Sapiens: a brief History of Humankind

participate in popular assemblies or to be a judge. With few exceptions, such an
individual could not bene t from a good education, nor engage in business or in
philosophical discourse. None of Athens’ political leaders, none of its great
philosophers, orators, artists or merchants had a womb. Does having a womb
make a person un t, biologically, for these professions? The ancient Athenians
thought so. Modern Athenians disagree. In present-day Athens, women vote, are
elected to public o ce, make speeches, design everything from jewellery to
buildings to software, and go to university. Their wombs do not keep them from
doing any of these things as successfully as men do. True, they are still under-
represented in politics and business – only about 12 per cent of the members of
Greece’s parliament are women. But there is no legal barrier to their participation
in politics, and most modern Greeks think it is quite normal for a woman to serve
in public office.
Many modern Greeks also think that an integral part of being a man is being
sexually attracted to women only, and having sexual relations exclusively with the
opposite sex. They don’t see this as a cultural bias, but rather as a biological
reality – relations between two people of the opposite sex are natural, and
between two people of the same sex unnatural. In fact, though, Mother Nature
does not mind if men are sexually attracted to one another. It’s only human
mothers steeped in particular cultures who make a scene if their son has a ing
with the boy next door. The mother’s tantrums are not a biological imperative. A
signi cant number of human cultures have viewed homosexual relations as not

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only legitimate but even socially constructive, ancient Greece being the most
notable example. The 
Iliad
does not mention that Thetis had any objection to her
son Achilles’ relations with Patroclus. Queen Olympias of Macedon was one of the
most temperamental and forceful women of the ancient world, and even had her
own husband, King Philip, assassinated. Yet she didn’t have a t when her son,
Alexander the Great, brought his lover Hephaestion home for dinner.
How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people
merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology
enables, Culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of
possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realise some possibilities while
forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige
women to realise this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one
another – some cultures forbid them to realise this possibility.
Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a
biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by de nition
also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of
nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition. No culture has ever
bothered to forbid men to photosynthesise, women to run faster than the speed of
light, or negatively charged electrons to be attracted to each other.
In truth, our concepts ‘natural’ and unnatural’ are taken not from biology, but
from Christian theology. The theological meaning of ‘natural’ is ‘in accordance
with the intentions of the God who created nature’. Christian theologians argued
that God created the human body, intending each limb and organ to serve a