When the earliest Homo sapiens fashioned their tools, they offered them to the much-dumber Neanderthals. But right before the hairy knuckle-draggers grabbed the spears, those first humans pulled them away and yelled the equivalent of "Psych!"
Pranks are as old as human civilization, but their stories didn't start getting told until the 1300s. After all, paper was too expensive to write "I guess you had to be there." People love to tease others and other people love to watch it. That latter part took awhile to monetize, but once pranksters with an entrepreneurial spirit figured out how to make money while making people look stupid the field exploded. Now society is filled with professional pranksters and millions more amateurs trying to get out of the farm team. How did we get there? Let's take a look back in time.
1729
The Irish writer/priest Jonathan Swift writes the satirical essay, "A Modest Proposal." It suggests Ireland sell its extra children as food to the English. Many took it seriously and it caused a stir. Thus, the prank by satirical essay was born. Above is an artistic depiction of what Jonathan Swift may have looked like before eating a baby.
1922
Artist Hugh Troy attends Cornell University and becomes a well-known prankster. During one snowstorm he made rhinoceros tracks around a lake and cut a hole in the ice as if the animal fell in. That's the kind of thing that passed as a prank in the '20s.
1947
Allen Funt creates a prank radio show called "Candid Microphone." A year later, it becomes "Candid Camera" on ABC and runs 38 seasons on various networks.
1958
Comedy duo Coyle and Sharpe begin terrorizing confused beatniks, and later hippies, with man-on-the-street radio pranks.
1960
Paul Krassner, Alan Abel, Joey Skaggs and others start staging larger media pranks for vaguely political reasons. Krassner becomes infamous for convincing the media Lyndon Johnson had his way sexually with JFK's body. Abel spoofed conservatives by starting the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, which insisted on clothing animals.
Mid 1960s
Argentinean Julio Victorio De Rissio becomes Dr. Tangalanga, a name that continues to be the most famous in Spanish prank calls.
1970s
Andy Kaufman unintentionally creates "alternative comedy" by mixing performance art and comedy. Audiences often didn't know if his characters Foreign Man and Tony Clifton and his professional wrestling stunts were real or not.
1979
Young Howard Stern begins hosting his first morning show in Hartford, Connecticut. He would go on to create the morning zoo format, a hotbed for prank calls and risqué stunts.
Late 1980s
The Jerky Boys begin recording their prank calls. The bootleg tapes found their way to Howard Stern and eventually made them internationally famous.
1994
After some success as a stand-up comic and rapper, Tom Green starts his public access show in Canada. In 1999, his stunts make him the hottest thing on MTV since Beavis and Butt-Head.
Early 1990s
The sketch and improv group Upright Citizens Brigade begins staging elaborate pranks in Chicago and then New York. They develop a cult following and birth the likes of Amy Poehler, Horatio Sanz and "Anchorman" writer-director Adam McKay.
1999
Out-of-work actor Johnny Knoxville begins pulling stunts and pranks with a group of skateboarders and questionable characters. In 2000, they end up on MTV as "Jackass."
2001
Charlie Todd starts Improv Everywhere. The group stages huge, flash mob pranks and encourages people to ride the subway with no pants.
2002
"The Jamie Kennedy Experiment" becomes the first "celebrity-driven" prank show.
2003
Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel create "Crank Yankers" and prove prank calls can also be enjoyed on TV. All you need are some puppets to look at.
2003
MTV and Ashton Kutcher prove that it's just as funny to eff with beautiful people as it is ugly people when "Punk'd" debuts. The series ran four seasons and proved Kutcher could do more than play Kelso on "That '70s Show."
2003
The Yes Men bring social commentary back to pranks with their documentaries "The Yes Men" and "The Yes Men Fix The World."
2010
MTV announces that "Punk'd" will return with the cherubic Justin Bieber as host.