Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

For 25 years, "A Pattern Language" (C. Alexander, et al) has occupied first place in my "Most Human Wisdom In a Book Cover" category. Leonard Shlain's "Sex, Time, and Power" has just replaced it. Surely, even amongst the well educated, the relationship between men and women holds more misunderstanding than any other human endeavor. Dr. Shlain's insightful study sheds more light into this thorny area than the sum of all other similar books I have read. Although the writing style is personal and humerous, this book is a relatively slow read due to the sheer density of ideas presented and quantity of supporting documentation supplied. Every time I loan out this book, it proves very difficult to get back. It is a slooow read that borrowers do not want to relinquish until they have finished. After a few weeks rumination time, I find them asking me if the book is available again. Get your own copy! Anyone trying to make sense of "The Urge to Merge" will find themselves returning to this fertile well of ideas again and again.
As a related aside, attending a book store talk given by Dr. Shlain, I found him to be every bit an excellent speaker as he is an excellent writer. If given the chance to hear him speak, don't miss it!

Many books have been written regarding relationships between men and women. Some even suggest that we are of different species and it is part of a cosmic joke that we are attracted to and must rely upon one another.

If this is the kind of book you are attracted to, you will be quite disappointed in this work by talented author Leonard Shlain. As in his previous two books "Art and Physics" and "The Alphabet Vs The Goddess" Shlain presents an observation that has troubled him. After a thorough search of the literature fails to satisfy his curiosity, some kind of internal dialectic occurs and a well reasoned "what if" process is presented.

The stimulus for this story started when Shlain, as a young medical student, could not accept the casual dismissal of his question "Why is the normal hemoglobin for women less than for men?" All humans rely on oxygen dependent metabolic processes. Women require just as much oxygen carrying, iron based, hemoglobin as men. Why would nature create women to lose this essential product every month in her menses, while pregnant and also in childbirth?

That question is the basis for a well reasoned work that presents possible answers that should stimulate much further discussion and interest. Shlain, also being an exceptional educator, presents pertinent human physiology, anatomy and psychology in an understandable and yet non-patronizing manner.

While this book reads like an entertaining `who done it' novel: the reward is not only a provocative explanation but a worth while educational process.

I bought this book because I had immensely enjoyed Matt Ridley's book on sexuality and evolution, The Red Queen. Whereas Ridley goes into excruciating detail about how certain evolutionary principles have affected a wide range of species, Shlain concentrates entirely on human evolution.

In the initial chapters, Shlain provides extensive explanations of the medical aspects of sex and childbirth. Shlain knows how to make these details interesting by highlighting their relevance. For example, he explains how the disproportionately large head of the human fetus endangered the lives of prehistoric women, and why the female tendency to lose iron was such a significant issue in ancient times. And these points are only the beginning. The first few chapters contain a dozen or so similar insights.

After Shlain provides the requisite background information, the book takes a more speculative turn. For the sake of argument, women are treated as a separate species, which Shlain calls gynosapiens. Because of certain evolutionary factors, gynosapiens were the first to become aware of time and mortality. In particular, sex was an act which carried potentially fatal implications for prehistoric women. Because the stakes were so high, gynosapiens took control of their own sexuality; they could not afford to be as carefree as men.

The subsequent evolution of male behavior (and society as a whole) is therefore explained in terms of male efforts to negotiate sexual relationships with women. According to Shlain, language itself evolved because the glibber male stood a better chance of succeeding with females. Most men (and women, I suspect) would agree that a significant portion of contemporary male behavior is motivated by sexual ambition. It is therefore not too much of a stretch to suggest that this motivation could have determined the evolution of human society at a fundamental level.

The author occasionally lapses into even more speculative arguments. For example, he proposes how color-blindedness, baldness, and homosexuality could have been useful characteristics in the early human gene pool. While these points are backed up by only minimal data, his arguments are reasonable. Furthermore, one must remember that any argument about prehistoric humans will necessarily rely on a fair amount of speculation.

Shlain has obviously spent a lifetime researching and reflecting on these issues. You may not agree with every one of his conclusions, but you are sure to finish this book with some valuable insights into human nature.

I heard Dr. Shlain on NPR discussing this book. Over the next month, I kept wondering about his theories and eventually bought the book. I wasn't disappointed.

The heavy hitting ideas come early and then, like some have noted, it fizzles into random speculation. For example, Chapter 17's Theory of Eights was interesting but not as powerful as the earlier theories.

