Sex, Time, and Power : How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution

by Shlain, Leonard

• ISBN13: 9780142004678
• ISBN10: 0142004677
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-08-03
• Publisher: Penguin Books

Summary

From the best selling author of Art and Physics and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess comes a provocative new book that will change our views of human sexuality and evolution. According to Leonard Shlain there is no clear and compelling explanation for the sudden emergence of glib, big-brained Homo sapiens 150, 000 years ago. In his latest book, he proposes an original thesis that variations in female sexuality changed the course of human evolution. Due to the narrowness of her bipedal pelvis and the increasing size of her infant's head, the human female began to experience high childbirth death rates. Natural selection adapted her to this environmental stress by drastically reconfiguring her hormonal cycles. Her estrus with its external signal that she was ovulating disappeared as her menses became the most florid of any mammal and it mysteriously entrained with the periodicity of the moon. These interlocking adaptations led the first women to grasp the concept of a month and make the connection between sex and pregnancy.

Author Biography

Leonard Shlain is the author of Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light, and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image. He is the chief of laparoscopic surgery at California Medical Center in San Francisco.

Table of Contents

Preface: Iron/Sex	ix
Acknowledgments	xxi
Part I Iron, Sex, and Women
Unknown Mother/African Eve	3	(8)
Big Brain/Narrow Pelvis	11	(12)
Red Blood/White Milk	23	(16)
Plant Iron/Meat Iron	39	(6)
Gyna Sapiens/Gyna All-the-Others	45	(12)
Periods/Perils	57	(12)
Her Climax/His Climax	69	(16)
Grandmothers/Circumcision	85	(16)
Part II Iron, Sex, and Men
Prey/Predator	101	(16)
Carnivory/Vegetarianism	117	(20)
Menarche/Mustaches	137	(12)
Premenstrual Tension/Masturbatory Tension	149	(16)
Part III Sex and Time
Moon/Menses	165	(22)
Woo/I Do	187	(22)
Anima/Animus	209	(18)
Gay/Lesbian	227	(14)
Same Sex/Hermaphrodite	241	(20)
Part IV Death and Paternity
Mortality/Angst	261	(14)
Superstition/Laughter	275	(14)
Father/Mother	289	(18)
Incest/Dowries	307	(14)
Wife/Husband	321	(14)
Part V Men and Women
Misogyny/Patriarchy	335	(16)
Unknown Mother/African Eve/Modern Woman	351	(16)
Epilogue	367	(4)
Notes	371	(16)
Bibliography	387	(16)
Illustration Credits	403	(2)
Index	405