The title of the "oldest profession" could have originated from tracing back to the first ancient female leaning against a rock one evening and winking at a Neanderthal returning from a hunt, suggesting the first exchange of favors. It is a historic possibility; as such an event must have taken place sometime in the ancient past. That first transaction was most likely the basis for the clichéd "oldest profession" some 200,000 years ago.
But if you allow for a bit of poetic license, the "oldest profession" actually began some 230 million years ago when the dinosaurs first roamed the earth. Of course, an explanation is in order so as to remove any of your incredulity from a time-honored belief. In 1935, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the first fossils of dinosaur prints to be scientifically described were found preserved in sandstone. Since then, numerous ancient imprints have been discovered around the world. Of particular interest was the Moab, Utah find in 2009, of over 200 well-preserved tracks completely intact after being left in mud that hardened into rock. Along with those tracks were other impressions of at least a dozen different animals. Among them, as far as they can tell, is an ancient crocodile that left behind its dragging tail markings, and a three-toed meat-eater similar to the ferocious Utahraptor.
Such imprints or impressions are in reality ancient molds. To confirm this, Webster's dictionary defines a mold as, "A hollow form or matrix for shaping a fluid or plastic substance." Fill the hollow form of a dinosaur track with a shaping fluid such as plaster or latex, as any self-respecting paleontologist would do in modern times, upon discovery and "Viola!" a mold has been utilized. Thus, a 200 million year old animal track casting has been produced from a dinosaur track mold which can be preserved for future study.
With this revelation, today's modern mold makers can actually trace the art of mold making back to those ancient finds, making mold making the oldest profession. Oh, one may quibble that this molds were not made by actual human hands, but none the less we should all be aware that art of mold making is not only ancient, but prehistoric.
Today mold making has reached its zenith. Without molds there would be no modern technology, no phone, pc, automobiles, and appliances and so on. For molds allow us to reproduce identical multiples of the same object. So when one holds an IPhone in their hand it should be noted that a connection can be made for the molds used in the casting of its parts to the ancient molds left behind by the dinosaurs many millions of years ago.
So is mold making the oldest profession? We'll leave that conclusion up to the reader, as a case can still be made and the imagination can be stretched, for a the first Neanderthal working and pressing clay found on the river bank, into rock depressions into a vessel for trade, before he was old enough to receive his first "wink."
Edmund McCormick is the founder of Cape Crystal Brands and EnvironMolds LLC. He is the author of several non-fiction “How-to” books, past publisher of the ArtMolds Journal Magazine, editor of Beginner's Guide to Hydrocolloids, and author of six eBook recipe books available for download on this site. He resides in Far Hill, NJ and lives and breathes his art and food blogs as both writer and editor. You can follow him on Twitter and Linkedin.
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