O que sabemos do nosso passado

Once upon a time, there was an ape that stood up. Why it stood up nobody knows, but once upright it found it could use its hands to fashion tools from sticks and stones. So it stayed standing up. And once it decided to stay standing up, its brain started to grow. Why its brain started to grow nobody knows, but with a bigger brain the ape, which was by now an ape-man, could make better tools and even speak. Why it started to speak nobody knows. And by then it wasn’t an ape-man any more, but a human. And those humans with the most developed brains – Homo sapiens – used their cunning to spread throughout the world. All the many other kinds of human and ape-man died. Why they died nobody knows.

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A surprising number of these mysteries concern female sexuality. The male orgasm, for example, serves a rather obvious seed-sowing function – but what is the point of its female equivalent? The popular hypothesis that such ecstasy enhances the likelihood of a subsequent pregnancy is, Barash informs us, entirely without evidence. The idea that it might motivate reluctant ladies also seems flawed: other animals don’t require an eruption of bliss in order to continue the family line. Perhaps it is simply a “non-adaptive by-product” – an incidental development to which evolution is indifferent?

Barash doesn’t think so, preferring to believe that it is more important than that. But in what way remains a riddle – and only one of many posed by the female body. Scientists cannot explain, for example, why women have prominent breasts even when they are not suckling children. Other mammals don’t. Yes, of course, men are drawn to these protruding sacks of fat – but why? No one knows, though theories abound.

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Ensaio de Stephen Cave, no Financial Times, sobre as certezas e as dúvidas do nosso passado evolucionário. Aconselhado pelo Francisco José Viegas - não é ainda rotina imaginá-lo, em primeiro, como o nosso Secretário de Estado da Cultura, mas é bom revê-lo na blogosfera.

Hermenegildo Espinoza