WBUR

Best of Summer: What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows.

This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. Listen to part two here. This episode originally aired on August 5, 2022. In the late 1800s, archeologists in Iraq ...

What the Indus script, ‘discovered’ a hundred years ago, reveals about the ancient civilisation

The Indus script has been called, with irony, the most deciphered script in the world. The first claim to a decipherment, based on the Sumerian language, was published as early as 1925. More than a ...
insider.si.edu

The invention of cuneiform writing in Sumer Jean-Jacques Glassner ; translated and edited by Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van de Mieroop

1. The Sumerian Account of the Invention of Writing -- 2. Time and Place of the Invention -- 3. Received Ideas: The Pictographic Origins of Cuneiform Writing -- 4. Received Ideas: The Origin of ...
insider.si.edu

The Sumerians their history, culture, and character Samuel Noah Kramer

Archeology and decipherment -- History : heroes, kings, and ensi's -- Society : the Sumerian city -- Religion : theology, rite, and myth -- Literature : the Sumerian ...
WBUR

What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows.

This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. The story appears in podcast feeds under the title, "Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not." Listen to part two here.