The Natural Superiority of Women (23 page)

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Authors: Ashley Montagu

Tags: #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #Women's Studies, #test

BOOK: The Natural Superiority of Women
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the brain. Chemical differences have been found by one group of investigators, but no one has the faintest idea what the significance of these differences may be. While it has been claimed that the female has a better blood supply to her brain, in that the combined diameters of her internal carotid and vertebral arteries in relation to total brain mass are greater than those of the male, it would seem unlikely that this fact, if it is a fact, has any bearing upon the matter of intelligence. In the words of Havelock Ellis, ''To sum up, it may be said that investigation has shown that the ancient view which credited men with a significantly larger amount of nervous tissue than women has been altogether overthrown. There is much better ground for the latter view, according to which, relative to size, the nervous superiority belongs to women."

7

Beginning in the early 1990s, new methods were developed for detecting what happens while thinking. For this purpose various powerful imaging technologies were developed, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and positron emission technology (PET). By means of such instruments it now is possible to observe something of what is going on in the brain as it reacts to thinking, feeling, emotions, remembering, problem solving, mathematical activity, reading faces, making judgments, idling, and the like. These images tell us where, and in which side of the brain, things are happening. The fundamental discovery thus far is that the two lobes, or hemispheres of the brain function very differently in women. In women as well as men, the left hemisphere is found to be normally dominant for language functions, while the right hemisphere is prominently involved with spatial and nonverbal relations. This does not mean that each hemisphere is either exclusive or independent from the other, for every function seems to be capable of representation on either side. Hence, though one now speaks of the left/right brain, men tend to rely more on one or other hemisphere when processing information, whereas women will use both hemispheres; in other words, the male brain is more
lateralized .
Since processing information is what the brain does for a living, it is evident that women use their brains more efficiently than men.
The structural system that makes possible communication between both hemispheres of the brain is the corpus callosum, the largest fiber tract of the brain and the main highway of communication between both hemispheres. The corpus callosum contains

 

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more than 300 million nerve fibers, which are largely distributed within the six layers of the gray matter, the cortex, of the brain. The cortex has been estimated to contain as high as a trillion neurons, not surprisingly since that is where most of the business of the mind is conducted. Cortical neurons with different thresholds and kinds of excitatory responses, serving the nervous system, are always modifiable by environmental factors contributing to the structure and quality of the widely different functions, and ultimately the conditioning of behavior.
Furthermore, in women the corpus callosum is larger than it is in men, also each of its fore and aft regions, known as
commisures,
are enriched by additional bundles of neurons, which contribute to the more efficient coordination of both hemispheres. In short, neuroscientific studies have revealed that the female brain is structurally and functionally more highly developed and capable of thinking more soundly and intuitively than the male brain.
Finally, it should be noted that from their late teens until their middle age, men lose brain tissue at almost three time the rate of women, and tend to be mentally less lively then women.
One of the earliest experiences that drew my attention, as a student, to the natural superiority of women was the observation that in the general character of the skull the female appeared to fulfill the promise, the evolutionary promise, of the child rather more significantly than did the male. This idea was by no means original with me. I can no longer recall the circumstances that led to my encountering it, though I know that in my capacity as a physical anthropologist the study of many thousands of skulls helped. I think it was in the pages of Ellis's
Man and Woman,
or perhaps in the pages of someone quoting Ellis, that I first grasped the full significance of the differences that struck me when comparing male and female crania.
Ellis pointed out that the infant of the great apes (gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan) resembles the human being much more closely than does the adult ape, for the features of the ape as it grows older become more and more animallike. To the extent that
Homo sapiens
is apelike, the resemblance is, on the whole, to the infant and not to the adult ape. While man and woman in the course of their individual development fall somewhat away from the bountiful cranial promise of their early years, the ape

 

