Spoiler alert: It wasn't prostitution at all. And not even journalism.
There is a widespread belief that selling love was the first professional occupation that people mastered. At the same time, journalism is called the second oldest profession, meaning the exchange of gossip. It turned out that both statements are misleading. The first professionals turned out to be shamans, to this conclusion was reached by Manvir Singh of the Department of Social Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.
According to the researcher, a profession is a kind of occupation that requires special training and special skills. But in primitive communities, specialization was very conditional. That is, there were people who had a pronounced talent for making canoes or bows. However, at the same time, nothing prevented people whose hands grew from a known place from making their own, albeit unprepossessing, boats or throwing weapons. Therefore, the exchange of gossip and shura-mura with men on a commercial basis were rather a public hobby than a profession.
But the priests, oracles, shamans - call it what you want - quite early separated into a separate caste, which provided exclusive services to society. It was about the most important matters: the expulsion of evil spirits, the management of the weather, the treatment of the sick, the prediction of future events. In the opinion of our ancestors (however, many people think the same way today), spirits were in charge of this entire area. How to come to an agreement with this invisible force? An ordinary member of the community can hardly do this. But the shamans assured: “But I know how to deal with this evil spirits: ask for help a fairy-sorceress or recognize and neutralize a witch. And in a state of altered consciousness I can communicate with God or dead ancestors."
- What unites shamans from different parts of the world? They are able to enter a trance - a special behavioral and psychological state, explains Manvir Singh. - It was this state of frenzy that convinced people that the shaman turns into something other than just a human being and is able to communicate with supernatural forces. We can find echoes of this belief in superhero comics. Stories about how a certain person possesses superpower are incredibly popular with people. And as a rule, this wonderful quality appears as a result of a genetic mutation or a bite of a radioactive spider …
Thus, a distinctive feature of shamans arises: the ability to transform physically and biologically. Accordingly, there is a division into two classes. One includes people who can overcome the barrier separating the natural and otherworldly worlds (or pretend to overcome it). And the second class, which is much more numerous, includes the audience in the auditorium, unable to master the shamanic science.
“Consequently, the first-ever professional community is emerging with exclusive rights to provide services,” Singh said. - The right to join this community is received only by those who will be able to pass the entrance exam - to enter a state of trance. It is surprising that such a cultural practice as shamanism appears independently in different parts of the planet, but everywhere it has the same pronounced features. We are talking about initiation ceremonies, dance music, witchcraft, punitive justice. Why do human societies look so strikingly the same everywhere? This is one of the main conundrums of anthropology.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV
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