Everything You Always Wanted to Know. . .

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Along with our bigger heads and brains, the female of this new species developed a unique set of reproductive traits, including periodic menses that were attuned to the phases of the moon. For complex reasons, these various changes gave women an unprecedented control over when (or if) to reproduce, thus breaking what Shlain calls the age-old "sexual monopoly" enjoyed by the strongest males.

But their new power had a price. Periodic blood loss drained women of iron, an element crucial to life, especially fetal development. That might have doomed our species if not for the adaptive edge it gave us in return. Shlain theorizes that females used their bodily rhythms to develop one of our greatest intellectual skills -- a sense of time -- then shared it with males to make them better hunters. What did women want? The iron in meat. Which men bartered for what they wanted.

This sexual economy may have fueled the creative tension that made us what we are today -- a brilliant predator with a split personality. Shlain suggests that "males have spent the last 150,000 years trying to regain the power they so emphatically lost to females" when women discovered the power of saying no, and maybe. One result is misogynistic rage; another is the male capacity for what otherwise is nearly nonexistent in nature, fatherly love. Go figure.

5. What do men want?

Generally, anything that will distract them from ever having to visualize "sperm competition."

6. Are people having more or less sex today?

With the human population surging past 6 billion, we can say that people today are more or less having sex, and leave it at that. It's a frisky planet.

7. How many genders are there?

A trick question. Certain feminists and queer theorists have argued that what we call gender is really a kind of performance. Meanwhile, scientists disagree over just how flexible our sexual identities really are -- a debate played out famously in the case of a boy born in 1966 who lost his penis in a medical accident and was unsuccessfully "reassigned" to be a girl. Meanwhile, geneticists will tell you that male and female traits get mixed in every imaginable way, including creatures split right down the middle

So how many genders are there? Two: the gorgeous young, and everyone else.

8. Is homosexuality natural?

Yes. Homosexuality abounds in nature. Indeed, homosexuality is nature at its enigmatic best, in that it reminds us how little the natural order gives a damn about what humans think they ought to be.

Same-sex activity between animals (and between animals and humans) has been portrayed in human art since the cave paintings at Lascaux. Though earlier peoples wove their knowledge of homosexual and transgendered animals into ritual and lore, modern scientists were slow to accept how common these phenomena were. Now that it's been well documented, nature's flamboyance is clearly a challenge to religious fundamentalists. Less obviously, the reductive view of sex held by certain hardcore neo-Darwinians may also need rethinking.

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