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in the course of its development departs very much more from the promise of its infancy than human beings do. Humans as they grow remain more like the infant than does the ape. The skulls of an infant gorilla and of an infant human being closely resemble each other, and the skull of the infant gorilla in many respects more closely resembles that of an adult human than it does that of an adult gorilla. But as the ape grows, the skull departs more and more from its infant form, so that the adult ape skull turns out to look so unlike the infant ape skull that, comparing one with the other, one would hardly believe they belonged to the same species.
The adult human skull preserves the promise of the infant human skull very much more than does the adult gorilla the promise of the infant gorilla skull. In other words, the adult human being is an infantilized or pedomorphic type, a type which has evolved by preserving some ancestral youthful characteristics; the adult gorilla is an aged or gerontomorphic type, a type that has undergone evolutionary change as the result of the accentuated development of already adult traits.
The skull of the human infant has a rather globular brain box, which relatively overshadows the small face; the bones are smooth and delicately made; the teeth are small and efficient. The more an adult skull approaches in appearance the human infant or late fetal skull, the more human it looks. The human female skull more closely resembles that of an infant than does the male skull. The human female, therefore, maintains the evolutionary promise of the fetal or infant skull more than does the male. The female is in the vanguard of evolution in this respect; the male falls somewhat behind.
As far as human beings are concerned, most authorities today believe that
Homo sapiens
is not only a predomorphic type, but even more a fetalized type; that is, the adult human being preserves many of the physical traits characteristic of the fetus. The infant shows these traits even more markedly than the adult; for example, in the general lack of body hair, the big head, the flatness of the face, and the root of the nose, which is associated with the epicanthic fold, the fold of skin of the upper eyelid that tends to cover the inner corner of the eye, that so many infants for a time exhibit. There are also the traits of the general smoothness of the bones of the skeleton, the correlated

 

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absence of eyebrow ridges and other bony ridges and tuberosities, the short legs and long trunk, and fewer hairs to the square centimeter. In other words, humans are in many ways very much like a big fetus. Actually, the ethnic type whose adult members most closely preserve these fetal traits is the mongoloid, and these are, perhaps, best represented by the Chinese peoples. To a lesser degree these traits are characteristic of all human beings, but in non-mongoloid people they are not quite so marked in the adult stage as they are in earlier years.
Most authorities are agreed upon the important point that the infant type is the type toward which human development is directed and that human evolution has actually come about as a result of the slowing down and stretching out of our development, in the womb and especially after birth. This kind of development is known as
neoteny .

8
For a species having one infant at a birth and not a litter, it becomes very important for the survival of the species that the baby be well nourished and prepared before it is exposed to the dangers of postnatal life. This is as true of the anthropoid apes as of humans; but, as we have seen, the fetalization process becomes arrested in the ape much earlier than it does in the human.

The progress of the human species has been a progress in youthfulness, in growing young rather than old. Woman exhibits that progress to a more conspicuous degree than does man, not only physically but also behaviorally. As Sir Arthur Keith has stated, "In mankind there has been a tendency to carry the joy of youth and the carefree spirit into adult life; the retention of a youthful mentality is commoner among women than among men."
9
The female, in most respects, is a more highly fetalized type than man, and adheres more closely to the line of evolutionary development indicated by the child than does the male. As Havelock Ellis wrote in
Man and Woman,
When we have realized the position of the child in relation to evolution we can take a clearer view as to the natural position of woman. She bears the special characteristic of humanity in a higher degree than man . . . and led evolution in the matter of hairiness, simply because she is nearer the child. Her conservatism is thus compensated and justified by the fact that she represents more nearly than man the human type to which man is approximating.
10

 

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In more senses than one, Jesus' words have a profound meaning: "Except ye . . . become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3).
If human beings continue upon this earth, they will probably continue to evolve in the direction of a greater prolongation of infancy and childhood and a progressively increasing slowing down of maturity.

11
Just as modern humans have lost the heavily developed brow ridges and protruding jaws of their prehistoric ancestors, so it is likely that they will continue to lose many of their present distinguishing adult characteristics. As Schiller wrote long ago in
Dignity of Women,
"From the bewitching gracefulness of the features shines forth the fulfillment of humanity."

 

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5
When "X" Doesn't Equal "Y"
We have already seen that there is good reason to believe that the female enjoys, on the whole, a substantial biological advantage compared with the male. Does there exist some biological differentiating factor that may serve to explain or possibly throw some light on the origin and meaning of these differences? The answer is, yes. I do not know that anyone has previously made anything of a key fact that lies at the base of practically all the differences between the sexes and the biological superiority of the female to the male. I refer to the chromosomal structure of the sexes, the chromosomes being the small cellular bodies that carry the heredity material, or genes, which so substantially influence the development and fate of the organism.
In the sex cells there are twenty-three chromosomes, but only one of these is a sex chromosome. There are two kinds of sex chromosomes, X and Y. Half of all sperm cells carry X and half carry Y chromosomes. All female ova in the female ovaries contain only X chromosomes. When an X-bearing sperm and an ovum unite, the offspring is always female, XX. When a Ybearing sperm unites with an ovum, the offspring is always male, XY. It is the initial genetic, or constitutional, difference between the sexes. This is not to say that the sex chromosomes are eventually entirely responsible for the development of all

 

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