Sex, Time, and Power

How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution

By: Leonard Shlain

Narrated by: Bob Souer

Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

As in the best-selling The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, Leonard Shlain's provocative book promises to change the way listeners view themselves and where they came from.

Sex, Time, and Power offers a tantalizing answer to an age-old question: Why did big-brained Homo sapiens suddenly emerge some 150,000 years ago? The key, according to Shlain, is female sexuality. Drawing on an awesome breadth of research, he shows how, long ago, the narrowness of the newly bipedal human female's pelvis and the increasing size of infants' heads precipitated a crisis for the species. Natural selection allowed for the adaptation of the human female to this environmental stress by reconfiguring her hormonal cycles, entraining them with the periodicity of the moon. The results, however, did much more than ensure our existence; they imbued women with the concept of time, and gave them control over sex - a power that males sought to reclaim. And the possibility of achieving immortality through heirs drove men to construct patriarchal cultures that went on to dominate so much of human history.

From the nature of courtship to the evolution of language, Shlain's brilliant and wide-ranging exploration stimulates new thinking about very old matters.

©2003 Leonard Shlain (P)2020 Tantor

I loved this book

There are so many interesting ideas here. Sure, the archaeology, and the science hasn’t caught up to prove or disprove Shlain’s thesis.

I think it’s best to read this thinking of Shlain as an artist as opposed to a scientist.

He is setting out some big ideas for us to contemplate certainly it’s a scientific way of looking at human evolution, but it ties together the evolution of the social structures that make up our complex society with our biological evolution, which is quite mysterious.

I am actually a believer in the supernatural and the spirit world, but I also believe in evolutionary biology, but then again, I am an artist not a scientist, and an artist can hold contradictory ideas in their head, and find a way to see the possibility of them both.

I would like to extend Leonard Shlain a tiny amount of artistic license and allow him to take us on these thoroughly imagined thought exercises.

If you are a scientist dive in, pick up the argument, what would it take to prove or disprove his thesis? If you’ve already made up your mind about everything well, this is probably not the book for you.

Do I make you horny baby?

The books is an interesting one...I preferred his Alphabet Versus the Goddess book in depth and content. in listening to this book I am reminded of our hairy shitting dying ape nature! but of course, we are more than that. have a listen and see what stands out to you.

I am grateful you are so curious and bright.

This book has so much wisdom in it to criticize anything here in my opinion is a fool’s errand.
You dissect details subjective in nature as clever as one possibly could knowing the ambiguity of such a illusive subject is challenging to say the least.
Worth reading a few times! Thank you!

Very interesting account of the relationship of us

this is a very thorough and interesting account of the biology of men and women and how we relate to one another, it has much to do with our hormones and Cave Man and Woman days!

Well done Shlain, well done....

This book was interesting. Shlain has done a good job putting things together to elucidate our past and it's impacts on now.

I couldn’t stop listening.

Fascinating book, accessible to the science-averse, and very thought provoking. Special kudos to the narrator for delivering the words in a way that’s engaging without ever veering into the kind of cloying performance that has forced me to abandon many books whose content was not the problem.

Really boring

This is like reading a text book about woman’s periods I can’t believe anyone who write this

A man explains women

As a woman, I thought this book was going to be interesting at the least and empowering at best. It’s neither. It’s just a man expounding on his own theories about why women [insert phenomenon]. Just as has been happening in academia and medical science for a very long time. We’re right here, guys, you can just ask us questions. Please stop guessing, it’s getting embarrassing for you.

The narrator did fine. This time it was the material that was vapid and not worth the listen.

Interesting conjecture

The author has some interesting conjectures about the impact of physiology, and overall does a pretty good job of trying to address the power balance between females and males of our species, Though he sincerely wishes to respect gyne-sapiens as he refers to females of our species, he also is stuck in some out of date thinking about gender roles and the behaviors of "males" vs "females". For example, he describes male penguins as some how unusual for minding the egg when the female has to go eat, because minding the egg is a female role. He seems oblivious to the fact that by attributing egg minding to a female role, he is applying human bias. It is no more odd that male penguins tend their eggs than sea horse males or some species of toads which tend their fertilized eggs - it is the result of evolution. But this is only one of many, many points where he is stuck in mid-20th century thinking. And this book is 20 years old, so I guess that it isn't surprising. (I would like Audible to show the publish dates with the title of a book.) While I find his conjecture on the impact of bipedalism on human relationships, I find the book overall to be too full of sweeping generalizations and assumptions. It is an interesting thought experiment, and worth discussing - but I hope you can read with a critical mindset so you can separate the wheat from the chaff. In all honesty, I can't even finish this book, because for me, the chaff built up a bit too much.