Invention: The Bed

Yeah yeah, my my head just between two pillows, just in the utter darkness there. Uh yeah, I mean we it's it's kind of a cliche, especially when it comes to mattress commercials, but we do spend an enormous amount of time in bed, you know. It's we spend a large portion of our life the sleeping. Uh, and this

is where we do it. One of the sources that I'm going to refer to in this episode as a book that I just started reading called What We Did in Bed, a Horizontal History by Yale University Press or Not by Yale University Press. From Yale University Press by uh Brian and Fagan and Nadia Durrani, And in one of their early chapters, they begin with a quote from a writer named Lawrence Wright, who I think wrote on architecture, but who said, from nearly all social history and biography,

one third of the story is missing. And that's kind of true. I mean, we've talked before about how a lot of times it's interesting to try to get a flavor of everyday life from the histories written in a certain place and time, and that can be difficult because the histories that people write about are usually devoted to unusual events, are very like like high stakes events. Uh, the things we think of as making history, not what everybody happens to go home and do at night, right, Yeah,

And and the big part of that is sleeping. Not not as many maybe, I guess you do have paintings of people sleeping, but uh, for the most part, it's not the stuff of Soka's but it really does define the very texture of our lives. I mean, we you know, you spend maybe roughly a third of your life or so in bed, and so uh, what's happening there and what form that bed takes probably matters a lot for

your experience of the world. That's right. If it's not the center of your house, it's kind of kind of a center of your house, you know, it's like one of the places that you you spend a lot of time. Uh it, I mean, it's it's it's one of those things that is you start talking about it, and it's kind of a an outrageous overstatement of the obvious. But but yeah, we we live in our beds, like, our beds are a place we live. So I was wondering, how did our ancestors sleep before the creation of beds.

You know, whenever we look at an invention, we like to ask what came before? And uh, of course, obviously we've been sleep being much longer than we've been sleeping in beds, So what was that transition period like? And there's a lot we don't know, but what we do know is kind of interesting. So, for one thing, it seems like, if you go back far enough, much of the life of our hominid ancestors took place in trees. We were you know, we were descended from largely arboreal

species and this probably included sleep. And for some evidence of this we can look to the sleeping habits of our nearest relatives in the animal world, which would be chimpanzees, whose relationship to their environment is we don't know for sure, but we think it is probably pretty similar to that of human ants of human ancestors from several million years ago.

And in their book, Fagan and Durrani point out that chimpanzees in the Toro sim Leaky Reserve of western Uganda prefer to make their tree top nests out of branches of a particular tree. Actually like their picky about what kind of tree would they want to sleep on. They

really like something called Ugandan iron wood. And I went actually to dig up the citation on this because I was wondering about the study, and it looks like this comes from a study by Samson and Hunt published in p Os one that looked at different types of nesting behaviors in chimpanzees and Uganda, and they sampled eighteen hundred and forty four nests and found that chimpanzees selected Ugandan ironwood for seventy three point six percent of all those nests,

even though it was only a little bit less than ten percent of all the trees within the area that they surveyed. And they found that this was probably related to certain material properties of the ironwood, as would They said it was the stiffest of all the woods around, and they said it quote had the greatest bending strength of all the trees tested, had the smallest distance between leaves on the branches, and had the smallest leaf surface area.

And so I'm wondering if all that just kind of add up to, well, this kind of tree makes the best natural mattress material. It's like that it's got the best sort of the best support structure for you, but it also bends is sort of nicely cushioned. Yeah. And the idea too that it there's the smallest distance between leaves on the branches. Um, you know that that brings that makes you think of something that's almost uh, it's

almost like it's woven together, you know. But of course, eventually our ancestors did come out of the trees for the majority of their lives, and the date of this transition is debatable, but uh, Fagan and Durrani right that probably roughly two million years ago or so, our ancestors first began to control fire, and it seems that this probably coincided with a transition to sleeping out on the ground in open camps or under the shelter of rock,

overhangs or caves around fires instead of sleeping in trees. And I think that's an interesting possibility that that fire control of fire would be correlated with changes in where and how we slept. Yeah, we can easily imagine the Gary Larson far Side cartoon showing what happened to our ancestors that decided to have the fires in the tree with them. Yeah, that's not a good plan. Yeah, And then uh, Fagan and Doroni go on to mention something

that's interesting. Now, this is speculation, but it is interesting to consider the possibility that the introduction of camp fires could very well have shaped the development of what we see as major features of human social life. And they give the example of huddling around fires for warmth and for protection against predators during and adjacent to sleep time that could have given rise to increasing habituation to prolonged

close physical contact. That this could somehow be related towards repeated sex with the same partner in places otherwise used for sleep, as opposed to opportunistic sexual pairing. The possibility that if this is true, the author's right quote pair bonding maybe a recent feature of human evolution, and it's intriguing to imagine that technology fire and the bed played

a role in its emergence. Now, unfortunately, it's impossible to know for sure at this point given the evidence we have, but that is an interesting possibility, I mean even today, Uh, Like, what do you think when you see um like this, this this setting, a roaring fireplace and some in the fur of some sort of animal placed in front of it like it is? It is? It is on some level. And this is of course probably a lot of this is probably just cultural uh coding as well, but it's

it's an erotic situation. It's like they're a bed, they're a fire, right, you're you are in James Bond and the Russian Spies Shelley. But there is a certain point at which we we don't have to speculate as much what was going on, because we eventually do get some physical evidence from archaeology that can tell us something about the sleeping arrangements of our ancient human ancestors. Uh. And this would be especially during the Middle Stone Age of

