Author Description

'Female' is a disarmingly simple title, but here's a book that deals with an age-old problem; why are men and women so different?History hasn't been much help - history has been written by men from the very earliest date. But carvings and drawings on pyramids and frescoes from Greece show women as a forceful presence: But art has always been kind to women. Archaeology and anthropology tell a different story; women have always been a vitally strong force in early human society, but patriarchal forces usurped their influence as soon as humans departed from their primate origins.They did so because a vital mutation conferred recall; the ability to think and plan ahead, based on remembered events.So humans fashioned tools, women being primesources of inventive ideas. Ethnology (studies of societies as yet unaffected by industrial production for example), shows how women play a crucial rolein exploiting natural resources; garnering fruit and foodstuffs in a way that preserves the seasonal bounty. Nature replenishes itself under her care.'Sensory Intuition', as defined here, is a natural instinct that guides her behaviour. But the baskets she made, the hides she sewed, the fish traps made from woven reeds or branches, perished with time. Unlike the first flint tools - like those discovered by Sonia Harmand near Olduvai Gorge in Africa - that date from 3,500,000 years ago ( the Earth's Magnetic field flips into reverse periodically and give a precise time-line, written in the stone). But nothing fashioned from natural materials lasts long. Scientists have ignored this 'abductive' approach as applied to pre-history. But we know that a huge swathe of time, perhaps ten million years, equates better with the long pedigree of humans as thinking beings. Women were there, crucially shaping human survival.In the first epochs of human advance, men were not necessarily the powerful, dominant creatures grunting their way through today's comic books and films. The 'Recall Mutation' p