For those who find importance in getting eight hours of sleep every night, our ancestors might say that you’re being a bit dramatic regarding your beauty rest.
A new study published in Current Biology this week suggests that getting eight hours of sleep may not be necessary, as it appears that our ancestors weren’t getting the doctor-recommended amount of sleep either, according to the publication Press Herald.
Researchers traveled to three preindustrial societies, the Hazda, the San, and the Tsimane, to find evidence that our ancestors slept, on average, 5.7 to 7.1 hours, and rarely took naps, according to the news outlet Pierce Pioneer.
“The bigger conclusion is not that they sleep less but that they very clearly do not sleep more, contrary to what has been assumed,” UCLA psychiatry professor Jerome Siegel commented.
Interestingly enough, people in the tribes reportedly didn’t go to sleep when it got dark either.
University of New Mexico anthropologist Gandhi Yetish reportedly noted that the research shows that the recommended 8 hours of sleep “may be a longer sleep duration than can be realistically expected.”
“These findings challenge many of the traditional beliefs about ‘normal’ sleep.”
The common belief that modern technology is keeping us from sleep has also been debunked with the findings of this study.
“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,” explained Siegel.
