From the Vault: Invention of the Bed

We sure do spend a lot of time in bed, but what exactly IS a bed and what were ancient beds like? In this classic invention-based episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the ancient history of the bed. (originally published 11/17/2020)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today's Vault episode
is going to be about the invention of the bed.
Originally published novemb Pull the covers uptight and and settle
in for a listen. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your
Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to

(00:34):
Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be addressing
a maybe a surprisingly cozy topic. We're gonna be doing
a bit of an invention. Look at the bed, that's right. Uh.
We we love to go to bed, especially this time
of year. You know, It's just it just seems like
the place to be under multiple layers of blanket, um

(00:58):
totally over your body. Yeah, 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 sleeping. Uh, and this

(01:19):
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, not
by Yale University Press. From Yale University Press, by uh
Brian and Fagan and Nadia Dorani, and in one of
their early chapters they begin with a quote from a

(01:42):
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 every three day life from the histories written

(02:02):
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,
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

(02:24):
not as many maybe I guess you do have paintings
of people sleeping, but for the most part is not
the stuff of saga'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

(02:45):
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
as you start talking about 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

(03:07):
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 h of course, obviously we've been sleeping
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,

(03:30):
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 our boreal 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,

(03:50):
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 Huan
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

(04:11):
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

(04:34):
at different types of nesting behaviors in chimpanzees and Uganda,
and they sampled eighteen hundred and forty four nests and
found that chimpanzees selected Uganda 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

(04:57):
found that this was probably related to certain mat curial
properties of the iron wood, 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

(05:18):
so I'm wondering if all that just kind of adds
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

(05:38):
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

(06:00):
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

(06:23):
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

(06:43):
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 jace to sleep time that could have
given rise to increasing habituation to prolonged close physical contact,

(07:08):
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 write 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

(07:32):
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 something in the
fur of some sort of animal placed in front of
it like it is? It is? It is on some level,

(07:54):
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 situa. 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

(08:16):
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 Sievers, Marian Bamford, Paul Goldberg, Francesco Berner,
and Christopher Miller called Middle Stone Age Bedding construction and

(08:36):
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,

(08:56):
innovations in stone technology, the creation in 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.

(09:19):
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

(09:41):
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
fine the archaeologist Lynn Wadley, the lead author and the

(10:02):
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 collected as
part of betting, because all of the leaves were clearly

(10:24):
the same taxon meaning of the same plant. If leaves
had simply blown into the side 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 Dorani also mentioned that there was something careful

(10:45):
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.

(11:08):
There are mosquitoes that want to bite you and suck
your blood. There are probably other opportunistic insects that are
attracted to whatever food 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 a way
to to improve their their odds with insects. Essentially, they

(11:28):
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

(11:50):
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

(12:11):
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 repellent 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

(12:31):
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

(12:51):
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

(13:14):
the history of human hygiene. But I thought this was
interesting for a number of reasons. I mean, one is
the 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,

(13:38):
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. You 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

(14:01):
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

(14:23):
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 thinking about
like my current living situation and past living situations, and
I think one thing we have to to to recognize

(14:45):
is that in 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.

(15:06):
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 windows. 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 darker 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,

(15:29):
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 bed. 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

(15:49):
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, uh 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

(16:11):
people in America today to have friends over and have
everybody get in your bed. Right. But but I think
two cases where like you and 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

(16:32):
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 if it becomes a sort of a

(16:54):
table half the time, well no, I but I gotta say,
as an adult, I have felt awkwardness for 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

(17:15):
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 dad breakfast and bad still
has a certain attractiveness to it. I don't know. It's
not something I want for myself, but I am at

(17:35):
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,

(17:59):
So something that 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

(18:22):
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

(18:45):
like a video conferencing type thing. If you're like actively
doing like an Instagram story or something from your bed,
I can see where that might be a little weight.
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

(19:05):
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,

(19:29):
driving doctor's waiting room, supposed to be paying attention in
a meeting. All right, on that note, we're gonna take
a quick break, but we'll be right back. Thank you,
thank Okay, we're back alright. So we talked a little
bit about the prehistory of betting, what some some innovations

(19:50):
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

(20:13):
course to Brian M. 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.

(20:34):
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

(20:56):
what they were able to create. So they point to
a particular exam pole, 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 bed, and this example certainly includes a bed. It's
from the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland circa

(21:16):
one hundred to b C. 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

(21:39):
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 husband and wife of the

(22:01):
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 they 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

(22:23):
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.

(22:44):
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 that get me in there.
I'll sleep in it. I'll sleep there. I'll do it now.

