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posted by martyb on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep... dept.

200,000 years ago, humans preferred to sleep in beds:

Researchers in South Africa's Border Cave, a well-known archeological site perched on a cliff between eSwatini (Swaziland) and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, have found evidence that people have been using grass bedding to create comfortable areas for sleeping and working on at least 200,000 years ago.

These beds, consisting of sheaves of grass of the broad-leafed Panicoideae subfamily were placed near the back of the cave on ash layers. The layers of ash was used to protect the people against crawling insects while sleeping. Today, the bedding layers are visually ephemeral traces of silicified grass, but they can be identified using high magnification and chemical characterisation.

Remains of camphor bush was also found in the bedding, which is used in East Africa to deter insects.

Journal Reference:
Lyn Wadley, Irene Esteban, Paloma de la Peña,, et al. Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abc7239)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:42AM (#1036877)

    Note they also discovered that ashes deter insects. Use them in making your bed tonight.