On the other gender’s side of the equation, there’s always “Of course it’s your child, you’re the only one.”
A) Dowry generally isn’t paid to the wife’s family, but rather to the husband’s family.
B) Even with “bride price”, the payer does generally end up married as they sought, not merely assaulted.
Selling something you don’t own has got to be pretty old…
What about the Trojan Horse? That dates back to the 12th century BC and it’s in the Iliad.
The first “trick” in the Epic of Gilgamesh is when the temple prostitute Shamhat is sent to subdue the wild man Enkidu. After having sex with her for 6 days and 7 nights, Enkidu loses his strength and his wildness, but gains reason and understanding.
So taming a wild man with sex is the oldest trick in the book.
Neanderthal art proves that they invented the “pull my finger” gag.
Predated by both the Code of Hammurabi and Gilgamesh.
**What is the oldest scam in the book? **
Marriage.
Trust me on this…
.
Here’s a paper on Accounting and Forms of Accountability in Ancient Civilizations. (PDF)
It starts addressing accountability and fraud on page 8. Around 3250 BC (in Mesopotomia) a common practice with clay tablets was to make an impression of the objects to be traded, as a way of proving that the contents of a delivery matched the description. There are some examples of these sort of tablets a few pages later.
I think that makes embezzlement the oldest one in any book… since these symbols actually predate writing itself.
Stupid Gilgamesh.
:mad:
I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a wooly mammoth burger today.
I think Alessan meant figurative fucking with, not literal. What happened with Noah was just his son trying to embarrass him while he was drunk.
Aren’t there ancient stones worked to look like sea shells that archaeologists think were used as counterfeit decoys to trade with inland tribes who valued shells as a form of currency?
Make spiky clubs fast:
I think I saw that on a PBC science show with Alan Alda. The expert though the fake shell was a knock-off of the real thing. I suspect it was done for art though. It must be easier to get a real shell than to carve one from stone.
God resting on the 7th day, and creating that whole “sabbath” thing that people still fall for. C’mon, he’s God, what does he have to rest for?
And of course that whole Garden of Eden/snake/apple scam.
my dear Thog,
I must solicit your strictist Confidence in this matter, for it is of Utmost secrecy and urgency.
I am a senior partner in the Neanderthal Corporation. We sell energy (wooden logs, ready for burning) to all the cave-dwellers here in Nigeria.
We have over 4,000,000.00 colored beads in profits.
But because of tax Regulations I must appeal to your goodnes of heart to help me deposit the beads in your cave.
This transaction is 100 per cent safe and if you let me partake of it, you will gain 70%
Please responde immedieately and tell me your cave number and the number of your bead account .
yours faithfully,
Dr. Ugh,
chief cave dweller
That’s the one I first thought of too. “I’m pregnant and the baby is yours”, must be very very old.
Not if you’re miles and miles from shore, which is why they were prized in the first place… Maybe it wasn’t a cottage industry, but simply one man’s desperation to come up with those shells he owed Rocko by Three-Sun-Ups or he’d get his legs broken.
“This real mammoth? I paid you twenty good clam shells for a mammoth steak.”
“That real mammoth.”
“It tastes like bison to me.”
“It mammoth.”
“Nobody see a mammoth in over three winters. Where you find mammoth?”
“I hunt, I kill mammoth.”
“Where you find mammoth?”
“I no tell. If I tell, who give me clam shells?”
“…This better be mammoth.”
“It mammoth.”
“Hey! … Is this clam shell? Or rock?”
“It clam shell.”
“Where you get clam shell?”
“Rocks-for-head, clam shells come from ocean.”
“That is four-hands of sunsets of walking. You no had clams yesterday.”
“I hide my clams.”
“If real clam shell, why crumbly like rock when I chip it?”
“It old. Was buried for a long time.”
“…This better be real clam shell.”
“It real.”
(…SUCKER!)
(…SUCKER!!)