Was tickling babies the first form of comedy?
Did all comedy arise from tickling games played with babies? Aaron Schuster draws attention to this theory in a long and surprisingly serious essay on the philosophy of tickling. Psychologist and adult laughter expert Robert Provine has speculated that the anticipation of a tickle might have been the first ever 'joke':
Linking tickling not only with humorous laughter but also with the prehistoric birth of comedy, Provine writes: “I forge recklessly into the paleohumorology fray, proposing my candidate for the most ancient joke—the feigned tickle. (Real tickling is disqualified because of its reflexive nature.) The ‘I’m going to get you’ game of the threatened tickle is practiced by human beings worldwide and is the only joke that can be told equally well to a baby human and a chimpanzee. Both babies and chimps ‘get’ this joke and laugh exuberantly.”
[Novelist and polymath] Arthur Koestler anticipated this hypothesis in his wide-ranging study The Act of Creation:CABINET // A Philosophy of Tickling
It's an interesting theory and, of course, one that we will never be able to prove or disprove. But I, for one, love the idea that the giggles of ancient protohuman babies provoked the invention of comedy. Thanks, ancient babies!
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