
In Search of Ancient Comedians
by Erich von Daniken  (a.k.a. Robert Hankins)

On an island in the South Pacific known as Easter Island, the
remnants of the first civilization are the giant gods carved in rock
and stone.  Strolling among these huge pagan objects, one can only
think of a race long dead and so totally separated from us by time,
it is though they never existed.  But if these so-called "giant god
formations" are viewed from the air, they take on a new meaning.  One
of the gods, it appears, has slipped on a banana peel, and the other
gods seem to be laughing at him.  Shortly before his death, comedian
Stan Laurel was interviewed by Richard Perkins.  When asked about the
famous "banana routine" of Laurel and Hardy which inspired director
David Lean and countless others, Laurel said he had once seen it
happen to a milkman in York, then nervously tried to change the
subject.  When Perkins pressured him about it, Laurel said, "I can
neither deny nor confirm the routine's origin as being that of the
rock formations on Easter Island, but I understand it is a very old
joke."  He needn't have said more, the answer was crystal clear.
What is not clear is how the pagans of Easter Island could have
conceived of such a sophisticated "bit" during their time.  Could it
be they were given such knowledge by ancient visitors from the
heavens, who not only possessed physical knowledge of space travel
but also a keen sense of humor?

In the year 312, shortly before their victory at the Battle of
Milvian Bridge, Constantine The Great's troops were camping one
night.  Late into the evening a stranger approached and began to tell
the men a fantastic tale about a nomadic seller of wares who was
without lodging.  The nomad found refuge with a local peasant who
told him, "We've no guest room, so you can sleep in my daughter's bed
--- but be warned, you must resist her charms lest you will surely
die."  When the morning came, the nomad informed the peasant that he
gave in to temptation and had his way with the girl.  As a penance,
he granted the peasant his belongings, including all of his wares and
both of his oxen.  When the nomad was gone, the daughter emerged from
her room.  "How'd we do this time?" she asked.  The peasant replied,
"Well, if we sell only the oxen, I figure we won't need jobs for the
next fifteen years!"  Constantine's army went into an uproar, and
there was much rejoicing and mirth.  They invited the stranger to
partake of food and drink with them, and he continued his fabulous
stories, such as the fable about the fat man who sat "around the
house."  Constantine was so impressed that he asked the stranger to
join them and become their master story-teller.  "I cannot," he
replied.  "My work here is done.  Now I must travel due west to see a
man about a goat."  And with that he vanished into the night.

Even the skeptical have to give a nod to the cave drawings at
Altamira, Spain.  There on the underground walls, our Cro-Magnon
ancestors rendered images of herds of bison, mammoths, and evidence
of early practical jokes.  In one famous scene, one man is bending to
sit in a chair when it is pulled out from under him by a second man.
The first man then retaliates by throwing a pie at the second man,
but the second man ducks and the pie hits a third man, not the
intended victim.  Another scene shows a man tying a sleeping man's 
shoe laces together.  When matches came along the shoe lace bit was
dropped entirely in favor of the more popular "hot-foot".  Of course,
we can only interpret these drawings, which are at best, primitive
stick figures.  One controversial scene in the Lascaux cave in France
shows two men who are apparently shaking hands.  We think that either
the man on the right is asking the man on the left to "pull his
finger", or that the man on the left is the victim of one of the
first crudely built "joy-buzzers" of the time: a primitive rubber
band with a sharp thorn tied around it, easily concealed in a
prankster's palm.  Sometimes these ancient joy buzzers could be
lethal when the stinger of an asp was used in place of an ordinary
thorn.  This may be how Cleopatra died.   

Wiltshire, England is the home of Stonehenge, which scientists have
traced back to 1845 B.C.  It took hundreds of workers to arrange
these huge stones which can barely be lifted by the most modern
equipment --- all to create what many believe to be a giant celestial
calendar.  Considering all of its splendor it is still rather
primitive: if you needed to remember an important dinner party or
mark your grandmother's birthday, you couldn't just check it off or
draw a circle around the number like we can on today's calendars.  In
1948 Henry Childs compiled all available information on Stonehenge,
then fed it into the giant LUMMOX computer in Riverside, Iowa.  After
deciphering the statistics for eighty three hours and seventeen
minutes, the machine spit out a single card with holes punched in it.
It read "Take my spouse, I implore you!" followed by a rim-shot.
                                                                {RAH}
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Robert Hankins lives in Lake Charles, LA.  No other information about
him is available, as he's in the Federal Witless Protection Program.

