To be fair I'm sure any time after the agricultural revolution had performances or something.

Seriously, though, advertisement is a tumor on society. It's psychological manipulation we've allowed for profit purposes. I don't think we take it seriously enough. It's an addiction machine and a life waster, designed to ruin your brain slowly over time. I consider hyper-consumerism an addiction, but even if you look past that into food, tobacco, alcohol, and medicine you'll see "real" addiction.

Anyway, my pet theory is that if advertisement was simply banned we'd solve a lot of problems. Ones we don't even intend to solve.