(23:05):
I mentioned earlier that Killing's main area focuses ancient Egypt,
So that raises the question what about ancient Egypt. Well,
say 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

(23:27):
made from bound red 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

(23:50):
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

(24:12):
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

(24:33):
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

(24:53):
it makes sense to maybe lift your sleeping area up
a little bit from the surrounding floor or or ground.
Well 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, Fagan and Killing mentioned that there were

(25:16):
crude batted frame attempts during the pre Dynastic period b C,
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

(25:36):
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,

(25:59):
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 wooden furniture

(26:21):
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 like far easier to put
things back together again. Yeah. So the key bed from
this period is the bed of Hiteferies from around twenty
b C, which was buried with the queen in her

(26:43):
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 a wooden flat bed

(27:04):
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 atop a pedestal or a little y shaped
stud of some kind. I wonder what that for. Yeah,

(27:27):
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

(27:48):
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 two of tutin 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

(28:09):
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 tuting common example like that it would be kind
of like slightly inclined towards the headrest. I think so
now they had taperies. Example from earlier is is pretty

(28:31):
u 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

(28:54):
remind uselves of the role the gravity plays in sleep.
Come back to that in a bit. But but you know,
it's sleeping in a bed is very much a gravity
dependent um uh 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

(29:17):
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,

(29:37):
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 John Hopkins Archaeological Museum, and she
points out that Egyptian headrest had two purposes, one practical

(29:58):
and the other um uh 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 serve to protect the individual from evil
influences during sleep. Ah. So they were kind of like

(30:20):
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 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,

(30:43):
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

(31:06):
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

(31:27):
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
gonna 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

(31:50):
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 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

(32:12):
of thing is comfortable at all during sleep. Well, I
ran across a wonderful article about this very topic. This
is from the 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

(32:34):
the use of of headrest and this headrest in these
headrest 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,

(32:55):
so a headrest in these cases would protect an elaborate
hair treatment from what we'll we would think of his
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

(33:17):
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

(33:40):
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 to what

(34:00):
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

(34:22):
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

(34:44):
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

(35:06):
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 clarified
a few things for me. Firstly, I had always assumed
that the curve support of the headrest could be used
to support either the head or the neck. This was

(35:28):
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't be used fairly
comfortably while resting on one's back. Many representations of the

(35:49):
headrest in use, such as in the glencre And figurine,
show the sleep arresting 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

(36:14):
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 lightning as this
experiment was, I do not think I will trade my
trusty pillow for a wooden headrest 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

(36:34):
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.

(36:57):
It makes me wonder too. It's just the kind of
thing we can see make to come back, 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

(37:19):
buy you know online 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

(37:40):
for why this is the best way to sleep. Yeah,
like some chiropractors theory about our 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 head rest I would be interested to hear from
any listeners out there who either have tried the same

(38:02):
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 in that next support. Now,

(38:25):
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. Yeah. Uh,
you know you. I don't know if you were in

(38:47):
the city at that 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. But it was like a big canopy
bed and you hung out on it and you ate
U 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

(39:10):
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 the ancient Chinese 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

(39:32):
the kind an integrated home heating system for cooking, sleeping.
Domestic heating and ventilation is 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

(39:52):
have is you have hot exhaust from a fire housing
another room circulating through this pla form 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

(40:16):
maybe not realize exactly what you're looking at. But it's
like a it looks like a raised corner 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

(40:37):
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 peoples of
the of the America's We should definitely come back to
the hammock. Yeah, I love I love a good hammock.

(40:57):
All Right, we're gonna take another break, but we'll be
right back. All right, 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

(41:19):
nest of virtually 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 aticle and evolutionary anthropology titled Sleep Intensity and the

(41:41):
Evolution of Human Cognition by David R. Sampson and Charles L. Nunne,
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

(42:03):
is superior to that of other primates. It's shorter, it's deeper,
it exhibits a higher proportion of of of rem sleep
than expected. Uh. 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

(42:26):
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

(42:46):
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 become you know, it becomes essential to humans that
were transmitting skills and knowledge to the next generation of humans, uh,

(43:07):
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 are survival skills and survival knowledge. This is
one of those hypotheses that would it seems like it
would be hard to prove something like this, but it

(43:27):
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 addities

(43:48):
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 if sleep is
is indeed important to the consolidation of those skills in

(44:10):
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

(44:31):
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

(44:55):
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,

(45:19):
but but yeah, I bring 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
bed plays in our lives, you know, as part of
this suite of technocultural 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

(45:42):
and technical uh 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 humans patterns have changed before.
I think there's like, there's some evidence that throughout much

(46:04):
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 than then I would be led to assume.
I wonder. Yeah, I guess one of the questions would be, like,

(46:26):
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 I certainly don't

(46:46):
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

(47:06):
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 necessary, but we but we don't fully
understand all of it, all the roles it plays in
human health and psychology and all that. Yeah, I mean,

(47:28):
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.
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,

(47:51):
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

(48:14):
awesome new project, Corridor Magazine, a new horror magazine that
brings the weird worlds of 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
blow your mind topics I think many of you will
dig it. As well as Christian story Rescue and Alter,

(48:39):
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 Grabanowski. 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. Jo Grants,

(49:01):
who creates his 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

(49:22):
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,

(49:46):
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

(50:10):
that here. We can continue to do Invention episodes from
time to time as we enjoy doing them, and we're
led to believe you enjoy listening to them as well.
This book by Fagan and Dorani 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

(50:32):
bit of insight there, and likewise, we'd love to hear
from everyone out there. If you've ever used a head rest,
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. Uh.
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.

(50:53):
We just asked that you rate, review and subscribe. You
can always find us by going to stuff to Blow
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have our logo or various monsters or fun designs on

(51:15):
the huge Thanks 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
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(51:38):
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