LONDON (Reuters Life!) - The world's oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and suggests that toilet humor was as popular with the ancients as it is today.

 It is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq and goes: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

On a nearby tablet, a heckler's response was recorded as: "The fart of that young woman smelled like a rose compared to the stench of your jokes."