bignum
Explanation
This comic imagines what "biggest number" contests would have looked like in prehistoric times.
Two cavemen are depicted in a primitive landscape. One excitedly declares: "Me can construct number far bigger than 3 or even 4 by kill mammoth, count mammoth bones." The caption reads: "Early 'biggest number' contests were much shorter."
The joke plays on the concept of "Big Number Duels" or "largest number competitions," which are a real fixture in recreational mathematics and computer science circles. In modern versions of these contests, participants try to define the largest finite number they can using a formal notation system, leading to mind-bendingly large constructs involving things like Graham's number, the TREE function, or the busy beaver function — numbers so vast they cannot be physically represented in any meaningful way.
By contrast, the caveman's boast about constructing a number "far bigger than 3 or even 4" by counting mammoth bones is hilariously modest. The humor comes from the collision between the grandiose framing of a "biggest number contest" and the tiny scope of prehistoric numeracy, where 4 was apparently an impressively large number. The phrasing "me can construct" also parodies the formal mathematical language of "constructing" large numbers, applied to the very literal act of killing a mammoth and counting its bones.