to a need for an evolutionary adaptation if the species was to survive. Shlain states that natural selection adapted to these changes with changes in the female hormonal cycles. External signals of ovulation began to disappear and menses became somehow tied to the periodicity of the moon. Such connections, according to Shlain, allowed women to grasp the concept of month and its connection to both sex and pregnancy, and to use this knowledge to better conceptualize the future and to refuse sex during ovulation.
In terms of the influence of these adaptive changes on social and physical evolution, Shlain also explains that males learned these new conceptualizations from women and were, as a result, able to utilize the new and helpful concept of the future to become the most fearsome predators on the planet but they also discovered notions of their own mortality and that they could have no heirs. These insights concerning sex, death, and paternity are all said to have structured subsequent human culture. Thus, the idea of gender being social and sex being biological should not be construed to mean that they are entirely separate. Biological sex can and has influen
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