
Correcting a glaring omission in science
Share
Rewriting the Evolutionary Story Through the Female Body
What if the human story didn’t start with “Man the Hunter,” but with Eve—the bleeding, birthing, adapting female body that shaped the entire species?
In Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, author and researcher Cat Bohannon sets out to correct a glaring omission in science: the near-erasure of women’s bodies from our understanding of how we evolved. With wit, rigor, and revolutionary clarity, Bohannon reframes evolution not as a male-centric narrative, but as a dynamic, complex, and female-led masterpiece of biology.
We honor the lived experience of the female body through a mind-body understanding, Eve is a powerful reclamation. It’s science—but finally in service to the full human story.
𖥸 What the Book Is About
Eve asks a provocative question: Why has biology ignored the female body for so long? And what happens when we put her back at the center of the story?
Bohannon weaves evolutionary biology, anthropology, and medical history into an expansive journey through deep time—from the first mammals to modern women. She brings into focus how menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, lactation, even multitasking brains shaped the development of Homo sapiens.
Key revelations include:
- The Evolution of Menstruation: Far from an inconvenience, it’s a finely tuned biological advantage linked to immune function and reproductive intelligence.
- Menopause as an Evolutionary Asset: The “Grandmother Hypothesis” suggests that human longevity and cultural transmission are directly tied to post-reproductive women.
- Female Pain is Understudied: For centuries, most medical research ignored female biology, leading to major gaps in how we understand pain, stress, and disease in women.
- Brains Wired for Adaptation: Female neurology evolved to handle social, emotional, and environmental complexity—crucial for survival.
- The Myth of the Universal Body: Medical research based on the “default male” has failed women in profound ways, from heart disease to drug testing.
With every chapter, Bohannon invites us to question the stories we’ve inherited—and to recognize that evolution isn’t just survival of the fittest. It’s survival of the wisest, the most connected, the most adaptable—and, often, the most female.
☯︎ Connection to Yinful
Yinful was built on a simple but radical truth: the female body is not a problem to fix, but a story to nourish.
Eve confirms what ancient medicine has known for millennia—that the body is not separate from the story of humanity. That menstruation, menopause, and even libido changes are not malfunctions, but meaningful shifts within a powerful biological lineage.
This book is science in the service of sovereignty. It gives women permission to be curious, to ask better questions, and to trust their embodied knowing.
And it reminds us: we’re not just part of evolution—we’re driving it.
꩜ Who Should Read Eve
- Women who’ve ever been told their pain is “normal” or “in their head”
- Anyone wanting an unbiased foundation in women's health
- People who's last formal 'health class' was in high school
- Couple trying to have kids (ESPECIALLY new and expecting fathers)
❀ Final Thoughts
Eve is equal parts revelation and reckoning. It rewrites the script not by erasing what we knew, but by completing the story. And it gives us a new lens: one that sees the female body not as a sidebar in human evolution, but as the main thread.
“This book is for every person whose biology has been under-described. For every woman who was told she was being ‘too sensitive.’ For every person whose body wasn’t studied—because it wasn’t the default.”
Understanding your body is a radical act of reclamation. Books like Eve fuel that revolution.
Interested in more great recommendations?