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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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.
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.
Ever done a hard days work in your life? You fucking fall asleep standing up. None of the shit we have to sleep in necessary, it’s just nice
They lived very physical lives. Today we don’t.
You ever see a man who works construction have problems falling asleep? No. You don’t see that. Because he’s using his body all day long. It was the same for early humans.
But now we “work” while our bodies rest. We just don’t get enough exercise to sleep properly.
They didn’t sleep eight hours, nor were they expected to in order to keep a job. No one did prior to indoor electricity. It’s called a biphasic sleep schedule and the hour or two you were awake in the middle of the night was typically reserved for visiting people, petty theft and of course, a good round of whoopee.
They didn’t have sleep patterns like we’re “required” to have nowadays. They didn’t sleep from 10 pm to 6:30 am. They didn’t have electricity and they didn’t work 8-5 shifts. They slept when it got dark and got up in the middle of the night to do chores or get some action with their partner or eat or whatever for a couple/few hours. Then they went back to sleep for awhile until it got light again. Modern sleep patterns didn’t start to take hold and become the norm until most people had electric light in their homes.
You’re assuming they did get a good night’s rest. It’s entirely possible they didn’t, really. Without any real basis for comparison, how would they know what a ‘good night’s rest’ even was?
But they also got a lot more activity than we do, on average. And they lived in an environment with way less artificial light. And they consumed fewer calories than we do.
They were probably exhausted from hunting animals, following the mentioned food source, and collecting berries, finding a water source, on top of who knows what other nonsense they had to put up with on a daily basis.
The two main reasons are brain development and environment.
Environment is probably the biggest. We lead lives filled with lights which, day or night, fool our brain into thinking it’s daytime and definitely not time to sleep yet. We live less active lives, which makes us less tired once comes the time to sleep. We live more complex, chaotic lives, which goes against our circadian rhythm’s need for a constant routine.
We also, ironically, have more stress in our lives due to the fast pace life in the productive, industrialized world. Stress-wise, predators and food scarcity couldn’t even begin to compete with our current lifestyle as far as inducing stress. Deadlines, schedules, custody or legal battles, information about the hundred ways in which we’re all doomed. It’s even worse for parents with all the extra scheduling comes from conciliating kids, their school/afterschool activities, and work.
I’m not so sure on the brain front, but if I recall correctly having more higher brain functions also interferes with sleep, especially with things like ADHD and chronic anxiety attacks becoming more widespread. Thinking too much and being unable to stop these runaway thoughts definitely doesn’t help with sleeping.
The primitive brain ignored insect bites easily, and we setup guard rotations for predators so we felt safe enough to sleep soundly.
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