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The history of flatulence is rife with debate. Recent scholarly works have become quite heated over the warm wind, as evidenced by T. Hubert Longely's infamous invocation regarding what may be Chaucer's famous tale: "Farts are not funny, and Nicholas' humour was justly punished by Chaucer, that most upright and noble of aristocrats" (Longely, 1957).
Longely was, of course, laughed out of the academy for his overly pompous attitude, which may have served him well merely a generation before. He passed on in obscurity in 1988, having spent the last twenty years of his academic career teaching current-traditional rhetoric.
Farts are funny, and even academics know it today.
One doesn't need to reinterpret Chaucer to come to this conclusion.
But scholarly debate persists over when in the course of human history farts became funny.
Was the first Neanderthal to fart immediately ridiculed by his fellow Neanderthals?
Aristotle's writings on flatulence have been the subject of much debate. It is impossible to tell whether he himself felt that farts were funny, as his references are entirely within his natural writings (Physics; A Private Looking-Glass for the Female Sex). He probably did not think farts were very funny.
The later Romans, however, clearly enjoyed a good fart joke, as evidenced by orator Cicero's famous Farticus, possibly the world's first limerick. Indeed, Cicero's Heuristics starts with "Open with a fart joke, use Farticus if you don't have another." While the Romans have many such examples, the Greeks left no standing evidence of any pleasure from wind-breaking.
There once was a man named Farticus
Who bravely fought beside Spartacus.
He let one rip,
His gladius slipped,
And we smelled no more of this Farticus.
No one knows, as the evidence is inconclusive. But recent findings can help us trace the history of farts way before Chaucer, or the Arabian Nights, or even Aristotle.
Henry Hampton, an Egyptologist at the University of Gloucester recently discovered some rare hieroglyphics of what may indeed be the first fart joke ever written. The Hampton Hieroglyphs depict the Egyptian goddess Fartiris, smiling as she farts in the face of the pharaoh. 
While the carbon dating has not confirmed the age of the piece, it appears to be between 4,000 and 4,500 years old. The pharaoh bears a striking resemblance to the 2,000 BCE pharaoh Arkensmelhur. Most importantly, the piece is clearly meant to be humorous, as evidenced by the goddess' smile.
Even more intriguing, if puzzling, is Richard Backfront's discovery of Sumerian Cuneiform. The piece, uncovered at Hamadsen-al-Rameh, depicts a nose above what appears to be fumes emanating from what is unmistakably the rear end of a Sumerian. Backfront, a Yale paleontologist, is best known for his discovery of the first known article of lingerie, a Hopi loincloth fashioned into a garter belt he discovered at his sister's wedding. The piece has been estimated to be 40,000 years old.
Backfront's cuneiform is an important discovery in the history of farts, but it remains unclear whether it is the world's first fart joke. The question arises because there is no smirk, there is no laughter, no punch-line. Historians love a punchline.
Perhaps the most exciting find in the emerging field of Fartology has been the Lumier Ridge in France. Nestled in a cave in Brittany, Emil Lumier and his team found a cave that rivals the famed Lascaux for what may indeed be the first etchings of pre-modern man. And they depict what may be a fart joke.
Among over eighty different images carved into the cave walls at Lumier Ridge are four that clearly represent a farting scene. A small figure with a bow and arrow is attacked by a large animal, possibly a hemotroph or a mucca dragon, which has already been pierced twice by arrows. The figure lets out an enormous fart and the animal falls, at which point the figure shoots a third arrow into the fallen creature. The final image shows the individual with arms raised in triumph and the crude letters, likely the hunter's name, "ZOG" beneath him.
This exciting finding has yet to be dated, but it is estimated to be at least 60,000 years old. Such an artifact begs the question: was this meant to be a joke?
Perhaps it was a serious message, that large animals could be stunned by humanoid farts. Perhaps it was meant as an entertainment, the way we watch movies today. Perhaps Zog's farts were so bad that his friends made fun of him with the image.
We may never know, but we are sure to learn more as the emerging field of Fartology expands.
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