Thursday, October 15, 2015

Hunter/gatherer sleep

Research unveiled on Thursday showed that people in isolated and technologically primitive African and South American cultures get no more slumber than the rest of us. Average of 6:25. Apparently they stay up "late" (after the mosquitoes go to bed?) and wake up early. The environments vary a bit, so that source of bias should be missing, but none are of latitude high enough to have radically different winter and summer hours. That'd be an interesting effect.

If this pans out--or even if it doesn't, I expect to hear lots of new experts explaining how much sleep we really need. What with waking up an unreasonable hours, their average is probably close to mine...

One advantage of civilization is that you don't have to worry about so many different things, and usually don't have to work quite so hard.

No comments: