Human Ancestors Slept Less Than 8 Hours Yet Lived Healthy: Study

We usually bargain to sleep for eight hours a night. Sometimes we even bargain to take a nap during the day time. However, a new study finds our ancestors didn’t sleep for so long and even didn’t take nap most of the days, and yet they lived a healthy life.

Researchers studied three human tribes who currently live in preindustrial societies and found they slept for an average of only 5.7 hours to 7.1 hours at night.

The three groups were the Hazda tribe in Tanzania, the Tsimane in Bolivia and the San in Namibia. They were chosen for the study because of their traditional lifestyle that is not engulfed with technology and are not trapped in modern life.

Two of the groups are in Africa. The Hazda lives in northern part of Tanzania, which is just south of the equator. They completely depended on hunting and gathering for food supply. The other group from Africa is the San tribe of Namibia. They live further south of the Hazda group. They too are hunters and gatherers. The Tsimane group is not an African tribe. They live in the reinforests of Bolivia and are hunter as well as horticulturalists.

Researchers used special watch-sized devices to measure their sleep as well as waking up times for more than 1,000 days. Most of the members of the three tribes slept less than seven hours a night and the average sleeping time was found to be just 6 hours and 25 minutes.