South Africa. Now, this next part refers to a study by Lynn Wadley Christine Seevers, Marian Bamford, Paul Goldberg, Francesco Berner, and Christopher Miller called Middle Stone Age bedding, construction and settlement patterns at Subadu, South Africa. This was published in two thousand eleven and Science and according to Widely at All, there are a number of interesting adaptations that all appear or emerge in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa.

We noticed the use of shell beads and engraving, uh innovations in stone technology, the creation and use of compound adhesives, so types of glue, heat treatment of rocks, and circumstantial evidence for snares and for bows and arrows. But along with this all all this stuff in the same period, there's also early evidence of domestic innovations in betting. And this evidence of betting comes from a place known as

the Seeboodoo Rock shelter. To read from Fagan and Durrani quote in a cliff above the youth Ungathi River in South Africa, forty kilometers north of Durban and fifteen kilometers from the Indian Ocean. Modern people Homo sapiens, who were physically and mentally like ourselves, visited the shelter at least fifteen times between seventy seven thousand and thirty eight thousand years ago, and slept there. Thick swaths of grasses, sedges, and rushes that still grow by the river tell a

story of regular but careful slumber. Now about the archaeological find the archaeologist Lynn Wadley, the lead author and the study I mentioned, she said in a separate interview that was quoted in an article I was reading. Quote, the fossilized leaves were uncovered as a sheet of white plant matter overlying layers of sedge leaves and stems. I suspected whilst excavating them that the leaves were deliberately elected as part of betting, because all of the leaves were clearly

the same taxon meaning of the same plant. If leaves had simply blown into the site from the forest, there would have been several different tree species represented. So that's about the method of determining what this layer of vegetation that was repeatedly found buried in the ground meant. But Fagan and Durrani also mentioned that there was something careful going on about the construction of this ancient betting. Here

where does the careful part come in. Well, when you're sleeping in a cave or a rock shelter, it can be extremely difficult to keep your sleeping area clean and free of insects. I mean, obviously, you know you're laying out there, and you are you and all the stuff you're doing is probably pretty attractive to insects for multiple reasons. There are mosquitoes that want to bite you and suck

your blood. There are probably other opportunistic insects that are attracted to whatever foods you're eating around your dwelling space. You know, you're like a magnet for insect life. But the Stone Age inhabitants of this cave discovered away to to improve their their odds with insects. Essentially, they invented

an insect repellent mattress. Now, this mattress was made out of not just any leaves and grasses, but very importantly, it contained the aromatic leaves of the Cape laurel tree or Cryptocaria woody eye, which smells very nice to humans, I'm told, I'm not sure if I know what that would smell like. But it also bears insecticidal compounds that

can drive away mosquitoes and other pests. And this would have been not only to make the beds more pleasant, but to some extent this was a question of life and death, because insect borne illnesses were and are a real threat to survival, especially to young children. But beyond that, there's also evidence that the people who lived here frequently burned their bedding and then replaced it with fresh layers

of foliage. And this would be to kill any insects that had taken up residence despite the repell leaves, and to get rid of trash and garbage. Because one thing is quite clear from the archaeological remains, these people liked to eat in bed. The remains showed that they would consume food on these grass mats that served as their beds,

but they would also do other stuff. Tools, debris, and charred bone indicate that they probably worked and did other activities in bed, because hey, beds are nice, you know, it's it's a soft layer, Like, why leave if you don't have to. They also clearly liked large beds. Fagan

and Dorani described these as king sized quote. Most of the bedding covers at least three well trodden square meters uh and the fact that they were burning their bedding and replacing it at regular intervals shows early human use not just to fire for warmth, cooking protection, and tool manufacture, but also for sanitation, which is an important milestone in the history of human hygiene. But I thought this was

interesting for a number of reasons. I mean, one is the ancient insight into the insect repellent properties of these particular leaves that would be woven into the bedding material

to keep the insects out. But another thing is what kind of role this bed location would have played in ancient culture, Because, at least in American culture today, we usually think of beds as well several things private right hidden from view, Like if you're showing somebody around your house that you know, you don't usually start with the bed. You might not even show them the bed at all. We think of beds as solitary or at least secluded

