Based on my current job, I would be arbitrator of arguments and the person who convinces you to do things that you don’t really want to.
I would be the new cave finder and or cave recess explorer . I have been a caver for many years and consider the idea of grubbing thru the mud on my belly a great way to pass the time .
Mom?
I’m a translator/interpreter, so I figure back then I’d be the Cultural Attaché to the Ug Tribe or something fancy like that. With a classy yet sober three piece loincloth and everything.
That or some sort of augur. It’s basically translating from innards, innit ?
Naah … the white ones just make you barf. Even if the grouse can eat them, you can’t.
It’s the black ones on the shrub with the purple flowers you have to watch out for. A drop of the juice in each eye will help the healer check for cataracts, though …
Organizer of harvesting game, fish, and storing of grain. Train up harvesters. “No, you pick the berries this way!”
I imagine that I’d be a wizard, same as I am now. And no, that’s not the same thing as shaman.
I’d be chipping pictrographs on a stone slab, of one lonely farmer’s corn stalk, while sitting high in a tree. I don’t know how I’d get the stones up there. I would report to a committee about how much … uh… fertilizer… that cornstalk needs. Or I’d be at the end of a log cantilevered over a limestone quarry, reporting how deep and wide to the square-wheeled wagonmasters.
In real life, I take aerial photographs (fly the plane, too) of corn fields for ag consultants, and rock quarries.
I would be the world’s first clown.
I’d be a broker.
“That’s not something cavemen had”, I hear you cry, but I beg to differ.
Here’s how I view my job if we lived back then, playing off one of my significant talents.
Thag the fisherman would come up to me. “Me got lots of trout, more trout than can eat, but want nice thing to sit on.”
“Hmmm” I’d say. “Thorok is always making things to sit on from fallen trees, but he doesn’t really like fish. Falberg said he wanted trout the other day, but he hunts deer. And now that I think about it, Thorok was saying how he’s been … lonely, and Suka will do almost anything for some roast venison. So you could trade fish for deer, then deer for … favors, and those favors can get you a chair.”
“That sound like a lot of work.”
“Okay, how about you leave the fish with me, and come pick up your chair tomorrow?”
So now I’ve got a couple of fish, one nice venison steak, and … how exactly would one take a small percentage of a woman’s company? Or a chair? Well anyway, I’ve got some fish.
I’m the guy who knows someone who’s selling what you wanted to buy, or someone who wants what you want to get rid of. Which is far more marketable in cave-man days than being a retail clerk.
“Want a slushie?”
“What’s a slushie?”
“Haven’t the foggiest. Want Marlboro Lights?”
Based on my real job: tool maker or similar. (Programmer.)
Based on the fact that I am quite large: hunter or warrior. Or dead because I would have been killed by my own people as a giant.
Another scout. What’s over that hill? What’s in the back of the cave?
Or I could be the guy who sells insurance.
The guy who goes around doing everything to prove how easy it is?
It occurs to me that if the Dope was an actual tribe, we would last about all of twenty minutes.
We would leave some beautifully decorated caves for posterity, though.
I would be the alien who lands in a bright shiny spacecraft. (Actually, I would fake all of that.) Then the rest of you would worship me while you brought me the best food and let me sleep in the most comfortable cave.
I’d be the one annoying everyone else by constantly suggesting that the “way we’ve always done things” is wrong and that we can do it better, or that I’ve invented a device to make it easier.
“No, no, dragging the women by their hair is so inefficient due to the butt to ground friction. Look here, I’ve been testing out a better method…”
My idea or device would actually be better just often enough to make it worthwhile for my group to keep me instead of killing me.
Either that, or I’d be making drum and shaker noise devices for our ceremonies and parties. (IRL I’m an electronics engineer who designs recording and musical instrument equipment.)
I’m a locksmith now, which would seem to imply that I build locks, but the truth is that I have absolutely none of the skills required to build a lock. But I’m an expert at figuring out the most efficient way to bypass or destroy one!
So, I wouldn’t be the person who makes tools. I’d be the person who demonstrates how to smash tools that other people made. Then I’d be murdered in my sleep my a tool maker.
Many potential cave-people have mentioned lorekeeper and storyteller, but I’m claiming that one for myself–in real life, I have a Ph.D. in English literature.
But I doubt a saber-toothed tiger cares for Byron.
I’d be resolving tribal disputes, traveling to new territories, documenting my findings and reporting back to the Chief with wonderful opportunities for collaboration with other tribes. I’d also be organizing the wheel makers to demand a greater share of the mammoth and teaching all the women to hunt.
I’m on Social Security. So, considering the life expectancy of yore, I’d be dead and buried or thrown to the vultures.
But considering my life time interest in lexicology, I’d be carving words in rocks just to make future language specialists happy (or crazy).