Hunter gather I would have to vote for. Engineering would have to be an early one too which would entail weapon design, shelter, and nuclear power plants.
Three votes for motherhood? Can’t have it unless you START with fatherhood!
I’m claiming fatherhood as the oldest profession - about 9 months BEFORE motherhood.
Haven’t you heard of Erma Bombeck’s book titled Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession 
?
Maybe we need a little more clarity on “profession”. I suggest it is something specialized, that produces goods or services that can be traded for subsistance goods/services like food or shelter.
I would argue this rules out hunter/gatherer, and mother. Technically it might not rule out prostitution, but frankly I doubt a primitive society could afford a woman who fucked for food and did nothing else. And with no birth control, how long could she keep that up anyway.
I go with the toolmaker proponents. It’s arguable even shamans would fit into this category, as they created “tools” to interface with the spirit world.
Another candidate would be artist.
Adam and Eve were gatherers in the Garden of Eden. Their children were farmers, Cain raising plants and Abel raising animals. Hunting came before prostitution.
It would be illogical for prostitution to be the first occupation, since no one would have any “money” to pay for it. Someone had to have earned some money at some other occupation, in order to be able to “pay” the first prostitute. By definition, prostitutes do not do it for free.
Oh, come now. An engineer, an architect, and a lawyer are having this discussion. The engineer says, “Look, God created the universe out of chaos. Obviously He’s an engineer. THAT’S the oldest profession.”
“Not so,” says the architect. “First, he had to have a Plan. Who draws up plans? So obviously, architecture is the oldest profession.”
The lawyer looks up. “And who do you think created the chaos?”
And yes, I Am.
One does not need cash. There were surely some professions before it came about. Somebody to stay around the hearth doing their thing while food caught or harvested by others was brought to them.
Maybe cook? Someone especially skilled at preparing foods brought in by other tribe members.
Spoken like someone who’s never been pregnant.
Where does farming fit in here?
Your point being?
By your logic, no one would have had any money to pay for any of the other trades either. So while I’m not proposing that prostitution was the first occupation, you can’t rule it out via this logic. Even if we’re talking “money” as in any form of barter, sex is something you can barter just as much as sabre-tooth tiger skins and clubs.
I think the earlier theory posited that primitive societies wouldn’t have been able to afford a woman who sat around and had sex is a great logical argument. I’m going to throw in a guess that the first profession might be farming, as that was almost certainly at one point a skilled task. Shaman and toolmaker also sound quite reasonable.
After weighing the options carefully, I’m going to throw my vote towards Gatherer.
A basic gatherer requires no tools. Anyone can do it. Those that did it well realized (or should have realized) that they had more items than they needed at any given time. So they could trade them off for services.
The people the gatherer trades with don’t specifically have a profession. If he trades items for sex that doesn’t mean the other person is a prostitute, merely on one end of a one time trade. But the gatherer is skilled at gathering and thus has the potential for multiple transactions after providing for his needs.
I will put forth a completly different take on this and say that the first profession wasn’t even held by a human.
Guard Dog was certainly a very important assignment and they got payed in meat and pats. Exchange of goods for services. Bada boom bada bing.
Ok, I just thought it was worth mentioning.
I’m sure early humans had some kind of trade/barter system (and therefore jobs) set up before they domesticated the dog.
Politics. Prostitution. But I repeat myself.
Seriously, I’d have to go with farming. Parenting doesn’t count in my opinion as every other species has to do it.
I vote for merchant/trader. A specialist who, in a bartering society (where goods are: a fresh killed mammoth - four tons of meat that will go off unless traded quickly, a supply of neatly napped flints, a fine atlatl, a large tuber (this sounds like the conveyer belt in the *Generation Game[\i]!)), makes a profit on matching supply to demand. He’s the man (or she’s the woman) who understands economics and keeps everybody happy.
Hmm, I guess I should have said laughing @ his joke then.
Well … It seems far enough in the past that whatever the humans were doing at least existed in some form for perhaps a million years which in turn was conceivably not all that different from what at least a few animals have been doing for quite some time before humans even made an appearance. Like the birds who get rid of pesky parasitical insects in exchange for the opportunity to eat said insects. In short you make your definitions wide enough and all sorts of wacky things happen.
First Profession: Plant Plankton.
Service: Sustenance for Animal Plankton
Time: 3.5 billion years ago.
the oldest profession has to be as a ‘career guidance advisor’ type thingy, or pimp, as they are now known as.