Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

The book explores human evolution from a female perspective, focusing on some of the known female ancestors of humanity. Though the focus of evolutionary science is on many of the male ancestors, there are some well-known female ones as well, including Lucy, or Australopithecus afarensis. However, many of the other female ancestors are not as commonly known, especially to people outside of the evolutionary field. The book explores the female ancestors it traces back in order of their existence. It also shows the gradual process that evolution took to form the human race, with the timeline going as far back as 200 million years. It begins with Morganucodon 205 million years ago, Protungulatum donnae and Purgatorius 67 to 63 million years ago, Ardipithecus ramidus 4.4 million years ago, Homo habilis 2.8 to 1.5 million years ago, Homo erectus 1.89 million to 100,000 years ago, and finally Homo sapiens about 300,000 years ago to the present day (21-22).

The book shows the lengthy and steady, but also painful and beautiful, process of female hominins’ transformation into female humans. It details humans’ ancestors, beginning as egg-laying, lactating monotremes and then becoming placental mammals giving birth to live young.