Edit: so what's been interesting to me so far is that our collective senses of humour are actually fairly similar across time and cultures, in fact it's quite nice to think that I could go back in time and sit around a camp fire with some Romans and laugh at one of them letting out a massive fart or someone making a pun.
What I'd be interested to know now is, whether there have been any cultures which had vastly different senses of humor?
There is a Latin name regiser from 1429 from the Kingdom of Hungary. Basically as people did not really have surnames, such registers often mention nicknames and they are funny as hell. Also vulgar. This one mentions a man who instead of using a potty which was common that time, had a outhouse type toilet, a wooden toilet made. The Latin name register says "Georgius Polczonzaro dictus" dictus means "he is called". Polczonzaro, which would be polconszaró in modern Hungarian, literally means Shelf-Shitter. They called the guy who made an outhouse George Shelf-Shitter. Yes, I think it was meant to be funny. It still is.
Another name register fro 1370 mentions a man "Ladislaus dictus lagfazou" Lagfazou, lágyfaszú in modern Hungarian means "has a soft dick". Seriously, someone - probably trolling a foreing priest who did not speak Hungarian - registered his friend as Leslie Softdick.
Source: said name registers, referenced in Hungarian linguist blogs.
I'd say historical jokes were largely the same as modern ones, although they tended a little more towards the crude and broad side of things, a lot of sex jokes. Of course, this might simply be because we don't get the more subtle ones. Here are two of my favorites, from the Facetiae, an early 15th century collection:
A Friar, who was but moderately considerate, was preaching to the people at Tivoli, and thundering against adultery, which he depicted in colours of the deepest dye. “It is such a horrible sin,” said he, “that I had rather undo ten virgins than one married woman!” Many, among the congregation, would have shared his preference.
zing!
"A man who had given his wife a valuable dress, complained that he never exercised his marital rights without it costing him more than a golden ducat each time. “It is your fault,” answered the wife, “why do you not, by frequent repetition, bring down the cost to one farthing?”"
Oh snap!
I was also recently reading *The Well-Laden Ship, a collection of medieval proverbs, folktales, etc., which contains a number of humorous sayings, including some still used today. Unfortunately, I returned it to the library a few days ago, but if you're interested and can get your hands on it, it's a fun text.
Clever wordplay and puns have always been enjoyed, but unfortunately are often lost on modern readers in translation. Shakespeare is a prime example - a lot of the pronounciation of the English language has drastically shifted since he was writing, so many of his cleverer word-plays are missed.
See here for examples. From about 8:15 for instance the actor reads a passage and it becomes clear that the lines "And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot and rot, and thereby hangs a tale", suddenly becomes quite a rude joke when we realise that originally 'hour' was pronounced in exactly the same way as 'whore' (and 'tale' and 'tail' are also homophones). The original 17th century audiences would have been rolling on the floor and slapping their legs in delight when the actors spoke those lines I imagine.
The oldest jokes are, unsurprisingly, either sexual or scatological in nature and frequently involve wordplay. So they're very similar to the jokes that we tell today. In 2008, a group of historians and other academics at the University of Wolverhampton compiled a list of the world's oldest jokes. The oldest known joke dates back to 1900 BC and comes from the Sumerians, who developed cuneiform, one of the world's earliest writing systems:
Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.
Another joke, dating from 1600 BC, comes from the Westcar Papyrus and is possibly a reference to Sneferu, an Egyptian pharaoh during the Old Kingdom.
How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish
The earliest joke in Britain is from the 10th century and comes from the Exeter Codex:
What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? Answer: A key.
One interesting story from the golden ass (a latin novel about a guy who gets turned into a Donkey) is the story of the wife's tub. A smith's wife is engaged in an adulterous affair. One day, however, the smith, work finished well ahead of schedule. Panicked, the faithless woman hides her lover in an old tub. She complains about their poverty to her husband and he suggests that they sell the tub for six drachmae. She counters that she has already sold it for seven and has sent the buyer (the lover) into the tub to inspect it. He comes out and says that it is of insufficient quality and demands that the smith clean it. He does so (lying under the tub) and the wife and lover have sex on top of it. As a final insult to injury the smith has to deliver the tub to the lovers house himself. Although this may not come across in the English it is very funny in latin, full of deliberately rude words etc.
Several of the comedic plays of Aristophanes (c. 446 BC – c. 386 BC) have survived to the present day. Sex jokes, fart jokes, satire, mockery, puns, he used them all.
From what I gather, ancient and early modern cultures found humor in the same sorts of stuff we find humor in today. There is graffiti in ancient Olympus in which one man says "so-and-so is beautiful" and another person replies "say who?!"
The Renaissance Italian writer Boccaccio satirizes European society in his work The Decameron. Same could be said in a way about Dante's Divine Comedy, Chausser's Canterbury Tales, or even Bosch's Paintings.
Peter the Great of Russia was said to enjoy practical and sometimes cruel jokes at the expense of others, especially Russian nobles. Voltaire was also known for his witty remarks.
Benjamin Franklin was known for having a very good sense of humor, and even loved a good fart joke (check out his 1781 letter to the Royal academy of Science).
I'd have to say that Mark Twain could be considered the first modern humorist though. His style formed the basis of American humor in the ealry 20th Century.
Professor Berg has translated what he purports to be the oldest 'compendium' of jokes, an Ancient Greek text called Philogelos. A lot of the jokes revolve around "student dunces". Some of them are pretty funny.
In Plato's Dialogues, the contrast between the wise Socrates and the dumb counterparty remains as humorous today as it was then.
I'd ask you this in reference to your latest question: how would we know if an ancient culture had a vastly different sense of humor? It would be a rare document or artifact indeed that both contains humorous (to them, not us) content and contains information to enable us to deduce that it's content is supposed to be humorous w/o our understanding the humor.
To add to the good answers you've had here, There's a section on this the FAQ that inclues What is the earliest recorded joke? and How long have people found flatulence funny? (Answer: as far back as we have recorded history, there's fart jokes)
Judging by the placings of his comedies in annual competitions, the Greek playright Aristophanes could be studied to gain better understanding of what residents in ancient Athens (around 420 B.C) found funny or thought provoking.
Plays like "Wasps" & "Frogs" are choc-full of crude humour and penis jokes which is pretty cool when you think about it. Almost 2500 years separate us from them yet jokes about sex remain.