Sometimes a person reads a book and the ideas are so foreign that it takes hours of re-reading a paragraph, and in the end you still aren’t sure of the intent or direction. It is unsettling, like sand shifting beneath your feet.
The opposite can also occur: when the words are so familiar that you know exactly what the next sentence will say, or even the next chapter. In that case, you might as well stop reading. You have already written this book yourself, and it is boring, a waste of time.
The sweet spot of language, literature, and communication is when each piece of data makes sense on its own, but the gestalt of those details blooms into a new thought—or an old thought expressed freshly. That is the glory of transferred information, whether in acting, storytelling, literature, or art.
Recently I found myself in that sweet spot with Leonard Shlain’s The Alphabet Versus the Goddess (1998). By page twelve, I was hooked. Not because I fully agreed with his premise, or even fully understood its boundaries, but because the problem he raised was compelling, and his willingness to pursue it was magnetic.
As I understand it, Shlain suggests that women lost equality in the social order with the rise of written communication. He traces a line of ideas leading toward that conclusion. I can’t say yet if I accept it, but I can say: it’s worth wrestling with.
He begins with something familiar—the evolutionary marvel of the opposable thumb. Then he moves into something I had never encountered before: the evolutionary development of the heel. When tree canopies disappeared, some mammals were forced to descend. The grasping hind limb evolved into a simple, hard heel. Two hands became free for tool-making, and upright walking followed.
This shift reshaped everything. Hands refined their skills, brains expanded, pelvises widened to make birth possible, and women’s gait itself changed as a biological consequence of accommodating larger-headed children. Evolutionary brilliance, drawn out across hundreds of thousands—even millions—of years.
And then comes the leap. Once communication matured enough, survival knowledge no longer depended on slow adaptation. What once required a million years of trial and error could be transmitted in a week. Evolution gave us the capacity; communication accelerated its application.
All this makes perfect sense—even if the dots aren’t all connected. But that is why I keep turning the pages. Shlain doesn’t just tell a story about history. He reminds us that when words reach that sweet spot, when they carry both familiarity and surprise, they don’t just inform. They evolve us.
Can’t wait for Chapter Two! Thank you Clay for recommending this author.
A Work Progressing 
Language is Compressed Evolution
Dancing With Ideas
Sometimes a person reads a book and the ideas are so foreign that it takes hours of re-reading a paragraph, and in the end you still aren’t sure of the intent or direction. It is unsettling, like sand shifting beneath your feet.
The opposite can also occur: when the words are so familiar that you know exactly what the next sentence will say, or even the next chapter. In that case, you might as well stop reading. You have already written this book yourself, and it is boring, a waste of time.
The sweet spot of language, literature, and communication is when each piece of data makes sense on its own, but the gestalt of those details blooms into a new thought—or an old thought expressed freshly. That is the glory of transferred information, whether in acting, storytelling, literature, or art.
Recently I found myself in that sweet spot with Leonard Shlain’s The Alphabet Versus the Goddess (1998). By page twelve, I was hooked. Not because I fully agreed with his premise, or even fully understood its boundaries, but because the problem he raised was compelling, and his willingness to pursue it was magnetic.
As I understand it, Shlain suggests that women lost equality in the social order with the rise of written communication. He traces a line of ideas leading toward that conclusion. I can’t say yet if I accept it, but I can say: it’s worth wrestling with.
He begins with something familiar—the evolutionary marvel of the opposable thumb. Then he moves into something I had never encountered before: the evolutionary development of the heel. When tree canopies disappeared, some mammals were forced to descend. The grasping hind limb evolved into a simple, hard heel. Two hands became free for tool-making, and upright walking followed.
This shift reshaped everything. Hands refined their skills, brains expanded, pelvises widened to make birth possible, and women’s gait itself changed as a biological consequence of accommodating larger-headed children. Evolutionary brilliance, drawn out across hundreds of thousands—even millions—of years.
And then comes the leap. Once communication matured enough, survival knowledge no longer depended on slow adaptation. What once required a million years of trial and error could be transmitted in a week. Evolution gave us the capacity; communication accelerated its application.
All this makes perfect sense—even if the dots aren’t all connected. But that is why I keep turning the pages. Shlain doesn’t just tell a story about history. He reminds us that when words reach that sweet spot, when they carry both familiarity and surprise, they don’t just inform. They evolve us.
Can’t wait for Chapter Two! Thank you Clay for recommending this author.
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