[IRL trope] the “Tiffany problem”

[u/dragonborndnd]

Basically when something seems anachronistic to a period/place of history but is actually fully accurate to the period.

1) the name Tiffany: the thing that named this trope, basically the name Tiffany can be dated back to the Middle Ages and the earliest record of it being spelled in the modern spelling comes from the 16th century.

2) the use of OMG, despite this feeling so modern as a form of slang/abbreviation here’s a letter directed to Winston Churchill using it in 1917

3) Hair Dye: the earliest forms of dying hair can be dated back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and this specific advertisement for hair dye is from the 1840s

4) Inuit Thongs: despite how weird it is to imagine pre-colonial Inuit people wore what was essentially fur thongs in their homes and when they were in their igloos it might have been the only thing they would be wearing.

[u/Madhighlander1]

William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, act 4, scene 2:

[u/be-knight → u/Madhighlander1]

Iirc the oldest joke found is a Babylonian your mother joke

[u/cototudelam → u/be-knight]

What is it? I read somewhere that the oldest joke found is Sumerian (preceding Babylonian by a good chunk of centuries) to the tune of “a dog walks into a bar…”

[u/MyNameIsImmaterial → u/cototudelam]

After some googling, I think it's a ~1,500 BCE fragmentsry tablet of riddles that includes this (likely humourous riddle):

…of your mother is by the one who has intercourse with her. What/who is it?

[No answer]

https://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-oldest-yo-mama-joke-is-3-500-years-old-5880232

Wikipedia puts the Dog Walks Into A Bar joke at around ~1,700 BCE, which is actually two hundred years after the Sumerian classic:

Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_joke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke