Conversation

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)
  • Prostitute
    45.3%
  • Priest
    26.4%
  • Bard/cave-painter
    17.6%
  • Performing artist
    10.6%
386 votesFinal results
10
2
Replying to
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.
1
4
Replying to
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
1
2
Shamanism origin myth: people compete in a game of camp-fire hot takes (heh) on why the hunt failed/succeeded based on pet wild theories (cosmic fan theories? Plato-cave people?). Guy who "wins" campfire twitter 10 hunts in a row is 1st shaman.
1
2
Show replies