Investigations showed that these traditional peoples slept slightly less than 6.5 hours a night on average.
Advertisement
They do not nap regularly and do not awaken during the night.
He said there had been a notion that people used to sleep more than they do now and that modern life reduced sleep time, but the new findings suggest this is a myth.
In total, the sleeping habits of 94 individuals were recorded. “Despite varying genetics, histories, and environments, we find that all three groups show a similar sleep organisation, suggesting that they express core human sleep patterns, probably characteristic of pre-modern-era Homo sapiens”, Siegel says. Those amounts are at the low end of durations reported in “industrial societies”.
On average, the hunter gatherers stayed up a little over three hours after the sun set and woke before sunrise.
This observation was one of many suggesting a seasonal change in sleeping behavior among these hunter-gatherer groups.
In other words, their sleep habits aren’t so different from ours, say the researchers in their study in the journal Current Biology published on October 15.
“There is this concern in the Western world that we need more sleep and that if you get less than seven hours you’re liable to suffer from obesity and diabetes and heart disease”, he said. “This has important implications for the idea that we need to take sleeping pills because sleep has been reduced from its ‘natural level” by the widespread use of electricity, TV, the Internet, and so on”.
What do they know how much our ancestors slept? Generally, 7-8 hours of sleep is recommended by health experts for good health.
Their health is “excellent” and they have better levels of fitness than typical Americans of the same age.
Despite not being exposed to artificial light, people did not doze off as soon as the sun went down; most people stayed up about 3.3 hours after sunset.
It’s common to hear lights, television, smartphone and computers – not to mention the pace of modern life in general – blamed for our inability to get a good night’s sleep, but our prehistoric ancestors didn’t get any more hours in the sack than we do, a new study suggests. Having unrealistic expectations of sleep can be unsafe, he said.
“Future work is necessary, but our data suggests that environmental manipulation may more effectively control sleep than any drug”, Siegel said. They do wake before sunrise, though. With the help of contacts at Hunter College, Yale University, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of New Mexico, Siegel was able to accurately measure how long traditional adults slept during summer and winter seasons.
The hunter-gatherers’ sleep is largely regulated by the natural environment – natural light and ambient temperature.
Siegel, aided by contacts supplied through a colleague at Witwatersrand University in South Africa, gathered measurements among the San hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari Desert.
The disorder affects more than 20 percent of the USA population, and Dr Siegel believes copying a few aspects of the hunter-gatherers’ natural environment could be effective in treating modern sleeping disorders. With no central heating, temperatures tended to fall throughout the night.
“In all three groups they are sleeping during this period of falling temperature and in our homes we sleep in a fixed temperature”, Dr Siegel observed. In comparison, 10 to 30 percent of people in industrial societies report chronic insomnia, the scientists noted.
Advertisement
Unable to travel back in time to monitor the sleeping habits of our paleolithic ancestors, Siegel worked with three groups of people who live life much as our forebears did for millennia. This might owe to the naturally cool temperatures the hunter-gatherers encounter at night, as our bodies must cool down before we can sleep.
