Hi everyone,

I asked about the origins of the fear of clowns on /r/AskSocialScience, and one comment (now deleted) said clowns have been around for 200 years. Is this the case? What are the origins of clowns, and how come this is a type of entertainer that seemingly exists in most of the world?

I mean, if clowns really are 200 years old, I'd have a lot of hunches as to why it became popular (modern circuses are a bourgeois and urban form of entertainment; maybe this form of entertainment began in Europe and was forced down to their colonies; etc etc.), but of course, these are just hunches and guesses.