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

by Cat Bohannon

Remember, this is the Middle Ages. At the time, Islam wasn’t just more egalitarian than European societies. It was also more intellectually productive. Because Muslims believed reading the Quran was vital for the soul, these societies expected all children, male and female, to be literate and well educated—not just in the Quran, but in a range of topics they found valuable: visual arts, mathematics, the sciences, even music. Public education was both available and well funded. Public schooling didn’t take hold among the Christians of Europe and North America until the Industrial Revolution. If you were a child born between 1100 and 1400, you definitely wanted to be born in an Islamic society, whether you were male or female. The payoffs were enormous. Islam’s golden age produced algebra, chemistry, the magnetic compass, better modes of navigation, and all sorts of advancements in medicine and biology. While Europe was busy telling itself the plague was caused by an evil fog, Islamic doctors had already figured out that copper and silver instruments were best for surgery (the metals are antimicrobial). Philosophy also flourished, with new ideas about humane government and social interdependence, many of which directly influenced the rise of the European Enlightenment. The golden age of Islam, in other words, produced one of the most intellectual, egalitarian, cosmopolitan, and profoundly influential societies of its time. And women were right there at the fore, contributing...