How did our ancestors sleep?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 August 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How we sleep is a topic of endless fascination and for some can, ironically be quite exhausting. Modern life has allowed us to invade the night, and those pesky late night work emails, social media and TV all conspire to limit our sleep or simply prevent us from a truly restful night. But if we travel back in time, did our ancestors master sleep any better? No air-con or electric fan for them on hot humid nights, and only smoky fires to keep them warm on cold, snowy nights. What if we go way back into our pre-history, to our ancient human ancestors? No interruption for them from an unwanted work email, however perhaps a ravenous lion gave them more reason for those night time worries.
CrowdScience listener Tom asks our sleep deprived presenter Datshiane Navanayagam to investigate how our sleep has changed over history and pre-history. She talks to Professor Russell Foster, Head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford and Neanderthal expert Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes about slumber habits in days of yore, and in doing so, she uncovers some top tips from our ancestors that may give us all a better nights rest.
Presented by Datshiane Navanayagam and Produced by Alexandra Feachem
(Woman sitting in bed and yawning. Credit: JGI/Jamie Grill/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hi Tom. Hi yeah. |
| 0:38.0 | Hi Tom. |
| 0:39.0 | Hi yeah. |
| 0:40.0 | Very nice to meet you like this virtually. |
| 0:43.4 | Thank you. Yeah, it's nice to be part of the program. |
| 0:46.2 | I'm Dacchioni Navarne Navenaigam and as as you heard that was one of our listeners Tom and |
| 0:54.2 | Tom's been in touch with the team at crowd science with a question about something we |
| 0:58.4 | all do every day but which we experience in completely different ways. |
| 1:04.0 | Some of us love it, but for some, the experience can be ironically quite, well, exhausting. |
| 1:10.0 | I'm Comberton, I'm currently living in Crawley, West Sussex in England and it's so hot at the moment and it's really |
| 1:20.3 | difficult to sleep. I was wondering as our sleep improved from centuries ago, |
| 1:27.3 | the quality of sleep for the majority of humans I'm sure we're in dwellings that were drafty and there was smoke fires and you would have |
| 1:37.1 | respiratory problems and you might have aches and pains from working in the fields. |
| 1:42.1 | But we in the modern day, we should be having much better sleep than some of us do. I wonder if the quality of sleep has improved. |
| 1:52.0 | Okay, well, we're going to try and answer your question, but I have to ask you, Tom, what kind of sleep are you? |
| 1:59.0 | I'm now a good sleeper, but for many years I wasn't. I now use a eye mask and that's completely changed my my sleep but before |
... |
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