We are told his mentality was similar to that of a bright little contemporary boy of five. This theory would give him the power of laughter at simple things and it seems only fair to assume that he possessed it.
In the beginnings of humanity there was very close connection between man and the animals. Not only did man kill and eat the other animals, but he cultivated and bred them, he watched them and studied their habits.
It is, therefore, not surprising that man’s earliest efforts at drawing should represent animals.
The earliest known drawings, those of the Palæolithic men show the bison, horse, ibex, cave bear and reindeer. The drawing at first was primitive, but later it became astonishingly clever and life-like.
Also, among these primitive peoples, there was some attempt at sculpture, in the way of little stone or ivory statuettes. These incline to caricature, and are probably the first dawning of that tendency of the human brain.
Yet the accounts of these earliest men show little that can be definitely styled humorous, and while we cannot doubt they possessed a sense of mirth, they have left us scant traces of it, or else the solemn archæologists have overlooked such.
The latter may be the case, for a scholar with a sense of humor, Thomas Wright, declares as follows:
“A tendency to burlesque and caricature appears, indeed, to be a feeling deeply implanted in human nature, and it is one of the earliest talents displayed by people in a rude state of society. An appreciation of, and sensitiveness to, ridicule, and a love of that which is humorous, are found even among savages, and enter largely into their relations with their fellow men. When, before people cultivated either literature or art, the chieftain sat in his rude hall surrounded by his warriors, they amused themselves by turning their enemies and opponents into mockery, by laughing at their weaknesses, joking on their defects, whether physical or mental, and giving them nicknames in accordance therewith,—in fact, caricaturing them in words, or by telling stories which were calculated to excite laughter. When the agricultural slaves (for the tillers of the land were then slaves) were indulged with a day of relief from their labours, they spent it in unrestrained mirth. And when these same people began to erect permanent buildings, and to ornament them, the favourite subjects of their ornamentation were such as presented ludicrous ideas. The warrior, too, who caricatured his enemy in his speeches over the festive board, soon sought to give a more permanent form to his ridicule, which he endeavoured to do by rude delineations on the bare rock, or on any other convenient surface which presented itself to his hand. Thus originated caricature and the grotesque in art. In fact, art itself, in its earliest forms, is caricature; for it is only by that exaggeration of features which belongs to caricature, that unskilful draughtsmen could make themselves understood.”
An early development of humor was seen in the recognition of the fool or buffoon.
It is not impossible that this arose because of the discovery or invention of intoxicating drinks.