Learning From Our Ancestors' Sleep Patterns Can Help Modern People Rest Better

Sleep is as important as diet and exercise since it plays a vital role in maintaining a person's good health and well-being. However, a third of the adult population in the U.S. get less than the recommended amount of sleep. Not getting enough sleep is connected to a lot of chronic diseases, such as heart disease, depression, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

It is often heard that modern lifestyles have shortened the sleep hours of humans, assuming that healthy sleep habits were the norm before modernity. Many people these days worry that they are not getting enough sleep, so it is worth considering what our ancestors' sleep habits looked like.

A Look at Our Ancestors' Sleep Patterns

To understand the sleeping habits of our ancestors, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) performed a wide-ranging study of traditional hunter-gatherer societies. These include Hadza from Tanzania, San from Namibia, and Tsimane from Bolivia.

In this research, the UCLA team collected data from 94 adult individuals within 1,154 days in order to develop understanding of our ancestors' sleep patterns.The participants in this study have differences in background, genetics, and living conditions, yet they yielded an astonishing result.

Scientists found out that these people sleep for only 6.5 hours a night. The average sleep duration within the groups fell between 5.7 and 7.1 hours each night. Meanwhile, the total sleep period was around 6.9 to 8.5 hours between the start and end of the period. According to experts, the short sleep in these populations challenges the belief that sleep was greatly reduced in the modern world.

The study also revealed that the hunter-gatherers do not include a midday nap in their daily routine and prefer to remain up late in the evening. Although they do not have access to artificial light, these people tend to stay up an additional three hours after sunset before going to sleep.

It seems that the ancient sleep patterns are almost the same as modern humans, but they actually have some differences. Generally, the hunter-gatherers woke up before the breaking of dawn or before the sun came up.

Similar to modern humans, the hunter-gatherers prefer to sleep an hour more during the winter season than they do in the summer months. This means that the sleep pattern of ancient people was primarily affected by temperature and not light. They retire as temperatures fall and sleep through the coldest moment of the night.

The Truth About the 8-Hour Sleep

The belief that every human needs to get 8 hours of sleep appears to be a modern invention. In fact, it does not appear to be the natural pattern of sleep for humans.

Previous research noted that 7 hours appears to be the healthiest amount of sleep for an adult. The findings that the tribes under study naturally sleep around that number support the idea that 6.5 -7 hours is the healthiest sleep.

The researchers also noted that the tribes did not complain about not being functional on less than 8 hours of sleep. They did not also consider themselves as sleep-deprived on 6.5 hours and less on a regular basis.