"mooning" origin

[Jesse Sheidlower]

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.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED