The History of Memes Friday 12 March 2021 à 03:19 by David Webb. If you’ve been on the Internet these last ten years, chances are you are familiar with the concept of Internet memes and you may even have favorite memes or type of memes. But this phenomenon appeared long before the 2010s and can be tracked down to the 3rd century B.C. In this article, we discuss the history of memes and their evolution, so if you want to find out how it all started, then keep reading. Word Origins and Definition The word “meme” (/miːm/) comes from the ancient Greek word “mīmēma” which means “that is limited”. In 1976, biologist