It was frustrating because I felt he could have expanded his later material into more interesting chapters if he had talked with more anthropologists. For example, Chapter 20 briefly mentions Neanderthals "large, big-boned homid cousins" ... "vanished. No one knows with certainty why." and then plunges into a "this child looks like me" theory. Given his theories from Chapter 2, I expected some mention of the Neaderthal's brain size -- equal or greater tban the modern average human. I would have been more interested in his thoughts about the differences between moderns and Neaderthals and speculations about their extinction/interbreeding than I was in the thoughts of his fictitious Cro-Magnon man.

Also troubling was the lack of discussion of Polygamy when he mentioned age differences in Chapter 7. In polygamous cultures in Africa many first marriages have exactly that same age difference, with young men's first marriages being to older widowed woman. That would be a good reason for the age difference of libidos to exist, yet he seems unaware of it and shows a monogamy bias throughout.

Regardless, his main theories seem rooted in cultural materialism logic, the book's real strength. (What were the material needs that evolving women had and still have?) Also, there are many interesting facts from his medical training and ample research to support all facts presented. His weaknesses, however, were lack of anthropological training, bias towards his own lifestyle and cultural norms, and a willingness to explain EVERYTHING in one book. Overall more of a fun book than a serious evolution text but worth buying because he offers a different perspective to the evolution puzzle.

While at least one central premise of the book - that women lose iron through a variety of ways, and this binds them to men in a hunter/gatherer society, is at least new to me and stands up well to scrutiny, there were numerous other factual errors in the book, as well as completely unfounded conclusions. After spotting about the sixth obvious factual error, I was forced to start taking the rest of the book far less seriously - after all, if I could spot that many, how many had I missed?

In addition to some of the other errors cited by other reviewers here, one that stood out that hasn't been yet mentioned was the author's contention that only mammals have a functional memory (even fish have been demonstrated to have memory, as any aquarium keeper will tell you). Among the authors dubious conclusions are that ancient female humans (which he calls gynosapiens) developed a detailed sense of time before the male - which is certainly not proven, or even suggested, by any of the evidence he presents.

Overall, the book made me very frustrated. It could have been such a good, good book. Instead, it was merely somewhat interesting, and not at all credible.

Many books have been written regarding relationships between men and women. Some even suggest that we are of different species and it is part of a cosmic joke that we are attracted to and must rely upon one another.

If this is the kind of book you are attracted to, you will be quite disappointed in this work by talented author Leonard Shlain. As in his previous two books "Art and Physics" and "The Alphabet Vs The Goddess" Shlain presents an observation that has troubled him. After a thorough search of the literature fails to satisfy his curiosity, some kind of internal dialectic occurs and a well reasoned "what if" process is presented.

The stimulus for this story started when Shlain, as a young medical student, could not accept the casual dismissal of his question "Why is the normal hemoglobin for women less than for men?" All humans rely on oxygen dependent metabolic processes. Women require just as much oxygen carrying, iron based, hemoglobin as men. Why would nature create women to lose this essential product every month in her menses, while pregnant and also in childbirth?

That question is the basis for a well reasoned work that presents possible answers that should stimulate much further discussion and interest. Shlain, also being an exceptional educator, presents pertinent human physiology, anatomy and psychology in an understandable and yet non-patronizing manner.

While this book reads like an entertaining `who done it' novel: the reward is not only a provocative explanation but a worth while educational process.

Leonard Shlain proposes that a need for the nutrient, iron, drove women to adopt the granting of sexual favors in return for their hunter partners' providing them with meat from their kills. He develops an elaborate Darwinian evolutionary theory that monthly menses (rather than annual estrus) provided a genetically selective advantage, allowing women to have the sexual availability that they could then trade for favors with their sexual partner.

More than just helping with survival, Shlain argues eloquently that the moon cycle of menses, linked with the periodicity of lunar phases, opened women to the awareness of time - past, present and future.

Shlain's discussion of the possible roles of sexual favors granted by women in prehistoric times, in return for male support and protection, is highly speculative. On the one hand, it appears to overlook the loyalty of males of many species - from birds to wolves to elephants - without monthly menses. On the other hand, it suggests a guiding hand in evolution because the appearance of monthly menses and the growth of brain size to enable the conceptualizations Shlain hypothesizes must have preceded the benefits that they conferred. Shlain repeatedly suggests an anima mundi, a collective consciousness that guides the course of evolution -explicitly stating that he subscribes to transpersonal beliefs.

