Do we really don’t have anything older before it that counts as a paid service/job being registered?

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Or maybe it’s not really unique from other animals, we just have fictional currency and choosy morality. Every animal I can think of has the male doing all the courting work. Male spiders dance, birds sing and survive with brighter colors, bugs may lose their heads, giraffes punch females in the bladder to see if they’re even ready for sex, straight female prostitution drastically outweighs straight males, etc. It seems like the one who has to actually develop the offspring has the option to be much choosier. So did the capuchin prostitute herself or is that our morality being imposed on godless creatures who likely see no difference between sex, cleaning, or feeding each other as each is some type of need?

      • Taco2112@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The capuchin engaged in sexual activity for payment, call it what you want but that pretty much the dictionary definition of prostitution. It’s not a moral or god question it’s semantics.

        • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          You can pay someone to pretend to be romantic on a date, to give you a massage, or to use their bodies for labor tasks. What exactly makes sex different?

          • Taco2112@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            To your point, I think it’s acceptable to call selling your body in a variety of ways prostitution. South Park has an episode from an early season about Kenny, Johnny Knoxville, and Tom Green doing gross stuff for money, in the episode Jesus calls the boys out for helping to make Kenny a prostitute. All that doesn’t change the dictionary definition of prostitution which is what the capuchin was participating in. From the Wikipedia article called “Prostitution”: Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of “sexual activity” varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercoursenon-penetrative sexmanual sexoral sex, etc.) with the customer.

  • mipadaitu@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    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.)

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      That would make hunting/gathering the oldest profession, so that you have something you can trade for sex.

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        It depends on whether you’re considering “a profession” to be something that someone does to gain goods/services/“value” from another person, or from nature.

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          So a farmer isn’t a profession?

          If the hunter/gather is trading food for sex, then they are doing to gain services from another person.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • raef@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      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

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        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.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    If you take “job” to mean “doing a thing in exchange for another thing”:

    Allow me to narrate a brief historical reenactment:

    Caveguy:

    dragging cavedeer carcus somewhere

    Cavegirl:

    happens upon the scene

    grunting (translation: damn that venison lookin’ tasty af)

    Caveguy:

    grunting (translation: it’s mine you can’t have it)

    Cavegirl:

    grunting, but seductively (translation: well, if we smash, can I have some?)

    Caveguy:

    aroused grunting (translation: hell yeah girl, you can stick around, I’ve been having the worst dry spell)

    fin

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    I liked the analysis in HIMYM. It can’t possibly be the world’s oldest profession, because in order to exchange something of value for sex, you have to have obtained something of value. Like say this hypothetical first ever prostitute was exchanging blowjobs for berries, then berry gatherer was actually the first profession.

  • djsoren19@yiffit.net
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    5 months ago

    It predates human civilization, and likely even predates homo sapiens. Our great chimp ancestors were likely trading spare food for sexual favors, though whether you can consider it the oldest profession depends on your definitions.

  • pathief@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    It’s hard for me to believe that hunter / food seeker isn’t the oldest profession… But it’s definitely up there.

    • Firipu@startrek.website
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      5 months ago

      What’s the last time you met a gatherer doing it as a profession and not a hobby?

      Hunters are a little bit more common, but still, full time food hunters are rare.

      Prostitutes on the other hand.

      So as a simple saying used in a daily life, I can kinda see why it’s used :)

    • foggy@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Yo if you hunt and gather a little more and share it all you can fuck my cave wife

  • Zier@fedia.io
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Profession doesn’t mean legal. It’s just as opposed to amateur. ie. You make enough money doing it for it to pay your cost of living.

      But yeah it definitely should be legal, regulated, and unionized

    • lud@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      It has been legal in large parts of the world at some point in history.

    • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Nah, prostitution pre-dates agriculture. Hunter-gatherer populations had men trading resources for sex.

  • PostiveNoise@kbin.melroy.org
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      I’m imagining dinosaur hookers, out on the jungle corner in fishnets and halter tops, smoking cigarettes and shaking their tails at passersby.

      Edit: look at that second word before anyone gets snarky about dinos and humans not coexisting. We can have fun that ignores reality, and there’s nothing more fun than picking up a t-rex hooker in your Flintstonesmobile, taking her back to your cave and smoking some rock. It’s a gneiss day.

  • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Itt: people finally making the argument I’ve made against the op statement for years.

    It’s beautiful when society starts to change and it begins to align with your views. 🥲

  • Emmy@lemmy.nz
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    5 months ago

    The answer is sexism. Before anything else, women were whores.

    Not cool actually. It’s clearly not true, but that’s why it’s a saying.