Just a point about our cave mothers, and the need to obtain food from our hunter cave fathers. In all hunter gatherer societies examined by twentieth century anthropologists who took note of it the vegetable foods, and other “gathered” foods were the major source of nutrition for family groups, and were primarily obtained by women, and older children.
Just who was prostituting themselves to whom, or why is speculation of the WAG variety.
Thug was at least as old a profession as prostitute. Extortionist and murderer were fairly early developments too.
The obvious fallacy that everyone (including and especially crappy sensationalist Time magazine in an article earlier this year) fails to consider when advocating this topic is that even though it is possible that the gatherers (women and children?) gathered berries and leaves in bigger relative quantities than the men procured meat, these substances have different nutritional values. When our ancestors started eating meat after coming down off the trees and spreading into the savannah they were provided with a source of energy and protein immeasurably superior to that provided by what food could be gathered from vegetation: meat.
The evidence suggests that we were initially grasslands scavengers. Pretty soon we discovered hunting and fire as a means to tenderize meat and to survive eating rotting meat (cook some disease out of it). More complex tool-making and plan-making followed. Ever more complex tools meant a constant challege for the mind and more highly developed brains, in a feedback loop that continues to this day. Along the road we domesticated animals and cultivated the land. The fact that our ancestors engaged in the hunt for meat gave our evolutionary limb a distinct boost forward.
It was the hunters therefore who were providing the most precious nutrients to the pack. Whether the hunters were all male or mixed male-female is another discussion.
For those lurking vegetarians who are always ready to jump up and scream that meat is evil: stuff it. I don’t eat meat myself, but I do eat fish and I do recognize the important role that meat has played in our evolution. We’re not a vegetarian species, we are omnivorous. Sorry to get off track there.
Abe
“For what is myth, but the deconstructive prose of a missing literary critic who lisps?”
–Harry Harrison
Probably because it has been around ever since guys discovered that they liked sex more than clubbing animals or each other and women found out that they were willing to offer favors in return for sex.
I would assume that it really took off as soon as someone created marriage laws, binding the couple (or couples) to each other only. Especially since sex is a massive biological urge with ramifications we are just now discovering today (like ‘killer soldier sperm’ in the male. Killer acidic defensive conditions in the womb. All brought into play if one or the other suspects that ones mate has been unfaithful.) Plus an excellent wife or husband might – for far too many reasons – be a dud in bed. Not to mention the ‘kinky aspect’ which includes a partners desire to do something out of the ordinary with the other partner, who declines. Prostitutes, for a fee, will do it and almost anything else one desires. Plus we have just discovered that humans might have a built in ‘urge’ to stray – as we have found in animals, especially birds – to spread the gene pool around. A loving partner might not be, according to nature, all that nature desires for the gene pool so one partner strays.
There is an old saying, male based of course, from around the early 1900’s which states that the ideal wife is a lady in public and a whore in bed.
Personally, I am of the opinion that prostitution should be legalized and regulated.
Hmmm, I’m wondering if that’s referring to me? Because, you see, i interpreted the question to be what is the basis of the joke. So it’s a joke, ok, and so you’ve found the earliest use of it, so? You haven’t been able to interpret what he meant by it. I was hoping that with my reference, it may lead a little tangent on the direction that people were looking.
If it wasn’t directed at me, never mind it.
bygones!
The only way to rid yourself of temptation is to yield to it–Oscar Wilde