Based on the book of Genesis, I’d say “Apple Picker” 
[QUOTE=Brain Wreck]
In the context you’ve mentioned it, I’d classify sales as a skill. In order for it to be a profession, you’d need to be selling goods and services offered by others in order to benefit yourself. If you’re just selling yourself, well, here we are right back to prostitution…
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I can, to some extent, see your point - but I ain’t buyin’ it. I don’t believe sales, as a profession, can be properly defined so narrowly.
Would you have us believe that the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the blacksmith, the artisan, the farmer, the judge, the doctor, ad infinitum, are all nothing but prostitutes? (I can see it with some politicians, but that’s another story …)
Am I, a Professional Driver, who sells nothing but my own talent and skills, nothing but a prostitute? :dubious:
Are you? 
Please note that I have no idea what you ‘sell’ to put food on the table …
Perhaps a better definition or test might be that used with athletes. Do you get compensated? Then you are a pro. If not, you’re an amateur. (e. g., if you get compensated for sex, you are a professional prostitute. If not, you’re just a sl … hmmmm – GQ – make that ‘an easy date’. :eek: )
The simple fact of the matter is this: all of us are “professional” sales people in that we sell something - something unique that we have to offer to society – in the open marketplace for compensation. Some of us make pretty pictures, some of us produce goods (or have a hand in their production), some of us simply sell our unique skills or talents. *but we all sell *and, in one form or another, get compensated for that sale. True, some of us go on to develop more skills and become Professional Sales Persons, but for most of us the act of selling just comes so naturally that we don’t even realize we are doing it. I would submit to you then that to limit the definition of sales to those who ‘sell the goods/services offered by others’ is ludicrous at best.
Perhaps I need to clarify this point: I do not propose that ‘Professional Sales Person’ is the oldest profession, merely that (generic) sales, whatever the field, product or service, may be …
Lucy
Perhaps “sales”, in some sense, did preceed “toolmaking”, or “shamanism”, or “wizardry”, or whatever else one might argue to be the first profession. But if everyone does it, then you can’t very well say that “salesman” is itself a profession. If you’re going to go down that route, then I’ll cheerfully point out that long before people were selling, they were eating, so “eater” is the first profession.
[QUOTE=LucyInDisguise]
You want food, shelter, a mate, or anything else, you have to trade something you have to get it. Before you can, though, you have to sell someone else on the idea that what you have will fulfill a need of theirs, and in order to get that, they’ll have to give you something. Even something as simple as “I want to learn how to hunt” must logically be followed by selling the super hunter guy (gal?) on the idea the you’ll be a good student … or worship the ground they walk on … or whatever …
Since it’s gonna be a couple of months before somebody works out the charge card thing, you have to sell them on the idea that they can trade the meat and/or veggies they are holding for the skill, knowledge, (or body), that you have to fulfill their ‘need’. You may even have to help them discover a need that you can fulfill. You may even (as may be the case with spiritual stuff) have to ‘create’ a need.
This ‘process’ is called selling, and everybody does it - even today!
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What exactly is being “sold” among hunter gatherers, though? In an industrialized society we most often engage in “this for that” sales and transactions, because our possessions frequently represent significant proportions of our work product. Hunter gatherer groups don’t think that way nearly so much. They engage in a great deal more generalized reciprocity, in which goods or services are given without expecting any compensation in return other than the social cohesiveness that gift giving brings. We still do this in a limited fashion, but for hunter gatherer groups it’s a way of life.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
I’m pretty sure that the Babylonians weren’t even the first to practice cultic prostitution in the Middle East…that the Sumerians and Assyrians did it before them.
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No doubt.
[QUOTE=Johanna]
No doubt.
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Of course, there’s the other argument that cultic prostitution wasn’t practiced at all by the Assyrians, Sumerians or Babylonians…that there was plenty of regular prostitution going on in those places, and that there was cultic prostitution in the Near East-Levant, but not in Mesopotamia.