with a single partner. We think of beds as primarily for sleep, with secondary uses maybe including sex and low energy activities like reading. But historically and around the world,

none of this is a given. Like for much of human history and for many people even today, beds have been more public or in plane view, often shared by many people sometimes even by strangers, and used for lots of activities other than sleep in sex like beds have many times in place has been used for socializing, eating, preparing food, working on projects, etcetera. And I wonder what

kind of difference does this make in our lives. Well, I was thinking about this, and I think of thinking about like my current living situation and past living situations, and I think one thing we have to to to recognize is that in the sort of you know, stereotypical American home, you have the bed, but you also have the couch. And the couch is a place where we do a lot of the same things that we do

in the bed. It's certainly where we I don't know about you, but I certainly get in the occasional nap on my couch. Uh that there have been you know, there have been times. It was particularly recently I lived near some train tracks. There's a lot of bright lights that were visible through the bedroom window. So if it was too bright for me out there, I would come and I would sleep on the couch as well, because it was dark here in the living room. So you know,

you can you can sleep on the couch. You can. But also I find that generally some of us that are maybe not okay with, say, eating dinner in their bed, you you're probably perfectly okay eating dinner at your couch, like in front of the television. Right, So the couch is basically a bad I mean, it's doing all the same things that a bed does, but it I think in many cases ends up absorbing some of the activities that then we we don't do in bed proper, you know,

like eating a meal. That's a really interesting point. I mean, I mean, one very obvious thing is the way that a couch plays a role for like visiting and socialization. Socialization that maybe means something different socializing that would you know it's normal to like have friends over and I'll sit on the couch. It would be kind of weird for a lot of people in America today to have friends over and have everybody get in your bed. Right.

But but I think the cases where like you and I I have been on the road doing podcast stuff and then what do you what do you do? You're in a hotel room and you gotta go over notes you end up in a hotel room is generally a space in which there is a bed, you know, you. Granted, you can go to a business center if they have one, and sometimes you have more of a little study in the room, but a lot of times it ends up

like sitting around on the bed laying out notes. I mean that's what I think back to, say college, I think a lot of us and probably have this experience, like you don't have a lot of space. Your bed ends up being a place where you can print, take printed sheets and organize them. Uh it becomes a sort

of a table half the time. Well no, I but I gotta say, as an adult, I have felt awkwardness before when you're like trying to hang out, say like when we've been on the road for the show and had to hang out in a hotel room and you just have to sit on the bed, Like it feels weird because yeah, you know this, it feels like you're doing something wrong. But uh no, I think I think it's just like you know, we're we're enculturated to think, no,

you don't do that with this kind of furniture. The furniture should be shaped a little bit differently in order to do what you're doing right. But then again, we also have like thinking of meals and bad breakfast and bad still has a certain attractiveness to it. I don't know. It's not something I want for myself, but I I am at least led to believe it is something that other people want. It's a good way to make a mess, a good way to find find crumbs later the following night,

you know. Way, Yeah, but I don't know. But also like a good reminder to to clean your betting right if you're if you're actively eating dinner in there, maybe the betting gets clean more often, I don't know, possibly, or you could just burn it and start over, yeah, just to be sure. Well, so something though, I was just thinking about that. Maybe this is a psychologically insignificant.

But I wonder if there are a lot of times in history when it's been more normal to gather around to bed and and socialize, even for like adults with their own living space or something. Um. But I wonder if, even in a culture where that's not very normal, does the effect somewhat reverse with how much we bring social media into our beds through mobile devices, like you know, you tweet from bed, you graham from bed and so forth. Uh, I don't know, I mean, it's I mean, from one level.

On one level, we have always been bringing media into our beds. Uh, social media being a like a way of communicating. I mean, given that you're generally I mean, unless you're talking about like a video conferencing type thing. If you're like actively doing like an Instagram story or something from your bed, I could see where that might be a little weird. Otherwise, it's like you have are people tagging themselves as being like this, here's my missive

from the bed. Um. You know. Otherwise you could be in your bed, you could be on the toilet. Uh, nobody's gonna know. Isn't it weird how people just read tweets all day without even acknowledging that a good number of these are sent from the toilet. Yeah, I think they should be required to tag them. You know. It's like, did you where where are you tweeting from? And the immediate drop down menu is toilet? Um, you're in all

or I don't know. I guess the bed would be on the list driving train, doctor's waiting room supposed to be paying attention in a meeting. All right, on that note, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Thank you, Thank you, Okay, we're back alright, So we talked a little bit about the prehistory of betting, what some some innovations in Middle Stone Age South Africa can can tell us about Stone Age life betting in

under rock shelters and things like that. But later on in history we do get more kind of constructed beds, beds that become sort of permanent furniture within dwellings. Uh. So maybe we should explore something about that. Yeah. So I immediately turned, of course to Brian and Fagan, same Fagan that we mentioned earlier. His his book The Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World, and there is indeed

