The authors do write based on the assumption that evolution is correct, which is something I also believe. But it isn’t necessary to believe in evolution to learn from this book. It touches base on things like language skills, becoming bipedal, and even the evolution of the birth canal. The authors are great at putting everything into terms that any lay person can understand.



What I liked most about The Invisible Sex is that while it focuses on women, it doesn’t put down men or their role in the process of “becoming human”. They are not ignored and pushed to the side. Their roles, contributions and skills are acknowledged as well. ( )

This very interesting book argues that the role of women in prehistory has been vastly overlooked. Nothing new there--feminists have been pointing that out for decades. What does set "The Invisible Sex" apart from similar offerings in the field is its focus: it doesn't argue that women were also out there making war and hunting mastadon, but rather that women doing traditionally female things--weaving, making pottery, growing plants, indeed raising children--are pretty much responsible for the evolution of modern man. Unfortunately, the book doesn't examine this conclusion nearly as deeply as I would have liked. Part of this is due to its authorship: having three main writers is inevitably going to dilute a book's narrative. Part of it is due to the fact that it's been written for general readership and thus spends quite a bit of time discussing the history of paleoarchaeology. And part of it is due to the fact that there's quite a bit of misdirected answering in the text: the authors are obviously very enthusiastic about their respective fields, but this enthusiasm sometimes translates into long discussions that are tangential at best to the matter at hand. Finally, "The Invisible Sex" suffers from some odd word, phrasing, and tense choices, although this might have been taken care of in the official release (I have an ARC). Still, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in prehistory or women's studies.