toddlers
Explanation
The Joke
Two cave people -- apparently the very first human parents -- are dealing with a toddler who just said she "hates me forever." The father, named Pag, asks if that is normal for toddlers, and the mother exasperatedly responds, "I don't know, Pag. How could I know that?!" The caption reads: "Sometimes I wonder what it was like to be the first human parents."
The joke is that all parents of toddlers experience the same bewildering, dramatic outbursts, but modern parents at least have the comfort of knowing it is developmentally normal. The first human parents would have had zero frame of reference. When your toddler screams "I hate you forever," you can Google it or ask your pediatrician. The first parents had absolutely no one to consult and no way to know if their child's behavior was typical or a sign of something terribly wrong.
The Humor
The comedy comes from transplanting one of the most universally relatable parenting anxieties -- "Is this normal?" -- into the most extreme possible version of that anxiety. Every new parent worries they are doing it wrong, but at least they have books, doctors, and other parents to reassure them. The prehistoric setting strips away all of that support infrastructure, leaving two bewildered cave people with no parenting resources whatsoever. The mother's frustrated response is pitch-perfect: she is annoyed not just at the toddler but at the absurdity of being asked a question that literally no one in the history of existence could answer.