a section in there not about betting, but about furniture. Uh. And this was written with Jeffrey P. Killing, a specialist in ancient furniture and woodworking, particularly ancient Egyptian furniture. So they point out that to have furniture of any kind, you of course need specialized tools and the ability to

work natural materials into new forms. Now, at first you would have been limited to materials in your immediate surroundings, um within your range at least, right, but eventually trade opens humans up to more materials and this would expand what they were able to create. So they point to a particular example, uh that stands as one of the earliest examples of furniture within a domestic environment. That's supposed to say, within a tomb, as will explore in a

bet And this example certainly includes a bed. It's from the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland circa thirty one hundred to b c. E. Now, Uh, wood is scarce on the Orkney Islands, so stone was the primary building material. So there were stone dressers, stone cupboards, and yes, stone beds are more particularly stone bed boxes. Okay, so this might be imagining something that looks a little bit more like a stone bath tub that you could fill

with betting material exactly. Yeah. And and if you you travel to the Orkney Islands you can you can actually see an example that The site here in question is called Scara Bray. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Uh. The domicile here features two beds, one smaller one a bit larger, often interpreted as belonging to the husband and wife of the people who would have lived here. Now we don't know for sure, but there there might have

been based on the evidence. There might have been a curtain of some sorts separating the beds from the rest of the domicile. Uh though there would have had little privacy either way. And these stone beds would have been filled with a mattress of bracken or heather, and for covers they would have used animal skins. I feel like I should know what bracken and heather are. What are they? Well, by bracken, it's a you know, it's a type of fern. Oh okay, that's nice. And head there is an evergreen

flowering plant. Okay, okay, Oh well, the brackens I just looked up they have their their immature fronds or fiddle heads, like fiddle head ferns. Yeah, so you know that it doesn't doesn't sound horrible at all. I mean, I encourage you to look up examples of this out there as you're listening to this episode, if you have a chance after you listen to it, because it it looks fairly comfortable.

I mean, like you said, it looks kind of like a stone bathtub, but you can imagine it filled with some some cushy mattress material and it being you know, not bad. Get me in there. I'll sleep in it, I'll sleep there, I'll do it now. I mentioned earlier that Killing's main area of focus is ancient Egypt, So

that raises the question what about ancient Egypt? Well, Fagin and Killing right, that ancient Egyptian homes were sparse, and most people could not afford wooden or certainly ivory objects or any kind of you know of fancy metalwork, so they would have had simple stools, tables, and screens made from bound read stems and rush that were employed for most things. And that the bed consisted of, quote, a

small platform built from mud brick. This is something I've noticed in looking at a bunch of ancient beds and ancient bedding materials. They don't always really seem to emphasize softness. A lot of them are just sort of like hard platforms of various kinds. Yeah, and I guess part of that is there is the idea that there would be something else there as well, you know, that they would have furs or you know, or or vegetation that would

be added into the mix. Um. But but then, but then also I guess it's kind of like raising something up, right, creating a platform on which to sleep that is a little separate, that's not quite the floor, which if you're thinking about you know, I'm just imagining like all the kind of things that could happen in a space like this.

You have water, say running in, or you have um, you know, any kind of you know, insect or or a crab or whatnot that wanders into I'm mainly thinking back to um, yeah, my my honeymoon when I was in this like little beach side place and there with the crabs would come in at night and it would just be all over the floor. They just came right in under the door, and so you had to watch where you step. But of course they're not gonna get up in the bed, but they are going to like

crawl the walls a bit. You've mentioned that before. That sounds awesome. Yeah, I'm sure that would make midnight trips to the bathroom a little bit scary. Yeah, well, you know, more like a video game. Yeah, but but I mean just as a yeah, reminder, it's like it it makes sense to maybe lift your sleeping area up a little bit from the surrounding floor or or ground. Well i'd imagine also uh heat, heat plays a role there because

sleeping on the floor is usually going to be cold. Right. Well, we'll come back to that because there's a there's a

wonderful example from from from Chinese history. But as for the ancient Egyptians, Fagin and Killing mentioned that there were crude batted frame attempts during the pre Dynastic period third one BC, which they described as boundary branches and twigs, But it wasn't until the following Dynastic period the copper woodworking tools began to make a real difference in what was possible, and this resulted in wooden stools, frames and

carcasses or cabinet frameworks. UH. Simple joint cuts and woodworking were key here, but materials played a big role as well. At first, they were limited by the wood UH that was available to them, which was sparse and poor in quality. But by the mid third millennium BC, Syrian and Lebanese timber provided far improved raw materials, and Egyptian furniture surged in quality. And we have some surviving examples of this sort of thing. And again this is coming via what

was put into the tombs of royal individuals. And does it seem like that that would mainly be because a tomb provided an opportunity for furniture to be preserved across the ages, as opposed to just sort of like chucked when it fell into disrepair. Right, I mean, even though the the wooden furniture in question, um, you know, basically turned to dust. Uh, at least the dust and the pieces are still all in the same place. It's far

