There were probably professions that long predate history, and any of those are a bit hard to prove. There were 'shaman' in pre-history, and good shaman were quite possibly supported by their communities. There may also have been things like dedicated cooks. Trading sex for food however, is clearly hundreds of thousands if not millions of years old, so it's hard to argue that other professions came before it.
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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I can't answer that question, but I want to know why it's called the oldest profession when sex work is still illegal in most of the world. A profession is usually a legal job. And sex workers should be legal everywhere as a human right.
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This reminds me an experiment made with capuchin monkeys, where the researchers were using small discs as some sort of currency. They could use it to buy stuff like pieces of cucumber (they eat it, but it's meh), jell-o (they like it), grapes (they love it)...
One of the things that they reported is that a female exchanged sex for a disc. Then used said disc to buy a grape.
Conclusion: sex for goods is likely a human behaviour that predates humankind itself.
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It's not just us humans, chimps trade meat for sex: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/chimps-behavior-sex-news-animals
Yale taught monkeys about money, and yup, they traded money for sex. From archive of NYT article:
Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.
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I couldn't find proofs that prostitution is the oldest
Around here it is called world's oldest business.
Because courtship rituals show up before money and across species usually involve the male providing food to the female to demonstrate the males fitness.
Long before language, money, and lots of other shit had been invented, males have traded resources for sex.
In some species the female stays with the young and is unable to get food for herself, she has to rely on her mate providing food or her and the baby die.
There was an experiment where the researchers introduced "money" to chimps that they could exchange for fruit treats. Some females almost immediately began trading sex for money
Well, yeah.
Food only lasts so long. Money could be stored and used later.
So the exchange became a much better deal. In effect the females were always hungry. Because they could exchange money for fresh food later.
Makes as well could save up money so they didn't have to get food whenever they were horny.
It really streamlined the process, but long term I'd be interested to see what happened to fitness of the population. Like 4-4 generations down the line, would that population be significantly less fit than a control group?
Although that would likely have to be done in the wild where threats are and not in a safe enclosure.
It really didn't play out like that. They were not saving anything.
It's a commentary on humanity and society.
There's no records or evidence for the first jobs, so it's mostly humor with a grain of truth. Most likely trading sexual favors for some benefit likely predates most other forms of trade (but it obviously depends on the exact definition of trade, profession, prostitution, etc.)
The only thing I can think that would be almost as old is agriculture
Nah, prostitution pre-dates agriculture. Hunter-gatherer populations had men trading resources for sex.
That's what agriculture is almost as old as prostitution!