While appearing on a podcast recently to publicise her first book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution, Cat Bohannon found herself having to reassure the pregnant producer. In the book, which puts women back at the heart (and brain, and womb) of our evolutionary story, Bohannon describes pregnancy as “a dance between what the mother’s body needs and what her hungry offspring need, with each accommodation skirting just on the edge of killing one or both of them”.
At each stage, Bohannon makes clear just how unlikely human survival has been, with our narrow pelvises, huge heads, needy babies and hungry brains. And so, she argues, the innovations that have allowed our species to survive and flourish were not the spear, the wheel or the internet, but midwifery and gynaecology, wet nursing and prenatal care. Without our super-social cooperation, we’d have disappeared back in prehistoric Africa, leaving barely a fossil.
