The Battle between Gyna and Homo sapiens
daya dissanayake
Leonard Shlain, a vascular surgeon by profession, used the term Gyna sapiens for the female of Homo sapiens, in his 2003 book 'Sex, Time & Power'. He says that Gyna sapiens rose to the challenge of evolution 150,000 years ago, from Homo erectus, leaving her male counterpart, Homo sapiens, trailing behind.
Shlain explains the new label. "So much greater were the changes in the female of the new species than those of the male that it would have been more accurate for scientists to have named our genus and species Gyna sapiens, rather than Homo sapiens". It was the female who faced the crisis at childbirth, after she began to walk on two legs and her infant developed an unusually large brain. If not for her evolutionary adaptations human species would have become extinct, long ago.
"The male and the female brains show anatomical, functional and biochemical differences in all stages of life....Both sexes are equal in intelligence, but tend to operate differently. Men and women appear to use different parts of the brain... (Zeenat F. Zaidi, Faculty of Medicine, King Saudi University) This observation justify the use of Gyna sapiens, as a separate identity for womenkind.
If Gyna too behaved like Homo, humankind would have disappeared from the face of the earth thousands of years ago. They would not have been able to survive. The woman outlives the man, under most conditions, in the most sophisticated social conditions in a city of a 'developed' country, or in the most underdeveloped village in an Asian or African country. Survival of the fittest is proven once again. In the U.S. women live at least five years longer than men, but the women's life expectancy is declining, probably because they too are beginning to live more like men. In Sri Lanka women live for 76.2 on average while men average only 68.8. In Japan women's life expectancy at birth is 86.1 while for men it is only 79.0 (2005-2010). In Mozambique women 39.0, men 38.3. Women are still ahead even in the country with the lowest life expectancy. (UN statistics)
Homo is not fit enough to survive. He could be bigger in size and have more muscle strength. But he lacks endurance. He cannot face either joy or sadness, pain or pleasure by himself. He cannot face physical exertion. He needs external props like alcohol and other substance to face all these situations. Men and women work together in the fields, but it is only the men who need the alcohol in the evening. When they face separation from a loved one, the man needs to console himself with alcohol, while the woman could face it by releasing her emotions by crying.
Very often, a mother has been able to bring up her children much more successfully after her husband is gone. She is able to manage her family better when she becomes the 'man of the house', to use a male chauvinist phrase.
It is the men in the family who consume more meat even though it is the women who need the meat for the proteins and iron, which she has to replenish regularly due to loss of blood. On this issue Leonard Shlain could be challenged, about women needing more meat, because in India, women have survived without consuming any form of animal flesh for several thousand years, and they are as fit as any woman in the west, and far superior to their men. In most parts of the world, It is the men who consume most of the food and the women have to be satisfied with the leftovers, and yet she is healthier. Even in countries where women have the opportunity to share their food equally, they consume much less than the male, because their bodies are more efficient, they need less nutrients and less calories.
Even in ancient times, according to Evelyn Reed, women gathered food for themselves and their children: men hunted food for themselves. She claims that the most reliable sources of food were not animal but vegetable. (Women's Evolution, 1975)
Men claim that they have larger and heavier brains than women. What they do not wish to admit is that women are excelling them in academic and industrial and technical fields using their smaller brains, which in turn means the smaller brain is more efficient. The claim by Homo against the Gyno is like a claim that a bulky desktop PC is higher in capacity than a notebook.
Men were so happy with the chauvinist statements by Charles Darwin, "the child, the female, and the senile white all had the intellect and nature of the grown-up Negro". Here Darwin was completely wrong, because women and Negros often have far superior brain power than some adult whites, and old age does not bring senility affects on the brain.
In 1997 Dean Falk at the State University of New York, pointed out that the size of the female human brain is larger in proportion to body size, than is the male brain and has just as many neurons.
One more argument brought up by Darwin was "that a weak man unless he was a good hunter is seldom permitted to keep a wife that a stronger man thinks worth his notice". This does not prove that man is higher on the ladder of evolution, but it only shows the barbaric nature of the less evolved man. Darwin had also ignored that the woman and the children did not depend on the man for their food.
J. M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer and Jake Page, published 'the Invisible Sex, uncovering the true role of Women in Prehistory (Smithsonian, 2007), where they say, "Most paleoanthropologists make the assumption that men, particularly, are the known representatives of hominid evolution." In this book we find mention of the famous footprints discovered by Mary Leaky in Tanzania. One set of prints were larger than the other and the immediate conclusion was that it was a man and a woman. Based on these footprints from 3.6 million years ago, the American Museum of Natural History in New York created a diorama showing "the couple walking through the desolate landscape volcanic ash, the volcano still smoking on the horizon...the female head is turned: she looks slightly alarmed,,,the male is looking forward, resolute, his arm resting (positively or affectionately or both) across her shoulders". A most romantic scene. The height of imagination, unfortunately a male dominated imagination. Adrienne Zihlman of the university of California at Santa Cruze has questioned the large-male small-female hypothesis, and suggested that the footprints could have been of a parent and offspring. A mother could have been leaving the volcano threatened zone with her daughter. Probably the man already escaped, leaving them behind.
The same book mentions another such incident about the pointed fragment of wood found in Clacton-on-the-Sea in England. "It has been interpreted by most scholars as a deliberately fashioned spear point, but it could equally well be the fragment of a 300,000 year old digging stick". A digging stick would have been used by a woman, and probably made by her, not to kill animals, but to dig up a tuber.
They quote from Sally Mcbrearty and Marc Monitz, of the likelihood that females among the early hominids were most likely to be the tool makers - or at least the most intense tool makers. This suggests that even then men were just lazy idlers, while the women foraged, processed food, reared children and kept the family together. Not only tools, even language may have originated with the women. They needed to communicate with their children. Protospeech could have developed from a 'vocal patter' or 'motherese'.
If Gyna sapiens had not surrendered herself to Homo, this world would have been a really wonderful place for all life forms, not just human beings. Gyna is more sensitive, more concerned about nature, about Mother Earth and all her children. There would have been less wars, need for less weapons of destruction. Because Gyna sapiens would feel the pain of a mother who has to see the murder of her child by another human being. She would have a greater respect for commonly shared resources and wealth and would be frugal in her use, knowing she has to leave it for her children and their children.
It is time for women to claim their due place in society, as a separate being, Gyna sapiens. The superior animal, higher in the evolutionary ladder, more intelligent and fitter than Homo sapiens to survive.