easier to put things back together again. Yeah. So the key bed from this period is the bed of Hteferies from around twenty b C, which was buried with the queen in her Giza tomb as So this would have been a fine wooden bed frame with a portable bed canopy. The wood just decayed to powder, but egypt Egyptologist George Reisner was able to reconstruct it from the remaining metallic parts. And you can look up images of this. It's I mean, it looks nice. It's it's just of a wooden flat

bed with a like a head. You look at it and you you instantly recognize, like that's a bed. That's the invention. That is the thing now, one thing that we should come back to in just a minute. But it's an interesting visual feature of this bed is it has this little spike at one end. It's almost like a like an eagle at up a pedestal or a little y shaped stud of some kind. I wonder what that's for. Yeah, the the Egyptian headrest, which is very

y shaped or kind of slingshot frames shaped. Uh. You know, we'll come back to that in a minute, because that's certainly one of the more interesting artifacts you tend to see when you see, um, you know, ancient Egyptian beds uh or reconstructions of them in museums, and you think, what, what was that? How did that? How did that work? Can I imagine myself using such a thing at night?

But we'll come back to that in a minute. Um. Some of the other beds that they mentioned, there's a really nice folding Z type bed frame with metal hinges found in the tomb of twot in Common from the fourteenth century BC. You can you can look up images this as well. But kind of think of the way that some beach recliners fold up, and that's basically what you have here. Now. Some of these ancient Egyptian beds, they were made to be not flat, but at an

angle right, Uh. Is the two in common example, like that it would be kind of like slightly inclined towards the headrest. I think so. Now, the Hataferies example from earlier is is pretty um or as a least reconstructed as being pretty flat across the top. But yeah, I think some of them had kind of a slant to them.

It looks like it might have a slight incline you've read some of them had a slight incline, and then often had like a little wall down at the bottom that you would put your feet on that would prevent you, I guess, from sliding out of the bed. Well, it's interesting to remind ourselves of the role the gravity plays in sleep. Come back to that in a bit. But but you know, sleeping in a bed is very much

a gravity dependent, um mode of human behavior. Now, let's get back to the headrest though, because there, Yeah, there's a lot that's interesting here. Um. It's one of the most notable aspects of Royal Egyptian sleeping arrangements. Often you'll find gilded ornate examples because yeah, the ancient Egyptians did not use pillows, but instead used a wooden or stone stand for their head. Why does that not sound very comfortable.

Uh that that? I mean, that's the thing I always I always wondered when I when I looked at It's like I I tried to imagine what that was like, you know, because I would think, well, wouldn't you just fold your arms up under your head? Instead? Like? Why is? Why is this a good choice to make? And I found an interesting article about this from Kira Foley. She wrote an article for the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, and she points out that Egyptian headrests had two purposes, one

practical and the other um apotropaic. So first of all, they did the same thing that a pillow does. They account for the gap between your head and shoulders during sleep. But they also were items of of apotropaic magic. In other words, they served to protect the individual from evil

influences during sleep. Ah. So they were kind of like a like almost like an amulet, but a feature of furniture that served the same purpose well both actually, because they start off as being this thing that is seen as a magical item of key importance, like so important that when you die you are buried with your head rest in order that you can take it with you

to provide protection in the next life. But eventually, by the third Intermediate period this would have been seven seven b C, they start using amulets in the shape of headrests instead, like the thing becomes a symbol of the thing, and you take this with you into into the grave for the same purpose. Interesting. Yeah, so it's like a little you can look up images of this amulet and it it's basically just a small version of the headrest,

the headrest made into a symbol. You know. It looks, uh, you know, look looks a little bit like if you don't know what it is, you might think, what looks kind of like a saddle on a stand or something, and fully writes that The Book of the Dead, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, elaborates that these amulets could protect you from decapitation in the afterlife. Whoa, yeah, so

I had to look this up. Uh. It's often referred to as the chapter of the pillow uh in the Book of the Dead, and this particular example, I believe is from the Wallace Budge translation from I'm just going to read a part of this. Uh. You can you can look up the whole text online, but it goes son of hathor nessert nessertet who giveth back the head after the slaughter, Thy head shall not be carried away from the after the slaughter, thy head shall never never

be carried away from the That's the headrest guarantee. Now, one of the big things from any Westerners when we view Egyptian headrest is again not the idea that they might protect us from evil, but rather that this sort of thing is comfortable at all during sleep. Well, I ran across a wonderful article about this very topic. This

is for the Glencren Museum in Pennsylvania. They have a nice article with illustrations on this topic from Jennifer hawser Vegner, pH d, Associate Curator Egyptian Section Pin Museum, and in it she points out several key facts about the use of of headrest and this headrest in these headrests in particular during sleep. So for starters, this wasn't just an Egyptian thing. Uh, Ceramic pillows were used during the Ming

