I always hear prostitution/hooker, but given that sex is a necessity it doesn’t count to me, which profession is the world’s oldest according to anthropologists? If it truly is prostitution, then what is the second oldest?
Farmer, or shaman.
Possibly hunter.
Well, the joke is that the second oldest profession is motherhood, of course. Sort of a side effect of the oldest profession, you see. And literally, it may not be so far off - bonobos and chimps trade sex for food and social status. Sounds like prostitution to me.
Prostitution aside, I don’t know that anyone has a real answer to this - it’s not the sort of thing that’s preserved in the fossil record. Also, one profession wouldn’t exist in a vacuum, assuming that the earliest economies were barter-based. If I trade this hide for a new knife, which profession is older, toolmaker or leatherer?
That said, my guess is that it’s those kinds of professions: flintknapper, spearmaker, hide-curer (perhaps “seamstress”, if the hides are cut to shape to make garments), basketweaver, bone utensil former - all those have been found in Neanderthal graves, so the technology was there. It’s very probable that the tribe had one guy whose flint knapping was better than the rest, so he made the tools while others hunted his meat for him.
It depends on what you define as a profession. Hunter/gatherer would long predate farmer or shaman. By the time homo sapiens appeared there would probably be more than one - tool maker and shaman also. So, I doubt there is a real answer.
This is exactly what I was going to say. For hunter-gatherers, the first “professional” (as in an individual to have a single, specialized role within the tribe) was probably a shaman. In hunter-gathering societies, it’s my understanding that there were no specialized weapons makers, tentmakers, etc. Every individual was pretty much on his own when it came to that stuff.
The first “profession” to exist after the advent of civilization (i.e. after the agricultural revolution) would have been farmers, but the nature of those sedentary communities would have quickly produced other specialists (such as soldiers, beer makers, artisans, etc.)
I’m gonna guess…astrophysicist. Or maybe Organic Chemist.
More seriously though, hunter is the most likely.
I don’t understand arguments that claim ‘farmer’. Surely there were societies that even got to metallurgy without farming. Hell I’d bet there were professional artists before there were farmers.
Okay, who’s feeding and supporting these professional smiths and artists, without farming??
As I understand the arguments, without farming, societies generally have to rely on hunting and gathering to feed themselves, and those always provide much less food per person on average. Thus, there isn’t grub to spare for anybody to do anything else.
Not sure if I’ve heard anything about how the possibility of fishing societies fits into this. (Fishing can provide more food per fisherman than hunting/gathering can I WAG.)
Well I would wag either a dedicated hunter or weapon maker or trader (with neighboring tribes)
That is true if only by average you mean “over the span of several generations”. If the weather is ok and the local animal populations are normal, hunting provides a lot more food than agriculture could ever hope for. But you either have to follow the food and be nomads or accept the fact that some of you have to starve any time animal populations drop due to whatever reasons.
You just killed an elk. What the hell are you going to do with an elk in the middle of summer? That elk has a shelf life of maybe a week tops before it’s inedible. How many people can an elk feed over the span of a week? I can imagine an artist trading a few polished beads for enough food to feed an entire family in a hunting society (as long as sufficient game is present, when the population drops it’s every man for himself). What I don’t see is anybody trading polished beads for enough grain to feed a family. Do you know how much work it takes to grow that much food? Grueling dawn til dusk days of work throughout the year.
Agriculture provides stability at the expense of freedom. It can’t possibly be more efficient than hunting/gathering. Sure your fields are much more abundant than any natural occuring food source, but you can’t abandon them to go look for food when your grain runs out or there is a drought in your area.
Pimping.
I’d say hunter was first because if it was easy to obtain a prositute wouldn’t barter for it. I can just see it, Og:“Hey babe, how about giving me some for this nice pear I found over there?” Pro: “You are such a caveman, get away from me. Hey you, you good looking Neantherthal hunk with the mastadon leg. I got what your link is missing big boy.”
Actually, the world’s oldest profession, even older than prostitution, is… farming
What about some sort of Doctor? I’m sure there have been others taking care of thier own ever since the beginning of time. Hospice is probaby pretty old, too. hell, honestly “farmer” is probably the best and most logical answer, though.
No way. There was plenty of trade going on before agriculture. That we can tell in the anthropologic record, by finding flint and amber and other materials far from their natural source. Someone was at the very least a trader before a farmer.
The fact that tribes may have been trading with each other does not mean that trade was a profession.
Even people who refer to prostitution as “the world’s oldest profession” don’t really believe it is. They’re just acknowledging that it’s a business that’s been around for a looong time, and that there isn’t much anyone can do to prevent it.
I think the idea is that every woman who offers sex in exchange for means of support (including wives) is, in some sense, a prostitute. Under this definition, if there was ever a point in history at which men produced a greater proportion of the food than the women, then at that point in time “prostitution” would have become a profession.
Of course, this is a very warped definition, since it implies that sex is necessarily the woman giving something to the man and not the reverse, but it is a definition I have heard used by some.
Don’t you think some people made tools better than others? I’d think division of labor might arise very quickly. Say someone who was an excellent tool maker was injured while hunting, and stayed back to make tools while the healthy did the hunting? the group might discover they got more food and better tools than they did before. I’d rather suspect that this was the true origin of a profession - if everyone does everything, there are none.
I would suggest midwifery.