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Eve review: Why women's bodies belong at the heart of human evolution

From sexism's "benefits" to mothers' role in creating culture, Cat Bohannon rethinks the role of women in Eve: How the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution

By Alexandra Thompson

25 October 2023

FRANCE - CIRCA 2002: Eve, 1896, by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer (1865-1896), pastel and gouache, 49x46 cm. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images); . (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Eve by Lucien Lėvy-Dhurmer, a painter in the symbolist tradition

DeAgostini/Getty Images

Eve
Cat Bohannon (Penguin Books)

DID humans evolve to be sexist? Without contraception, suppressing women may have been an effective way of keeping birth rates under control. But any “benefits” of sexism (painful as that is to write) may have been overtaken by the knowledge that culminated in gynaecology, as humans learned to help each other through the process of big brains travelling through narrow pelvises. Perhaps our ancestors also used that knowledge to time births with harvests or help…

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