Poll: what would you label the world's oldest profession in your version of the origin myth of humanity? (Not counting basic sustenance work like hunting/farming/tool-making as professions)
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Replying to @vgr
I actually wonder under what conditions labour can divide into distinct professions, in which case I vote shaman.
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Replying to @doriantaylor
Labor is interestingly fungible even when the activities are varied. I think a profession emerges when work makes you as much as you make work. That generally means second-order tool-making I think. Shaping other humans is one kind. Making tools to make tools is another.
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Replying to @vgr
the way I think about it is in proto-communities, everybody has more or less the same methodological knowledge, and there isn't any cleavage until the group gets sufficiently large
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Replying to @doriantaylor @vgr
my bet is on shaman because that's really the first instance of somebody with at least ostensible special knowledge/access.
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Replying to @doriantaylor @vgr
like "who is the one person who gets to skip out completely on the hunting/gathering tasks?"
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Replying to @doriantaylor
That's an interesting conjecture.
@sarahdoingthing may know the actual answer. I can think of the counter case of shamanic knowledge being a sort of distributed knowledge base of "magical rumors" so to speak. Much like meme-making today isn't quite a profession.3 replies 0 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @vgr @doriantaylor
I’ve seen cases for trapping, mining/mineral exploitation, crafts, social influencing, religion/healing of course...
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as far as “totally excused from other responsibilities” - combo of mineral exploitation/monopolizing & crafts makes sense
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Replying to @sarahdoingthing @vgr
my sense was that the community arrives at the consensus that one of their members has "great spiritual power" and lets them do whatever they like (usually apprenticed by an older shaman)
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yeah or some combination of that and being otherwise useless as you said I think
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Replying to @sarahdoingthing @vgr
indeed; I am 99% talking out my ass and 1% read some indigenous philosophy books that set my thinking in that direction
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