[QUOTE=Chronos]
Perhaps “sales”, in some sense, did preceed “toolmaking”, or “shamanism”, or “wizardry”, or whatever else one might argue to be the first profession. But if everyone does it, then you can’t very well say that “salesman” is itself a profession. … [snip]
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Good point - yet, even today we all sell, and the generic “salesman” has evolved into the Professional Sales Person, in much the same way as we all do something with our hair (at least those of you that still have hair) and yet there are also Professional Hairdressers. Not sure I’m explaining what I’m thinking all that clearly here. Let me tackle this next one …
[QUOTE=pravnik]
What exactly is being “sold” among hunter gatherers, though? In an industrialized society we most often engage in “this for that” sales and transactions, because our possessions frequently represent significant proportions of our work product. Hunter gatherer groups don’t think that way nearly so much. They engage in a great deal more generalized reciprocity, in which goods or services are given without expecting any compensation in return other than the social cohesiveness that gift giving brings. We still do this in a limited fashion, but for hunter gatherer groups it’s a way of life.
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In that sense, I’ll grant you point, game and match.
I think the point that I was trying to make, perhaps, is that if we are looking for an ‘oldest profession’, it would be something that would – in and of itself – indicate that humans were moving beyond the more primitive “generalized reciprocity” stage and individuals were reaching a stage of development where it was begining to dawn on them that “someone else has something I want, I have something they need, maybe we can make a deal” sort of mind set. (Oh, boy. Can I run on a sentence or what???) At this point, an area of specialization (a profession, pehaps …) would start to emerge.
I guess what I’m doing is looking back down the tree (so to speak), to see if a “profession” that exists in present day can be identified as having an earlier beginning than any other. “Sales” seems to be a perfect fit.
Pehaps in that regard I’m misinterpreting the OP’s question.
But I don’t think so.
Just some passing thoughts …
Lucy
[QUOTE=LucyInDisguise]
I can, to some extent, see your point - but I ain’t buyin’ it. I don’t believe sales, as a profession, can be properly defined so narrowly.
Would you have us believe that the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the blacksmith, the artisan, the farmer, the judge, the doctor, ad infinitum, are all nothing but prostitutes?
[/QUOTE]
Of course not. They are, respectively, a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, blacksmith, etc. Perhaps they all need a little sales skill to get by. But the true professional salesman is the one who buys candles from the candler and sells them to the blacksmith, making enough money off the trade to pay the butcher and baker for his own sustenance. This again boils down to what constitutes a profession vs. a useful skill.
When I was about 8 years old (ca. 1967), I remember an episode of “To Tell the Truth” where an author was plugging his book which purported to show that making alcohol was a really old preoccupation of the human species.
His book was called, “The Second Oldest Profession”.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Of course, there’s the other argument that cultic prostitution wasn’t practiced at all by the Assyrians, Sumerians or Babylonians…that there was plenty of regular prostitution going on in those places, and that there was cultic prostitution in the Near East-Levant, but not in Mesopotamia.
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Huh? That comes as a surprise. Where did you get this from?
Did I misquote William Blake above? Sorry. My fact-checker took the day off. I think that should have been “Prisons are built with bricks of the law…”
[QUOTE=F. U. Shakespeare]
When I was about 8 years old (ca. 1967), I remember an episode of “To Tell the Truth” where an author was plugging his book which purported to show that making alcohol was a really old preoccupation of the human species.
His book was called, “The Second Oldest Profession”.
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The production of beer (which was invented before wine) certainly seems to have played a significant role in the reason for the agricultural revolution. There are theories that the impetus for sedentary cultures centered around the cultivation of grain was at least as much about the desire for beer as for food.
[QUOTE=Johanna]
Huh? That comes as a surprise. Where did you get this from?
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It’s a view that is, I guess, becoming more and more common among archeologists and ancient historians. Here’s an article by Dr. Johanna Stuckey, which, while it doesn’t appear to be peer reviewed, does cite its sources:
http://www.matrifocus.com/SAM05/spotlight.htm
Basically, the argument against the existance of cult prostitutes, though, is:
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The only textual evidence for it is Herodotus, who’s not a reliable source.
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Historically in the field, there had been a tendency to refer to all priestesses in the Babylonian religion as temple prostitutes, and in in almost all of those cases, further research has suggested that that isn’t likely the case, and that these women took oaths of chastity or celibacy.
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There seems to have been one festival during the year where it’s possible ritual sex could have occurred…the “Sacred Marriage of Inanna and Dumazi”, where a special priestess may had sex with the king, but we don’t know for sure if, in the ceremony, there was an actual priestess, the actual king, or, if there were actually people involved in the ritual, what they did in there…if they actually had sex or just engaged in some ritual removed from the actual sex act.