"mooning" origin

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:08 PM -0500 2/4/04, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>On Wed, Feb 04, 2004 at 11:02:27PM -0500, Sam Clements wrote:
>>  A question from the Straight Dope.
>>
>>   Are there any examples of "mooning" (showing one's arse to
>>  one's opponent as a taunt) prior to the 20th century.  It
>>  seems like there should be, but I'm too tired to go looking.
>
>No. Early 1960s is the earliest known, though I haven't re-checked
>newspaperarchive.com to see if it has much better.
>
So the incident in the Canterbury Tales doesn't count?  I've heard it
described as mooning, although the label itself is admittedly
anachronistic.

L