Do they not mention that in this video? (just started)
I mean, the earlier form of a pun and also comes from Mesopotamia, based on the way "grains" and "destruction" used to be written...
I'm probably wrong, I'm not an historian, but I was a bartender and something like this actually happened to me.
A dog (a low person) walks a bar and finds no one there and says "should I open it" (open the business for trade that day).
The owner of a small restaurant I worked for was going through some personal problems and the business was in chaos. One day after my weekend off, I went in to the bar and found someone else behind the bar, he had set up the tables and set up and stocked the bar ready for business. The owner had let the cook in earlier and then left. I was told that this was no longer my shift and I'd have to take it up with the owner who I couldn't find till well into the evening shift. So this guy, who apparently had knowledge of this neighborhood restaurant and knew that it was chaotic at the time took advantage to not only steal my tips and wage for the day, but all the sales he made and the contents of the day till. This isn't that uncommon in badly run businesses, st least not in this particular city in the early 90's, people took advantage of neighborhood businesses frequently to line their pockets for a day...or longer if there was an absentee owner.
Like I said, I'm probably wrong, but it was the first thing I thought of when hearing this joke.
😆same here
@liverpooluk
👑 establishment
have for closed/& or shutdown most
of our pub & taverns 🙄 and turned them in too housing for immigrants,
who are mostly
getting here
*illegally*
🤨
Who says crime doesn't pay!!!?
I wasn’t ready for the dog speaking to it’s rear opening so I laughed out loud at a 3000 year old joke. This is why history is so great, it’s us, but from long ago.
Is your rear not a good listener?
The graffiti of Herculaneum and Pompeii are proof of that.
Yes me too. A great joke that lasted so long and was surprising.
I've seen some article about an ancient Roman wall graffiti with dicks carved into it.Its hillarious how people found the same basic things funny back in those days.
Or maybe not even funny,but thinking about all the dick graffiti we have today in random walls...Thousands of years and we do the same thing
Just goes to show human beings have not really changed all that much through the ages. This is why Greek tragedies from 2500 or more years still resonate with us.
I like the idea that it's the outside door that the dog's going to open, letting passers-by see things/acts that the participants inside don't want those outside to see. The joke then would be the dog pretending it's not seeing anything and exposing the punters to view.
Or as the scholar said, that the dog's desire to be an efficient guard makes him a terrible or redundant guard. Basic irony, slice of life, sexual innuendo, tint of wisdom... that's a routine right there.
From my experience the seediest bars are the hardest to see inside, implying that whatever goes inside is best left unseen from prying eyes. A dog that is either a man of passions (drunk,lustful) or a guard might be interested in opening the door to see what's happening. Perhaps the joke is that the dog is both.
If you read it as the dog being a servant/slave then you could interpret it as the servant entering the tavern and upon finding it empty, helps himself to some beer. A "who watches the watchmen" sort of thing.
This makes a lot of sense
The best one for me was one I read in a Jean Bottero book, which went like so: "The more cows you own, the more crap you have"... mo money, mo problems 😂
Among my friends, I am somewhat notorious for messing up jokes. I once butchered a joke that several of my other friends knew well. They later reported that the person I told the joke to repeated my butchered version which they found hilarious - funnier than the actual joke itself. The idea that someone messed it up appeals to me.
It could be an abstract joke. Example (Polish): "Było dwóch braci, jeden był w trampkach a drugi w szkole". The proper translation to English looses the zing: "There were two brothers, one wore sneakers, the other was in school". The thing which makes it work in Polish is the word "w" (English:"in") which you can use to describe what a person wears but also wherein the person is. Kinda if you could say: "One was in sneakers, the other in the school".
Your second translation is exactly how you'd say it in English, and there are a few similar jokes.
@@laurenceperkins7468 "there are a few similar jokes."
That's cool! I would appreciate examples and/or links .. Please!
@@BogdanBaudis Hmmm... So like:
The necktie said to the hat: "You go on ahead, I'll just hang around."
Where "ahead" in English is cognate with "a head".
You'll find many, many more like it in the pun section.
@@laurenceperkins7468 Yeah, you maybe correct about puns, to think about it: most "abstract jokes" work on puns ...
