The oldest profession

We all know what comes to mind when we speak of the oldest profession, but for various reasons I think writers have a greater claim to this title. No I am not saying that writers were the first prostitutes although the term does describe how writers are tempted to sell the soul of their craft to popularity, commercialism or plagiarism. I am merely arguing that writing is the older and more worthy profession.

Prostitutes may be "professionals", but they are not "professors". They do not occupy seats of learning, although they may at times share the beds of the learned. A profession speaks of a collection of professional occupations that includes doctors, lawyers and so on. They are highly skilled specialists in a given field of practice. Writing, by implication, can be regarded as a profession, prostitution is just prostitution.

Secondly, we have been around for as far back as history goes, because that is in fact what defines how far back history goes. History is the recorded past. If it isn't recorded it isn't history and it most certainly isn't recorded history. Okay, so maybe dinosaurs didn't write and they predated humans so perhaps fossils go back further, but as far as human activity is concerned our records of their existence are substantiated through cave graffiti, carvings, clay tablets and written scrolls.

The very fact that Moses wrote about Adam and Eve some 2,000 years after they were last sighted implies that some evidence was carried down to him. The fact that he chose to write about it suggests that he used written evidence.

If there is a basic human urge behind the more widely accepted oldest profession, there was a potentially greater, more surpassing instinct to write ... we don't have any sense of the sexual exploits of the cavemen, but we have their writings and they tell of their social and cultural activities.

The other reason I claim writing as the oldest profession is because it has preserved all of the past. Throughout history, writers faithfully recorded past events and passed their stories onto succeeding generations.

It was an almost religious pursuit, resulting in libraries (Alexandria) and the hiding of sacred scrolls from their enemies. That was how ancient civilizations preserved their cultures. It was taken so seriously that a scribe could work for days on one page and have to start again for the sake of the slightest error.

The fourth reason is because our entire faith has been articulated through writing, not through oral traditions, art, music or anything else - only through a written text, collectively referred to as the bible.

So right or wrong, there is nothing left to say, but that write is right and by rights authors should be given their rightful claim to being the oldest profession ... so put that in your pen and write it.