The oldest professions in the world

Why is it that most of us accept that prostitution is the oldest profession? Perhaps let's put some definititions in place. Prostitution in this context refers to the performing sexual fulfillment services for a fee, and profession means work.

Let's take a walk to the time where the early professions were started. We'll start at the most basic of basics - for any organism to survive, there must be nutrition. For any organism to continue its species, there must be propagation or reproduction. These two requirements must have defined the actions of the early humans. And because reproduction was never a "profession" until the late 20th century (sometimes known as surrogate mothers and sperm donors), it could not have been an early profession.

Thus the first profession would have been related to nutrition and must have been that of the hunter-gatherer. These were the first humans who hunted animals, and gathered parts of plants (leaves, roots, fruits, etc) for food (nutrition).

Then some of these hunter-gatherers found that they could cultivate land and produce food instead of hunting-gathering. The second profession is thus farming.

Because farming produces more food per working-person than hunting-gathering, it enabled the better farmers to barter their produce with the hunter-gatherers. Thus, trading started as the third.

Now, to facilitate trade, markets had to be established in fixed locations, and some humans started moving to live nearer to areas where trading was done. Society started, and the organisation of people and land, resolution of disputes, etc became necessary. Thus the profession of the politician came to being.

Where politics could not resolve a disagreement, violence would have been the normal means then. And thus the profession of fighters (or deliverers of violence) probably was the fifth.
And so, the rich (probably through farming, trading, or both) got richer (through the ability to engage the best politicians to win disputes and fighters for difficult disputes), there came extra wealth that could be used for purposes of pleasure instead of survival.

There are many other possible professions after the 4th (politician), which I will leave you to think about. But for sure, prostitution could not have been the first.

So why do so many of us accept the statement that prostitution is the first (and therefore oldest) profession? Is it because we want to justify that it is acceptable? Is it because we want to explain that this vice is more common than we like to accept?

- What other commonly accepted "facts" are false? Why are they accepted so commonly?
- Some are merely trivial info (such as the example above), others may have harmed society more than we think. Any examples from your own experience?

- In the early days of society, the highly respected people were the scholars, the thinkers, the philosophers. Today, all these people take a back seat to the rich. Why do we find it normal for the rich to be respected? What have they done for other people to deserve the respect?
- Don't you think that teachers, writers and others who works to spread exiting knowledge deserve more respect?- Don't you think that thinkers, researchers, scholars who create new knowledge are a class above those that are monetarily more profitable more than others?

- Before the USA developed and became the epitome of capitalism, who were the respected? Who are the people mentioned in our history books? the rich? In fact, I doubt if there were much mention of wealthy people in the history of the world. Why?
- Who were the rich in the rich history of Greece, Egypt, China and other ancient civilisations?

- Why have we, in the last hundred years or so, turn our backs on a few thousand years of humanity and history, and why do we choose to measure everyone with the simplistic ruler of dollars and cents?