Interpretations:
"A schlub walks into a bar and says 'maybe THIS beer will CURE my blindness'. "
"A guard walks inside and says 'It's too dark outside, I'll just do my job in here' "
"A friendly idiot walks into a private room with his eyes closed, wondering why he can't see"
"OWO WHATS THIS!?!"
if "dog" was a euphamism for penis and the listener was not supposed to realise this was what was meant by "dog" until the hint, " can not see", ( like a one eyed snake that does not see) and "I shall open this one" was meant "I chose this prostitute to "open", then the joke is a bad pun.
yeah that's exactly what it means
I subscribed and I want more jokes from ancient societies
I got a joke.
An sumerian walks into a pharmacy , he ask ,”do you have any cream for this butt rash i just got?” the phatsmcist replies ,” we’re out of cream, but i know where you can go to get some “ the man ask,”where?” the pharmacist says,” ASSYRIA.”
(insert drum rim shot)
In a couple thousand years, our ancestors will be equally puzzled once they try to find the humor in Garfield strips.
wait until they find the messed up ones where people like. randomly generate text or whatever. some of those are only funny because the context is that it is a Garfield strip
Some of us are puzzled by this already
I wonder if they'd find Lasagna Cat more or less easy to understand?
@@Colddirector I really miss Lasagna Cat. Those videos are true masterpieces.
@@the_hiroman I think there’s a certain beauty to a series deciding they’ve made their point and stopping strong.
Especially in a world utterly infested by soulless sequels, remakes and reboots
As an ex-anthropologist, I was assuming that the familiar interpretation must be based on knowledge that dogs were used to represent licentiousness in Sumerian folklore. That's how you would decode something like this, by reference to the mythological value of the animal. On hearing the last chap's claim that dogs were used to represent guardianship and watchfulness, it seemed that the sex joke fell apart. Also, none of the other sayings is a joke. Some have a mild wryness to them, but they are mostly expositions on the characteristics to which they allude. In that sense, it seems to me unnecessary to look for humour. It's a mini folk tale that tells us about dogs - they are ever watchful, ever on guard. Having walked into a dark room, he wants to open a door so he can still see what's going on back at the flock. The little moral for us humans is "never drop your guard, even when you're having fun". Act like a dog, he's always on the lookout. If it were shown that there were some other animal that Sumerians used to discuss sex, then certainly that interpretation for the dog phrase would lapse.
This made me think of an anti drink driving ad that was popular here in Aotearoa New Zealand a decade or so back. In the ad, one character is thinking about his responsibility towards his friend who wants to drive but, is probably too drunk. He is trying to think of ways to stop his friend but, doesn't want to look stupid in front of a girl he likes and, at the same time is also running through scenarios of what will happen if he doesn’t stop his friend and his friend dies. One of the scenarios has the first character walking along the road being followed by his - now ghost - friend who is eating hot chips and offering them to the first character who, answers irritatedly, "you know l can't grab your ghost chips!". It doesn’t sound like it but, the ad was clever and funny and parts of it were often quoted. "You know l can't grab your ghost chips!", became a bit of a meme and, l can imagine a scenario where many years from now, someone will discover this scrawled on a fragment of wall - realise it was meant to be funny and have absolutely no idea why. BTW. It was so popular, that even a decade later, if you google "ghost chips", the ad comes up. 😊
Beer was also stored in jars, so it could mean he’s going into the bar to open a jar of beer, implying he’s going to drink an entire jar of beer. This would be the equivalent today of drinking a whole keg of beer. Similar to the saying, I am going to crack one open. There could also be the implication that the dog is already in the bar, and is unaware of it because, they are blind drunk. I really think this joke was told with several different meanings (double entendres) intended in it’s day to cater to the audience. Which was and is often done today. Look at the Brother’s Grimm fairy tails. We tell a greatly censored version to our children today, because the original version are far too violent to tell our children today. I also feel this joke was so common, that everyone (at the time), would know what it means immediately with no explanation. So much so, that many people would cringe at hearing it.
In terms of sheer grossness and brutality, Grimm's fairy tales pale in comparison to the "educational" "child-appropriate" fare of their day, like Struwelpeter.
Crazy thought; Is it possible that this is the ancient equivelent to "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"? Remember that old typing exercise that had you using every key on the keyboard so you'd get used to finding them without looking? Since these tablets were transcribed by students, could it be that the statements contained lettering and combinations for practice without concerning themselves with having to make any particular point? Simply speed exercises to improve accuracy and reduce production time? Anyway, just a thought.
Great video, interesting topic. Now that I've discovered your channel, be sure to check out your other videos.
A man walks into a history RUclips channel with squinted eyes and says, "Shall I click on that?"
Everyone's talking about 5.77, but what about 6.16? "A dog walked into a tavern and said: that stool is broken. I'll unscrew this one."