ARC Review - Eve

 Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon

In Eve Cat Bohannon takes us on the evolutionary journey that led to modern humans, viewed through the lens of the female body. It’s a fascinating and engaging tour. Eve is well researched and thoroughly scientific while written with the non-scientist in mind.

Bohannon herself was pursuing her PhD while writing this book. She is a researcher with a Master’s in Creative Nonfiction and a PhD in Narrative and Cognition. She is also an author. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, and other periodicals. She has taught literary science writing at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.

In the introduction to her book Bohannon talks about the absence of females from modern medical research (which omits women from most studies), from evolutionary theory and from modern popular cultural representation. What Eve does is places females smack dab in the middle of the story and introduces us to research supporting a more complete view of how our evolution might have happened.

The Eve of the title is actually several Eves - those first females of our evolutionary ancestors to have some aspect of our biology or some behavioral adaptation that has led to us modern humans. “Morgie” the Morganucodon - from the late Triassic period some 200 million years ago - is the first Eve that Bohannon discusses. Morgie was a small, mousey mammal and the Eve of mammalian milk. From there we move through various Eves right up to today’s “Sapiens” (Homo Sapiens) the Eve of language, menopause and modern human love and sexism.

I found Bohannan’s chapter on Tools one of the most fascinating. Perhaps the most well-known and often discussed movie intro is that of 2001: A Space Odessey, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the Arthur C Clarke novel. In that opening sequence a group of our male forefathers, likely Homo Habilis, are depicted as the first toolmakers. That first tool is a bone which one of the males picks up. In his hands the bone becomes a weapon, and the weapon is used as an instrument of war. This is, obviously, a very male-centered depiction of the possible origin of tools, something Bohannon calls “Tool Triumphalism” - the male using his tools to hunt, to murder, and to dominate the Earth.

Bohannon takes that starting point and dives into biology and the study of some of our closest relatives among the primates to arrive at a different idea. Biology shows us that birthing humans, with our large baby heads, is uniquely difficult. Human babies are uniquely vulnerable and require care for far longer than other species. Yet Having babies grow to adulthood and be able to reproduce themselves is required for a species to survive.

Today there are 8 billion members of the Homo Sapiens species. How did we get here? Why are we so successful? Bohannon argues that the first human “tool”, and the basis for our success as a species is gynecology. Gynecology, which she defines as the many types of birth control, abortion and other fertility interventions, including midwifery, that allowed human reproduction to beat the odds our difficult childbearing. She finishes the chapter with a reimagined opening sequence for 2001 placing childbearing at the heart of the story.

RATING: Five Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating Comment: Cat Bohannon’s Eve will have you rethinking your understanding of what it means to have evolved to be human. The author takes you on an evolutionary journey that led to modern humans, viewed through the lens of the female body. It’s a brilliant book and the best book I’ve read so are this year. Highly recommended - Whether you were born with a female body or not.

NOTE: I read an advanced review copy courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher Alfred A. Knopf.

The book was released on October 3rd in North America in hardcover, ebook and audiobook. The paperback release is November 7th. The book will be available in the UK in hardcover, ebook and audiobook on December 10, 2023. The UK paperback releases May 5, 2024

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See What Others Think

• NYT (reprint at Trends Mag - no paywall): Putting Women at the Center of Human Evolution

• NPR: 'Eve' author says medicine often ignores female bodies. 'We've been guinea pigs'

• Kirkus Reviews: Prodigious research informs a spirited history of humanity.

  

• See Cat Bohannon’s brief overview (1 min 20) of her book Eve in this video from Blackwell’s Bookshops

• Listen to Tonya Mosley’s interview (43 min) with Cat Bohannon on Fresh Air.

Title: Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

Author: Cat Bohannon

Publisher: Alfred A Knopf (an imprint of Knopf Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House, which in turn is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann)

Publish Date: October 3, 2023

ISBN-13: 9780385350549 (US hardcover)

Publisher’s List Price: $35.00 (US hardcover)