dynasty of China through sixty four. She mentions that this was a time when elaborate female hairstyles were fashionable, so a headrest in these cases would protect an elaborate hair treatment from what we would think of as bed head today. Oh. Interesting. And then headrests are not just an ancient or even historical things. She points out that we see them used to this day in parts of Africa, and it comes

down to two key reasons. First, there's the elaborate hair issue thing quote groups whose cultural expressions involved the wearing of elaborate hairstyles. Uh. These are the types of cultures where we may see the use of a headrest at night, and this would have included the Egyptians. Uh. Secondly, there's climate. So if you use a traditional fabric pillow, you know as well as we know, that the cold side of

the pillow is where it's at right in a hot climate. Uh. This feeling, the feeling of the cold pillow that may be harder to come by. A headrest provides a cooler sleeping experience by lifting the head up from the sleeping surface and allowing air to flow under and around the head and neck. Nice. Okay, I think I understand now. That makes a lot of sense. And then another reason they mentioned this comes back to what you were talking

about earlier. With the burning of the betting. Organic fabric pillows may have posed more of an infestation risk, but a solid headrest, Uh, that would have that would have removed this particular threat. You know, you might have to worry with the rest of your betting, but at least

the head region is is safe and secure. Oh. This is uh sort of the same logic for why I was kind of grossed out when we were reading about in the history of the toilet that there were these cushioned toilets with like fabric that for the seat area, which just seemed awful, Like, wouldn't it be better to just have like hard, non porous surfaces that are easy to clean. And I guess the same that's true of a toilet would apply to a bed. Uh. They're probably

equally like germ infested and gross. Yeah, but you know, if you if you have just um, you know this this wooden platform on which to lay your head. Uh. Yeah, that removes at least some of the risk here, But it still leaves that that remaining question was this comfortable?

Is this a comfortable way to sleep? Well? Vegner takes the extra step of testing it out herself in this article so um, she constructed a wonder one replica of one of the headrests found in the Pen Museum's collection, and I just want to read her results here she she writes it up rather nicely, quote the experiment clarify had a few things from me. Firstly, I had always assumed that the curved support of the headrest could be used to support either the head or the neck. This

was an incorrect assumption. The headrest can only be used to support the head, not the neck. Trying to use the headrest on one's neck was an uncomfortable impossibility. There is a reason it is called a headrest. Secondly, the headrest, when positioned correctly on the head, can be used fairly comfortably while resting on one's back. Many representations of the headrest in use, such as in the Glencrere and figurine,

show the sleeper resting on their side. Again, it was possible to position the headrest in such a way just above one's ear that this pose was also not completely uncomfortable. I can also let any stomach sleepers know that using headrest and trying to position it on the forehead while facing downwards is impossible. There seems to be some evidence that the headrests in ancient Egypt were padded or wrapped with linen when used. I would imagine this would make

the headrest even more comfortable as it lightening. As this experiment was, I do not think I will trade my trusty pillow for a wooden head rest anytime soon. That's interesting. I mean, I wonder if it's a it's a matter if it's a matter of getting used to it, or if it's a matter of maybe like we don't know exactly how it was used. It sounds like it's a

it's it's a combination of those. Yeah, Like like there are particularly what particular ways to use it and not to use it, and you have to take an account that you would have like added um uh you know, padding and whatnot. But kudos to Vegner for for taking the you know, the step of trying it out for herself. It makes me wonder too. It's just the kind of thing we can see make a comeback, you know. I mean,

I'm surprised. I mean, on one one hand, it's something humans do and certainly did in the past as well. So it's the kind of uh sleep choice that could make a comeback. You could also imagine it becoming fashionable, be becoming the next big thing that you buy, you know, on line or you know, order with a podcast code.

It's the next squaddy potty. Well, and then on the other hand, you could imagine someone coming up with outrageous claims for why like this is the this is the way to sleep, you know, give you the the enlightened mind of the ancient Egyptian or something, you know, uh, some sort of you know, spiritual or pseudo scientific reason for why this is the best way to sleep, like some chiropractors theory about how pillows are responsible for all

Western diseases. Now, now, Vegner, you know very much, and is someone who normally uses a you know, a soft pillow and try it out using uh one of these headrest I would be interested to hear from any listeners out there who either have tried the same experiment or have any experience using a headrest regularly. Uh yeah, I'd love to I'd love to hear the reverse, you know, someone who regularly uses a headrest, a hard headrest, and then tries a soft pillow, because I mean, I'm very

particular about my pillows. I need a certain amount of firmness otherwise I'm not getting that that next support agreed, Now, Fagan and Killing back in, they're they're right up. They mentioned some other examples of note. The ancient Greeks developed a bed that was larger and higher than the Egyptian bed, called a client, and it was the sort of thing that you could lay on, prop yourself up on a pillow on, and of course enjoy a hearty meal upon

more in bed. Yeah. Uh, you know you. I don't know if you were in the city at at this point, but that's there was a There was a restaurant in Atlanta for a while called Bed and all of the tables, or at least a number of the tables, were beds, and that was the whole attraction. It was like a big canopy bed and you hung out on it and you ate. Uh huh, yeah, I mean I never went, but I I've heard about it. Oh, maybe I'm being unfair. That strikes me as very gimmicky, but I don't know.

