
Sex, Time, and Power
How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $25.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Bob Souer
-
By:
-
Leonard Shlain
About this listen
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 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
-
Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts
- A History of Sex for Sale
- By: Kate Lister
- Narrated by: Kate Lister
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The history of selling sex is a hidden one—and too often its practitioners are pushed to the margins of history. This book redresses the balance, revealing the history of the sex trade through the eyes of sex workers, from medieval streets to Wild West saloons, and from brothels to state bedrooms. Lister invites listeners to reconsider everything they thought they knew about the world's oldest profession. Together, these tales of sex workers from around the world and throughout history provide a powerful context to contemporary debates about sexuality and the empowerment of women.
-
-
10/10!!
- By sparklebean on 03-07-23
By: Kate Lister
-
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess
- The Conflict Between Word and Image
- By: Leonard Shlain
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 24 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who changed the sex of God? This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values.
-
-
Can't Even Get Started
- By Marie on 02-08-19
By: Leonard Shlain
-
Leonardo's Brain
- Understanding da Vinci's Creative Genius
- By: Leonard Shlain
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why.
-
-
As distracted as Da Vinci
- By D. McCracken on 05-12-15
By: Leonard Shlain
-
The Bluest Eye
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the story of 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
-
-
Amazing
- By psiegler on 07-25-18
By: Toni Morrison
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
Magic
- A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present
- By: Chris Gosden
- Narrated by: Clarke Peters
- Length: 19 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on decades of research around the world - touching on the first known horoscope, a statue ordered into exile, and the mystical power of tattoos - Gosden shows what magic can offer us today and how we might use it to rethink our relationship with the world. Magic is an original, singular, and sweeping work of scholarship, and its revelations will leave a spell on the listener.
-
-
Outstanding Readable Survey of Recent Scholarship
- By Earth Lover on 09-06-21
By: Chris Gosden
-
Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts
- A History of Sex for Sale
- By: Kate Lister
- Narrated by: Kate Lister
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The history of selling sex is a hidden one—and too often its practitioners are pushed to the margins of history. This book redresses the balance, revealing the history of the sex trade through the eyes of sex workers, from medieval streets to Wild West saloons, and from brothels to state bedrooms. Lister invites listeners to reconsider everything they thought they knew about the world's oldest profession. Together, these tales of sex workers from around the world and throughout history provide a powerful context to contemporary debates about sexuality and the empowerment of women.
-
-
10/10!!
- By sparklebean on 03-07-23
By: Kate Lister
-
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess
- The Conflict Between Word and Image
- By: Leonard Shlain
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 24 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who changed the sex of God? This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values.
-
-
Can't Even Get Started
- By Marie on 02-08-19
By: Leonard Shlain
-
Leonardo's Brain
- Understanding da Vinci's Creative Genius
- By: Leonard Shlain
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why.
-
-
As distracted as Da Vinci
- By D. McCracken on 05-12-15
By: Leonard Shlain
-
The Bluest Eye
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the story of 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
-
-
Amazing
- By psiegler on 07-25-18
By: Toni Morrison
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
Magic
- A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present
- By: Chris Gosden
- Narrated by: Clarke Peters
- Length: 19 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on decades of research around the world - touching on the first known horoscope, a statue ordered into exile, and the mystical power of tattoos - Gosden shows what magic can offer us today and how we might use it to rethink our relationship with the world. Magic is an original, singular, and sweeping work of scholarship, and its revelations will leave a spell on the listener.
-
-
Outstanding Readable Survey of Recent Scholarship
- By Earth Lover on 09-06-21
By: Chris Gosden
-
Native Son
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
-
-
Simply a classic
- By Noah Smith on 11-11-10
By: Richard Wright
-
Sex
- Lessons from History
- By: Fern Riddell
- Narrated by: Fern Riddell
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Statistically speaking, only one out of every one thousand sexual acts between a man and a woman will result in a pregnancy. And, as we know, sex does not solely take place just between men and women. So: what is sex for? In this wide-ranging and powerful new history of sex, Dr Fern Riddell will uncover the sexual lives of our ancestors and show that, just like us, they were as preoccupied with sexual identities, masturbation, foreplay, sex and deviance; facing it with the same confusion, joy and accidental hilarity that we do today.
-
-
What a colossal topic!!
- By linsey on 08-25-21
By: Fern Riddell
-
The Creation of Patriarchy
- By: Gerda Lerner
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A major new work by a leading historian and pioneer in women's studies, The Creation of Patriarchy is a radical reconceptualization of Western civilization that makes gender central to its analysis. Gerda Lerner argues that male dominance over women is not "natural" or biological, but the product of an historical development begun in the second millennium BC in the Ancient Near East. As patriarchy as a system of organizing society was established historically, she contends, it can also be ended by the historical process.
