By ancestors I mean like “cavemen” in a sense. If they had to sleep in caves surrounded by a million different noises, predators, insects, and sleeping on primitive beds – I just cant see them getting any good night rests.
In today’s world sometimes we cant sleep even with great pillows, mattresses, soothing sounds, sleep aid medicine, etc. For some even the tiniest noise or light wakes them up. Thanks for and whatever the reason early hominids must have been pretty hardcore.
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Does your dog get a good night’s sleep? Or is he up 6 times barking at the wind?
Animals would not have the brain power to associate interrupted sleep with fatigue. And even if they could, they would probably lack the self control to suppress it, and if they did… they would probably get eaten by a bear.
The intolerance for disturbances during sleep probably came after we figured out agriculture and founded permanent settlements that afforded more security.
It’s been theorized we have a hard time sleeping because so did they. It was likely they awoke in early morning hours to lookout for predators and to keep a fire going for warmth. This makes sense why many of us still have trouble going to sleep or staying asleep, it’s not really natural for us.
There’s multiple factors of sleep hygiene they had, but many modern humans don’t have:
1. They didn’t have desk jobs. They were much more physically active so they got tired more.
2. They spent a lot of time outside, so they experienced natural sunrise and sunset, which are signals to your body to start preparing for sleep (e.g. releasing sleep-related hormones)
3. They went to sleep whenever they felt like sleeping. They weren’t forced to adjust their sleep time so they can wake up at a particular time to go to work.
4. Less mental stress overall.
5. No artificial light, apart from fire which is rather weak, and gives a warm orange color (similar to a sunset)
6. They had much more time during the day to process their thoughts unlike modern humans who constantly busy themselves with work, TV, social media, etc., making it impossible for your mind to process what needs to be processed, so that starts happen when you lie in bed and interferes with your sleep.
Or maybe they often didn’t even have good sleep.
But if anyone reading this is struggling with their sleep, sort out the above mentioned points in your life and you’re very likely to sleep better.
They didn’t sit on their asses all day like we do. Try walking through the forest for 6 hours hunting an animal. You’ll sleep real good later that night.
Chimpanzees sleep like 9 hours. Pretty sure none of the points you mentioned deterred the early hominids.
Using their bodies to points of exhaustion with physical activity daily helps you get the greatest sleep in your life
If you have trouble sleeping it’s because you have a shitty lifestyle and unhealthy habits.
I have a desk job and spend a lot of my leisure time in front of a PC as well, but I still clock 7-8 hours of sleep each night and usually fall asleep in 5-10 minutes
Maybe lay off the caffeine and junk food a little or swap to a less stressful job.
Easy: they didn’t have things like “*crippling debt*”, “*feelings of not fitting in in a modern world*”, or “*a sense of powerless against the corporate overlords destroying their planet*” keeping them up at night.
They woke up at dawn and spent the day digging up and gathering food sources while keeping an eye on the kids (and carrying the youngest everywhere in a back sling) to keep them from wandering off too far and getting eaten by something big and toothy. Spend all day on your feet even just at a slow walk and you’ll get in your 10 000 steps a day and more.
No cars, no busses, no strollers, no grocery stores, no convenient tap water, and you have to do a hike well away from any drinking water source and dig a hole to take a crap which would have happened two to three times a day from the high fiber diet. Water is also heavy, all drinking water had to be hauled in from the nearest clean source, not always easily found. Camping next to good water is a good way to run into every thirsty and hungry predator out there. Oh yeah and no chairs. People just squatted instead of sitting down which uses more strength and energy than sitting.
I very much doubt they had trouble sleeping and it was probably higher quality sleep when they did it.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/29/health/sleep-like-your-ancestors/index.html
If you spend a week camping out in the wilderness you will very quickly realise that its pretty easy to fall asleep surprisingly early in the night when there is no artificial light.
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