I'd give it a shot if somebody at trusted said

the food was good. Now, we mentioned the idea of a platform and temperature earlier, um, the ancient Chineese Fagan and and Killing right where a matt level culture so they used lower simply wooden bed frames, and they don't really get into this, but one of the cooler sleep innovations in Chinese culture, at least in Northern China, was the kind an integrated home heating system for cooking, sleeping, domestic heating and ventilation that still apparently widely used in

northern China. And it's a heated h raised bed pat platform that is thought to have its origins and Neolithic designs but for for a long time. Basically, what you have is you have hot exhaust from a fire housed in another room circulating through this platform of stone or brick, creating a heated platform on which to sleep but also

to work and to live. If you if you end up looking at it, you probably have seen images of this of a Chinese household, either contemporary or historic, and maybe not realize exactly what you're looking at, but it's like a it looks like a raised warner or portion of a room, but it is also heated. Now. Uh, one quick note about something we're not really going to get into in these in this episode, and that is the hammock Um. Because the Hammock I was looking into

this a little bit. It seems to have its own really interesting history, one that we could potentially come back and discuss in greater detail. But it's an example the hanging bed that is based on fabric technology, and so we see examples of its use in the ancient world as well as among the fiber technology using people's of the of the America's. We should definitely come back to the hammock. Yeah, I love I love a good hammock. All right, we're gonna take another break, but we'll be

right back. Than alright, we're back. So I want to come back to some of what we were talking about earlier, about just sort of the basic function of a bed, like what does a bed do? Um? You know, because it is essentially a kind of nest, like like the nest of her Really any terrestrial animal you can name, um, if not nest construction, then at least nest behavior. But we also have to think of the human bed in terms of physiological and techno cultural adaptation. So I was

looking for for some examples of this. I was looking at a article and Evolutionary anthropology titled Sleep Intensity and the Evolution of Human Cognition by David R. Sampson and Charles L. Nonne, which considers the view that our our species sleep architecture is in accord with that of other animals and presents and they present an alternate hypothesis that human sleep is highly derived relative to that of other primates. So the idea that they present here is that the

human sleep is superior to that of other primates. It's shorter, it's deeper, it exhibits a higher proportion of of of rim sleep than expected. They call it the sleep intensity hypothesis. That early humans would have experienced selective pressure to fulfill sleep needs in the shortest time possible. Interesting, So what would that selective pressure be other that was different than

other animals. Well, that's a part of it was of course survival from predation like all animals would have had to deal with, as well as from human violence, uh, the violence of other humans. But it also this would have by being able to get like maximum but short sleep, it would have allowed them more time to engage in social interactions. Again we're talking, we're talking earlier about these these these creatures that we're living around fires, sleeping among fires,

having this enhanced social time. But then part of that also becomes you know, becomes essential to humans that were transmitting skills and knowledge to the next generation of humans, uh, and to each other. And so the less time you're sleeping, the more time you have to do that and most of that knowledge. I mean pretty much, I guess all of the knowledge and skills that you're dealing with at

that point, our survival skills and survival knowledge. Uh. This is one of those hypotheses that would that it seems like it would be hard to prove something like this, but it is interesting and I often find myself at least intuitively sympathetic to um explanations for in human origins that have a lot to do with social groups and social relationships. Yeah, it seems very likely to me that it's actually social pressures that were some of the dominant

pressures on early humans. Yeah. I mean, it also lines up with the old addity snooze you lose, right yeah. Uh. They also point out that that deeper sleep might have also been key to the consolidation of the skills and questions. So you know, the more you're you're you're out of bed, the more you're potentially learning new skills and then I have sleep, is is indeed important to the consolidation of those skills in the mind. Then it it pays to

have deep sleep when you are sleeping. But of course, in order to get the sleep they needed, our ancestors would have needed social and physical security, and beds are just part of that equation, both in terms of the general sort of bed that primates make and the technological bed that humans developed. They also point to an interesting study that Samson, along with Rob Shoemaker wrote in looking at how nests and sleep enhance cognitive performance in non

human grade apes. They quote quantified the sleeping platform complexity each night, measuring it as an index of the number of material items available to construct a bed, and found that complexity co varied positively with reduced nighttime motor activity,

less fragmentation, and greater sleep efficiency. I think one of the authors here, David Sampson, is also one of the authors of that study about chimpanzees preferring certain kinds of wood for their sleeping arrangements, the wood of the Ugandan ironwood tree. Oh that well, that would make sense, yeah, because I did look him. Look him up in a lot of his work seems to revolve around um sleep

