There have even been observations of transactional sex in the animal kingdom. Primarily among primates and birds.
So it may actually predate humanity.
Comment on How old is the "world's oldest profession"?
wador@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Some people jokingly say that prostitution is the oldest profession. I don’t know about that, but transactional sex must be as old as humanity.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
adhdsergio@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
It has been observed with certain species of monkeys, that should give you an indication 😄
hanrahan@slrpnk.net 19 hours ago
i was reading a history of aboriginal tribes in Australia and they said the tribes regularly met for socailsing, to sort out petty grievances and to trade including the women, who used the opportunity to “trade” genetic diversity. The book seem’d to suggest this was both necessary (as in part of the trade) and at the women’s discretion of cock choice.
Difficult to say if this occured for the 60,000 years or so the’d been in Australia but can’t see why not ?
sont know if that’s really prostitution, all seems blurred to me.
pity we’re no longer as sophisticated :(
CyanideShotInjection@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Probably even older considering that it also exists in other apes species.
cattywampas@lemmy.world 2 days ago
And certainly that would not count as a profession because that labor is not specialized.
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
I mean, it sort of is, in that only half the population can do it. What he’s referring to though is an experiment where they tried teaching chimps the concept of “money” by giving them tokens they could exchange for food.
The very first thing that they started doing was exchanging food tokens for… mating activities.
guy@piefed.social 2 days ago
only half the population can do it at the same time yes. But everyone can be a prostitute otherwise
cattywampas@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Well anybody could do it.
But there’s lots of things I could sell from time to time, including labor or sex. Would it make it my profession if I did so once in a while? Or would I need to do it full time?