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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Sarah: so no fully cleaved off roles until early states? The way I always heard it is basically what Dorian said: that the first specialized role in forager-type societies was shaman. I figured that would also be the first to cleave into its own profession.
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no I think mineral exploitation massively predates earliest states - long-distance trade certainly does
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basically specialization in making proto-money makes sense to me, a step from protein specialization
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What is protein specialization? Do you mean hunting in hoe cultures?
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no specializing in some particular animal and trading with nearby others when it’s not that season
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