The basic thesis is original, well argued, and supported with a wealth of historical notes, images from art and history, and written in a very engaging style. After the first half of the book, however, the discussions appear repetitive. Shlain puts a series of propositions related to sexuality through the same analysis, to the point that this reviewer became bored. Despite these criticisms, this book is well worth the read.

If you are looking for intriguing (but sometimes downright comical)
ideas about the evolution of human external characteristics and
internal traits -- this is a book for you. You will find answers to
the questions we all want to ask -- how has the male-female
relationship evolved, why females have hidden ovulation and
menstruate, how did male circumcision come about, etc. The best parts
of the book contain thoughtful descriptions of the homo sapiens'
anatomy and body functions. Unfortunately, the book is much more
successful in asking interesting questions than answering them. It
will take increasing perseverance to stick to the book as it unfolds,
since the author manages to frustrate both the rationalizing,
logic-and-consistency-loving-readers, and (I imagine) the more
soul/creator-searching, open-minded ones. Shlain is too busy writing
amusing theatrical scenes involving Pleistocene men, to have much time
to bother about details like -- what does natural selection act upon
-- the genes, the kin, the larger group, or the species (see
R. Dawkins and the plethora of socio-biological answers to his
"Selfish Gene" book). Shlain's Pleistocene man (usually called Adam)
is involved in strange conflict-with/adaptation-to something/someone
called "Mother Nature", which to the frustration of creationists, is
not an intelligent designer (aka God), and to the chagrin of the
proponents of evolution, is not a legitimate (logical, consistent,
supported by facts/theories) natural selector either.

In a comical chapter of the book, Pleistocene Adam, having learned
from African Eve about the flow of time and realizing his own
mortality (which makes him depressed) conceives the idea that his
children are his saviors, the carriers of his "essence" who will
render him immortal. Hence he decides to be more or less monogamous,
help his mate to take care of his sons and daughters, avoid sleeping
with his daughters, and in general happily continue to procreate. If
only evolution was so easily directed by homo sapiens' conscious
(self-aware) thoughts and emotions... And don't even ask about the
"evolutionary" explanation of male pattern baldness, which involves
confusing animals into believing you are not a human (the fiercest
hunter of all) when trying to spy on them (bald head-top emerging
first) behind a boulder while hunting.

My harshest criticism against this book is its lack of objectivity and
its unbridled imagination. Humans have evolved to find patterns in
nature even where there are none and infer causality from every
correlation (be it a true one or one caused by the mutual dependence
of two variables on a third and forth one) and this could easily lead
to wrong inferences.

If you are new to evolution and genes I would recommend Richard
Dawkins (especially "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker"), or
Matt Ridley's "Genome" and "The Agile Gene" or anything from Stephen
Jay Gould.

The author brings up a few interesting observations and pads them with information from sources as diverse as the bible and modern medical research. But his conclusions and theories are far fetched and some are just plain nonsense. For instance: bald men would have a slight advantage in hunting because they wouldn't look quite like other humans and prey would be fooled. If you ever tried to approach a deer you would realize that your hat and hair quantity had little to do with your stalking success. The author could have run this by a hunter or game ranger and gotten a good laugh before publishing, but he didn't.

That people learned about the passing of time from a woman's period being in synch with the moon. I think people were noticing the seasons pass and day moving into night before they were calculating years and months. Even without menstruation we could still be noticing the moon.

Circumcision to make men better lovers? I heard that uncircumsized men are better lovers. Besides, without the stress of modern life, men would be less likely to prematurely ejaculate.

Men wanted children to carry on after his death? I think the original idea of fatherhood is for status during life. There is no evidence that men were worrying about their life after death in prehistory. But the author reconstructs conversations and thoughts these guys had. Please read "The Red Queen," or "The Moral Animal," for some brilliant scientific thinking on why we are the way we are.

Even today many primitive societies don't associate intercourse with creating children. The author didn't cite any recent anthropological evidence regarding this one way or another. It would seem very relevant.

I heard the author speak and asked if his book addressed infidelity. He said it was in the book but I couldn't find any entries in the index or contents.

This is one of those books where the author stacks facts, probabilities and possibilities to take a shot at why human men and women are what we are today. He is tackling a huge subject; he trys to flesh out evolution from the points-of-view of many sciences. It may drive a 'purely scientific' reader crazy, but the real value is how it sets one's mind to questioning... and thinking.