-
-
Why isn’t this being taught in all high schools?
- By AM on 02-12-22
By: Gerda Lerner
-
Insatiable Wives
- Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them
- By: David J. Ley
- Narrated by: Rose Caraway
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before the term cuckold was a common word thrown around in the media, Dr. Ley explored the history and science of cuckolding. This groundbreaking work explores why and how some men not only allow, but encourage, their wives to pursue sexual relationships with other men.
-
-
Challenge your marriage
- By A.C.V. on 05-09-23
By: David J. Ley
-
Sex at Dawn
- How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships
- By: Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson, Jonathan Davis, Christopher Ryan (Preface)
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science - as well as religious and cultural institutions - has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing....
-
-
Strawmen and Ad Hominems
- By Carolyn on 09-18-12
By: Christopher Ryan, and others
-
Ancient Writing and the History of the Alphabet
- By: John McWhorter, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Embark on a journey to the very beginning of writing as a tool of language and see how the many threads of history and linguistics came together to create the alphabet that forms the foundation of English writing. Your guide is Professor John McWhorter of Columbia University and in the 16 lectures of Ancient Writing and the History of the Alphabet, he will help you navigate the complex linguistic and cultural history behind one of our most crucial tools of communication.
-
-
Great Storytelling!
- By Jared M. Leitzel on 10-22-23
By: John McWhorter, and others
-
Asian Journals
- India and Japan (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)
- By: Joseph Campbell
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the beginning of his career, Joseph Campbell developed a lasting fascination with the cultures of the Far East, and explorations of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy later became recurring motifs in his vast body of work. However, Campbell had to wait until middle age to visit the lands that inspired him so deeply. In 1954, he took a sabbatical from his teaching position and embarked on a year-long voyage through India, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally Japan.
-
-
What a journey!
- By Anonymous User on 08-11-18
By: Joseph Campbell
-
Primitive Mythology
- The Masks of God Series, Volume I
- By: Joseph Campbell, David Kudler - editor
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The author of such acclaimed books as The Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth discusses the primitive roots of mythology, examining them in light of the most recent discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology.
-
-
Epic speculation into the origins of our mythic consciousness
- By BGZ on 01-10-19
By: Joseph Campbell, and others
-
The World of J.R.R. Tolkien
- By: Dimitra Fimi, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Dimitra Fimi
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The World of J.R.R. Tolkien, you will join Dr. Dimitra Fimi to delve into Tolkien’s complex and multilayered mythology, examining all these ingredients and more. In these 10 lectures, you will explore and appreciate Middle-earth as medieval, mythological, and modern, a literary creation that was shaped by forces old and new. And you may be surprised to discover just how much of Tolkien’s legendarium was constructed posthumously, with his son Christopher compiling and publishing many of Tolkien’s later works after his death.
-
-
Calls Tolkien a racist and sexist
- By Kevin on 09-29-22
By: Dimitra Fimi, and others
-
Unmentionable
- The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners
- By: Therese Oneill
- Narrated by: Betsy Foldes Meiman
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you ever wished you could live in an earlier, more romantic era? Ladies, welcome to the 19th century, where there's arsenic in your face cream, a pot of cold pee sits under your bed, and all of your underwear is crotchless. (Why? Shush, dear. A lady doesn't question.) Unmentionable is your hilarious, scandalously honest (yet never crass) guide to the secrets of Victorian womanhood.
-
-
I hope my review does this book justice.
- By jb11 on 12-13-17
By: Therese Oneill
-
Survival of the Prettiest
- The Science of Beauty
- By: Nancy Etcoff
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Survival of the Prettiest, Nancy Etcoff, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a practicing psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, argues that beauty is neither a cultural construction, an invention of the fashion industry, nor a backlash against feminism - it's in our biology.
-
-
who is this lady?
- By Mark on 01-14-20
By: Nancy Etcoff
-
Metazoa
- Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind
- By: Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Narrated by: Mitch Riley, Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom — the Metazoa— they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.
-
-
Philosophy Meets Biology
- By aaron on 01-22-21
eye-opening
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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!
I am grateful you are so curious and bright.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Do I make you horny baby?
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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.
I loved this book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An intellectualized interpretation of the book of genesis
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very interesting account of the relationship of us
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I couldn’t stop listening.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’m sad he has passed, he was a great mind
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well done Shlain, well done....
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Almost perfect
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.