Mastodons And Banana Peels

I got to thinking about cavemen the other day. And I don't mean Otzi the iceman, I mean real cavemen from like 30,000 years ago, before cities, before science, probably even before writing. They lived hard lives, even a minor cut could get infected and lead to death, let alone anything as serious as getting mauled by a sabretoothed tiger or giving birth. But they soldiered on, invented agriculture and civilization and didn't have time for things like depression or road rage, even though they probably invented roads.
   But what did they find funny?
   There are certain universal tropes in humor - slipping a banana peel, for instance, or anything the Stooges do - but some things just aren't funny across cultures. Japanese don't think American humor is funny because it mocks people, while what the French find funny wouldn't be amusing in a New Yorker cartoon. And Dane Cook is never funny to anyone anywhere. People who lead hard lives need a lot of funny to unwind; both the Greeks and the Romans had a grand comic tradition, and Elizabethan England with its plagues, wars, and pestilences had Shakespeare and his hilariously funny comedies.
   So cavemen, who led lives ten times harder than the most abject Roman slave, had to have some kind of humor. What would they have found funny?
   I don't think satire would be a big hit with cavemen, which means irony would probably be right out. No Ben Franklin or Mark Twain for guys wearing bear furs. Since they didn't really have political institutions (that we know of) then there wouldn't have been a caveman Stephen Colbert . No witty rejoinders a la Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, no clever cocktail party talk since they didn't have cocktails. Or probably parties for that matter.
   We're left with really broad humor, Three's Company kind of stuff, where Og shares a cave with Nee and Maa, two curvy, bouncy cave girls while putting one over on Old Man Nuk who only lets Og stay in the cave because Og pretends to be gay.
   Doubtless cavemen would have found face-slapping amusing, so the Stooges would have been a big hit. Also Gilligan's Island, although they might have found the premise more of tragedy than a comedy. And they probably would have killed Gilligan the first time he cost them a trip off the island.
   Maybe I'm selling our caveman ancestors short here, but I think they would have found farts immensely funny. I know I thought farts were funny when I was little and they're still hilarious to this day, so I don't think cavemen would have taken the high ground on this one.
   Did cavemen have limericks? 'There once was mastodon from Nantucket...'
   See? This is why I need a time machine, so I can solve this kind of question. Let's get the egghead scientists cracking on this one.