Word: morgans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Longer Penis. Morgan dauntlessly tackles the questions that interest and titillate most amateur and professional anthropologists: Why did human beings adopt face-to-face sex? And why did the human male develop the largest penis of any primate? In both cases, she maintains, convenience rather than pleasure was the decisive factor. Although an ape's vagina is easily accessible from the rear, the human vagina has moved forward and is "tidily tucked away" deep in the body, "possibly for protection against salt water and abrasive sand." Man's penis thus "grew longer for the same reason...
Fighting Canines. Elaine Morgan's scientific credentials do not quite measure up to those of, say, Charles Darwin. A 51-year-old mother of three children who lives in Mountain Ash, Wales, she earned an Oxford degree in English and gleaned most of her information about science "from reading books." Two men in particular inspired her. The first was Amateur Ethologist Robert Ardrey, the failed but imaginative playwright whose views she now rejects. The second was Oxford Zoologist Sir Alister Hardy, an authority on plankton who thought up a nonsexist version of aquatic evolution about a dozen years...
...flight of man's ancestors to the sea became inevitable, Morgan says, when "torrid heat waves began to scorch the African continent," killing off the trees and drying up the food supply. At the time, things were even tougher for the female than for the male: "She had a greedy and hectoring mate," she lacked his "fighting canines" (teeth, not dogs) to fend off enemies, "she was hampered by a clinging infant," and when chased by a carnivorous cat, she "found there was no tree she could run up to escape." She "loathed getting her feet wet," but "when...
...Morgan states, that the prehominid female began to walk on two feet instead of four to keep her head above water. It was also there that she-and not, as some theorists would have it, the male-became the first to use implements purposefully. Envying the male's dagger-like fangs that he could use to crunch through shells, she picked up a pebble and managed to crack a shell with it. "She tried it again, and it worked every time. So she became a tool user, and the male watched her and imitated...
...Morgan particularly bridles at one suggestion of male writers: that the anatomical changes in females during the transition from ape to woman came about largely to make females sexier. "All these things they write down as erogenous zones developed purely for functional purposes," she asserts. On the seashore, a well-padded underside is comfortable for sitting. In the water, body hair is a nuisance and disappears from most areas. But hair on mother's head is convenient for an infant to grab a hold of. "If the hair floated around her for a yard or so, he wouldn...