Well, Aristophanes probably could have foreseen it and, if Wikipedia is to be believed, so could Seneca, here satirizing the Emperor Claudius:
When he had made a great noise with that end of him which talked easiest, he cried out, "Oh dear, oh dear! I think I have made a mess of myself."
My guess would be that our preoccupation with crepitation began pretty early on, probably right after we discovered that it annoyed others.
Don't tell me it was the volcano!