"I am not young enough to know everything."

- Oscar Wilde

"My mother? Let me tell you about my mother . . . "

Leon (Blade Runner)

"Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least."

- Lord Chesterfield

"Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead!"

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Burn them all."

-Mad King Aerys

"When all else is lost, the future still remains."

- Christian Nestell Bovee

"There is less danger in fearing too much than too little."

- Francis Walsingham

^ That reminds me of something Oscar Wilde would say as well. I'll have to see if I can find the quote I am thinking of in my list. Maybe post that one for tomorrow.

"Being proud of your country of birth is like being proud to have two nipples."

-Paraphrased from C. Coville

"Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung."

Scott.

"There is properly no history, only biography."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it."

- Robert Frost

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

- Ronald Reagan

^lol I doubt Reagan said that.

Actually, yes he did. At a business conference in LA on March 2, 1977 before he was President.

"A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits."
Woodrow Wilson

Wasn't the first profession farming? I don't see the similarities.

I would say hunter predates farming, and women were prostituting themselves out to the strongest hunters long before fields were cultivated.

"The enemy's gate is down."

So hunters are the oldest progression and not farmers or hookers?

I would say hooker and hunter are equal. Without hookers, hunters had no reason to hunt except for themselves and feeding oneself is not a profession. So hooking prompted hunting to be a profession, but hunting prompted hooking to exist as the women needed to eat but weren't very good hunters so were stuck being gatherers until they figured out they could get meat for sex. Kind of a chicken/egg thing. But definitely not farmers. Agriculture was much later.

"You guys pick the best topics to debate on the forum."

- bo_sox48

What about spying or reconnaissance, could one hunt before someone was sent out to see the lay of the land?

What about chef? Did someone once cook a vegetable stew or a meat stew made from an animal that died of natural causes before someone started hunting?

What about artist. Did people only start painting in caves after they had hunted?

I think we need a definitive list here...

Childminder? Did a potential hunter leave his/ her children with someone on the morning they first decided to go hunting.

Dressmaker? Did hunters go out with their dangly bits flapping?

On your list... One must consider if one did this strictly for themselves or for others and if those others constituted a "family unit". Presumably, the first meal with a hunter that resulted in sex was prostitution (aka a date) but if the date went further and the woman moved into the hunter's cave, is that then a family unit and did the prostitution stop?

The tailor/dressmaker/cook/babysitter... If only family units did it for each other, then it isn't really a profession, now is it? I mean, sure, we have appeased the housekeeper/maid who raises our children (aka our spouse) by calling them homemakers or domestic engineers, but is that really a profession?

As far as recon work goes, would that not be part of the hunters' job, especially if they hunt in groups? There is more to hunting than just killing the beast and slitting its belly open. Just as babysitting involves feeding and cleaning up after the child. One "job" multiple tasks.

But perhaps the fireman (the original one who kept the flame and knew the secret to making it) was the first profession in the early cavedweller days.

What about mother. The pays not great, but the hours are long.

And teacher?

King? Head tribesman

Money and bartering came about quite late so prostitution couldn't be in top 10. Did men really need prostitutes early on? Was sex available without payment for a few millennium?

If sex was available without payment early on, so were all "professions". I would view any profession as being an action involved in a mutually agreed upon (bartered) arrangement.

So the hunter that provides the hot cavewoman with a slab of wolly mammoth meat is bartering with her for a night of grunt grunt.

^This has to be one of the oddest discussions I've seen on here in a while. Good to see we're keeping things interesting. ;) Anyway...

"Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows. There is no code of conduct to help beginners. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent."

- Sophia Loren

Draugnar - my definition of a profession is "Something undertaken for another with the prospect of reward"

The person who mashes the berries for others to drink in return for having a drink themselves is therefore a professional chef.

Look at the animal kingdom, especially close relatives of ours. I don't see much whoring going on. Food sharing, mothering, teaching, child care, yes, but no whoring.