Our necks don’t seem able to support the weight of our heads which is fair enough but I’d have thought that by now we’d be a bit more able for it rather than either waking up with a cricked neck, or drooped over ourselves?!
In: Biology
Evolution provided an excellent solution to this problem: sleeping while lying down.
You’ve nailed it in your question, really. Our necks, in fact our entire vertebral columns, aren’t optimized for being upright. It’s a structure originally designed for walking on all fours that was repurposed for standing straight. We’ve only been doing this for the last couple million years, while our more distant ancestors had been going around on all fours for hundreds of millions. We get by, but it’s still got its kinks to work out.
As for airplane seats, they’ve been a part of our evolutionary history for a much shorter time than walking upright. It’s literally only been a century. There hasn’t been nearly enough time for selection pressure to do something about it. So, if we want to feel okay after a long sleep, we have to lie down and give those neck and back muscles a good rest.
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