how long did we used to sleep?
Have humans gotten better at sleeping? We have seemingly “successfully” optimized so many components of our lives…right? We have increased our lifespans by eating different types of foods, having access to modern medicines etc.
We have performance enhancements. We have drugs. We have mood boosters. We have all of these things.
Yet, I have this assumption that the way we actually fall asleep has not really changed much.
Like we lie down, close our eyes, and just hope to magically fall asleep. There is no real rhyme or reason or training we go through to sleep better, faster, longer, etc. Why not?
What has changed? Where is this sleep innovation that would help us all be happier, healthier and more efficient?
Sure we may sleep on a more comfortable mattress than the rock ones back in the stone age.
But do we sleep “better?” As in, are we more rested when we wake up? Do we sleep faster? More REM? Do we sleep for a longer/shorter period of time? Have we improved?
Let’s see..
In first digging into google and trying to find some answers (or at least proposed answers) — the first thing is obvious: it is really hard to get reliable data on how much large groups of people sleep today, let alone hundreds of years ago.
Here are a few facts/figures I found:
So are we sleeping less than we did? The graph above suggests this is probably the case on an individual level — by about 20 to 30 minutes per decade. But these data refer to different people at different ages rather than the same people when they were younger and older.
A small number of studies which have used similar methods over time show small increases or small decreases of a few minutes per night over several decades in different countries across the world. But there is absolutely no good evidence that sleep durations are shortening dramatically in the UK or elsewhere.
So maybe? Not a resounding maybe but probably yes?
But it gets more interesting:
Not only did our ancestors not sleep longer than we do, but they may have got slightly less sleep than some of us — http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170220-the-surprising-truth-about-why-we-sleep-and-how-much-we-need
This is a long block of text but it is super fascinating…perhaps our ancestors actually got less sleep than us!
Since it’s impossible to figure out how much time our ancestors spent sleeping, Siegel decided to do the next best thing. He travelled to Tanzania, Namibia, and Bolivia, spending time with contemporary hunter-gatherer groups. These people are born into an environment that is as close as can be found today to the one our ancestors would have lived in.
For their entire lives, these hunter-gatherer societies have lived — and slept — without any of the modern devices we suspect disturb our own rest. Several thousand miles separate the two groups in Africa, while the third is descended from a group that migrated out of Africa, travelled through Asia, crossed the Alaskan land bridge before then moving through North America and into South America. Despite this remarkable divergence, all three groups sleep about the same amount of time each night: six-and-a-half hours, on average. According to Siegel, there’s no reason to believe our ancestors would have slept any more than that.
For most humans — living in modern societies with all the trappings of technology and electricity — the amount of time they spend kipping is between six and eight hours a night. So not only did our ancestors not sleep longer than we do, but they may have got slightly less sleep than some of us.
Our human ancestors slept instead on rocks, dirt or possibly on tree branches, without the creature comforts of down comforters or central heating. They could not use blackout blinds to let them lie in long after the sun came up, nor could they hope to avoid weather or insects. They also had to worry about being picked off by the occasional predator or attacked by a rival group while they slept. It’s no wonder they likely got little more than six hours each night. — http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170220-the-surprising-truth-about-why-we-sleep-and-how-much-we-need
Is that a good or bad thing? Is it better we are sleeping more or worse? Going into this rough research, I figured we’d have optimized our bodies to sleep less but perhaps we have optimized our bodies and environments to sleep more?
Why? Why would we do that?
Perhaps sleeping more allows us to be more productive and actually function better than if we were sleeping less?
Surely though…some time in the future…we will figure out a way to maximize our productivities and sleep way less.
If the average night’s sleep is eight hours (ie one third of a day), one sleeps for one third of one’s life. If you live, say, 75 years, that’s 25 years asleep, or 9,125 days. — https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-50504,00.html