cognition and uh and primates. Interesting. Yeah, but but yeah, I breding this up not so much to to lobby for their hypothesis here, but I do think it's a very interesting hypothesis, but rather to use it as a way of rethinking exactly what role of bead plays in our lives, you know, as part of this suite of techno cultural adaptations that support human sleep cycles, sleep cycles that that you know very well could could be essential to um to many of the other cultural and technical

um adaptations that end up taking place afterwards. Yeah. On one hand, I think like, well, okay, so the bed doesn't seem like a realm of technology that's ripe to change much in the future. But then again, I don't know. I mean, the human sleep patterns have changed before. I think there's like, there's some evidence that throughout much of history people slept at kind of different times and in different segments than they often do at least you know

that we're familiar with in the in America today. Uh, And so so I don't know, maybe there is more room for change in the technology support structure of our sleeping habits. And then I would be led to assume I wonder, Yeah, I guess one of the questions would be, like, what would we intentionally change about human sleep? You know, we've all had those those sort of lingering fantasies like what if I didn't have to sleep, I wouldn't have to own a bed. I could just I don't wander around,

not pay rent. But um, I could doom scroll all night long. I know. I mean I certainly don't feel that way now. I'm kind of like, oh, man, sleep, that's um, you know, when it's when sleep is good and uh, you know, and you're not dealing with nightmares or awkward dreams, it's a pretty great place to be. But but but I guess what one of the things like we can sort of fantasize about what we want

sleep to be. But one of the problems is that we don't have a perfect understanding of what sleep really is, like what what it's key role is for for human existence. You know, Um, yeah, we know it, we know it's necessary, we know it's necessarious, but we but we don't fully understand all of it, all the roles that plays in human health and psychology and all that. Yeah, I mean, is it is it defragmenting the hardware? Is it as David Eagleman hypothesizes, is it is it is? It? Is

it tied to um uh to to to neural visual processes. H. You know, we were not entirely sure. So before we start messing with it and and reshaping sleep in our image, it would pay to to understand exactly what it is doing. Oh, humans would never intentionally mess with their sleeping patterns through technology, saying like bringing a small blue light device into their bed and staring at it for four hours before they

go to sleep. Oh. One other thing. Long time listeners of the show remember previous co host Christian Savior, who joined me on topics such as Timothy Leary, we could problems and are creepy pasta episodes. Well, Christian has an awesome new project, Corridor Magazine, a new horror magazine that brings the weird worlds, short fiction, art, comics and essays together under one roof. It's going to feature a new original work of science fiction by me titled Leviathan c.

I'm very excited about it. Touches on some stuff to bow your mind topics. I think many of you will dig it, as well as Christian story rescue and alter. It will also feature fiction by other names you may be familiar with, such as the incredible horror author Christie Demester, and you also find works in there by authors you might know, such as ed Garbanowski. You might recognize him

from his work with stuff you should know. As far as art goes, this is gonna be a beautiful publication with work from from such artists as j M. Joe Grants, who creates these amazing woodcut style images super into his work, but also the psychedelic art of Malachi Ward. But for this magazine to actually exist as a digital and physical product, they have to they have to reach their Kickstarter go and as of this recording, they're not quite there yet.

So if you want to get your eyes or hands on Corridor, you'll need to back it, and the easiest way to do that is to head on over to kickstarter dot com and search for Corridor Magazine again. Go to kickstarter dot com search for Corridor Magazine and you'll find it. Back it, and then you can get your your hands and your eyes on this. Uh, this very

promising project. I'm I'm super excited about it. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close out this episode here, But like I said, we may have come back in the future to talk about hammocks, etcetera. This is this is an Invention based episode of stuff to blow your mind, continuing the legacy of the show that we did for what about a year titled Invention. Uh. You can still find all those episodes online as a podcast that you

can subscribe to and download, etcetera. But we're we're continuing that here. We're gonna continue to do Invention episodes from time to time as we enjoy doing them, and we're lad to believe you enjoy listening to them as well. This book by Fake and Granny about the history of sleeping habits is interesting and I think there's stuff in it that we could come back to again in the future. Absolutely, I mean, sleep Again is one of those things we

all can relate to. We we all have have some bit of insight there, and likewise, we'd love to hear from everyone out there, if you've ever used a headrest, if you have thoughts on different beds and different cultures, if you've you know, tried out a wide variety of them and would like to, uh to share what works, what doesn't work. Yeah, we we'd love to hear from you.

In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find us wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. We just asked that you rate, review and subscribe. You can always find us by going to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That will take you to the I Heart listing for our show. And if you look around on that page long enough, you'll find a little

bit that's a store. Click on that that'll take you to a T shirt shop where you can buy some shirts or bags or stickers or what have you that have our logo or various monsters or fund designs on them. Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, this is the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows