WEBVTT - Invention: The Bed 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.200 My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.560 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:21.400 And today we're gonna be addressing a maybe a surprisingly 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:25.239 cozy topic. We're gonna be doing a bit of an invention. 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:28.800 Look at the bed, that's right. Uh. We we love 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.520 to go to bed, especially this time of year. You know, 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.239 It's just it just seems like the place to be, uh, 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:38.959 under multiple layers of blanket, um totally over your body. 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:42.440 Yeah yeah, my my head just between two pillows, just 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.440 in the utter darkness there. Uh yeah, I mean we 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:48.760 it's it's kind of a cliche, especially when it comes 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:52.960 to mattress commercials, but we do spend an enormous amount 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:55.760 of time in bed, you know. It's we spend a 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.320 large portion of our life the sleeping. Uh, and this 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:02.040 is where we do it. One of the sources that 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:04.200 I'm going to refer to in this episode as a 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:07.080 book that I just started reading called What We Did 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:10.560 in Bed, a Horizontal History by Yale University Press or 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:14.600 Not by Yale University Press. From Yale University Press by 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:19.080 uh Brian and Fagan and Nadia Durrani, And in one 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.880 of their early chapters, they begin with a quote from 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:25.000 a writer named Lawrence Wright, who I think wrote on architecture, 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:29.960 but who said, from nearly all social history and biography, 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:33.000 one third of the story is missing. And that's kind 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:35.760 of true. I mean, we've talked before about how a 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:38.520 lot of times it's interesting to try to get a 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:42.720 flavor of everyday life from the histories written in a 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:45.080 certain place and time, and that can be difficult because 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:48.600 the histories that people write about are usually devoted to 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:53.520 unusual events, are very like like high stakes events. Uh, 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.720 the things we think of as making history, not what 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:00.720 everybody happens to go home and do at night, right, Yeah, 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:03.720 And and the big part of that is sleeping. Not 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:06.040 not as many maybe, I guess you do have paintings 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.840 of people sleeping, but uh, for the most part, it's 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:13.040 not the stuff of Soka's but it really does define 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:16.200 the very texture of our lives. I mean, we you know, 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:18.600 you spend maybe roughly a third of your life or 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:22.160 so in bed, and so uh, what's happening there and 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.320 what form that bed takes probably matters a lot for 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:27.960 your experience of the world. That's right. If it's not 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:30.560 the center of your house, it's kind of kind of 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:33.440 a center of your house, you know, it's like one 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:36.800 of the places that you you spend a lot of time. 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:39.480 Uh it, I mean, it's it's it's one of those 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:41.120 things that is you start talking about it, and it's 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.040 kind of a an outrageous overstatement of the obvious. But 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.280 but yeah, we we live in our beds, like, our 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.160 beds are a place we live. So I was wondering, 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:53.160 how did our ancestors sleep before the creation of beds. 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:55.280 You know, whenever we look at an invention, we like 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:59.080 to ask what came before? And uh, of course, obviously 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:01.960 we've been sleep being much longer than we've been sleeping 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.880 in beds, So what was that transition period like? And 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.120 there's a lot we don't know, but what we do 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:11.280 know is kind of interesting. So, for one thing, it 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:14.320 seems like, if you go back far enough, much of 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:17.240 the life of our hominid ancestors took place in trees. 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:20.280 We were you know, we were descended from largely arboreal 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:25.320 species and this probably included sleep. And for some evidence 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:27.840 of this we can look to the sleeping habits of 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:31.600 our nearest relatives in the animal world, which would be chimpanzees, 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:35.040 whose relationship to their environment is we don't know for sure, 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:37.960 but we think it is probably pretty similar to that 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:41.760 of human ants of human ancestors from several million years ago. 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:44.920 And in their book, Fagan and Durrani point out that 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.400 chimpanzees in the Toro sim Leaky Reserve of western Uganda 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:53.480 prefer to make their tree top nests out of branches 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:56.520 of a particular tree. Actually like their picky about what 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.640 kind of tree would they want to sleep on. They 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.320 really like something called Ugandan iron wood. And I went 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:05.680 actually to dig up the citation on this because I 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:07.400 was wondering about the study, and it looks like this 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:10.480 comes from a study by Samson and Hunt published in 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:15.480 p Os one that looked at different types of nesting 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:20.440 behaviors in chimpanzees and Uganda, and they sampled eighteen hundred 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:25.160 and forty four nests and found that chimpanzees selected Ugandan 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:29.200 ironwood for seventy three point six percent of all those nests, 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:31.920 even though it was only a little bit less than 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.800 ten percent of all the trees within the area that 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:38.520 they surveyed. And they found that this was probably related 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:43.560 to certain material properties of the ironwood, as would They 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:46.080 said it was the stiffest of all the woods around, 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:49.279 and they said it quote had the greatest bending strength 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.880 of all the trees tested, had the smallest distance between 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:57.280 leaves on the branches, and had the smallest leaf surface area. 0:04:57.880 --> 0:04:59.599 And so I'm wondering if all that just kind of 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.240 add up to, well, this kind of tree makes the 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:05.760 best natural mattress material. It's like that it's got the 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.440 best sort of the best support structure for you, but 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:12.479 it also bends is sort of nicely cushioned. Yeah. And 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:15.119 the idea too that it there's the smallest distance between 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.239 leaves on the branches. Um, you know that that brings 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:21.920 that makes you think of something that's almost uh, it's 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:25.159 almost like it's woven together, you know. But of course, 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.520 eventually our ancestors did come out of the trees for 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:30.840 the majority of their lives, and the date of this 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:34.839 transition is debatable, but uh, Fagan and Durrani right that 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:39.560 probably roughly two million years ago or so, our ancestors 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:43.080 first began to control fire, and it seems that this 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:47.920 probably coincided with a transition to sleeping out on the 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:51.159 ground in open camps or under the shelter of rock, 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:55.839 overhangs or caves around fires instead of sleeping in trees. 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:59.240 And I think that's an interesting possibility that that fire 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.599 control of fire would be correlated with changes in where 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.520 and how we slept. Yeah, we can easily imagine the 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:10.240 Gary Larson far Side cartoon showing what happened to our 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:12.840 ancestors that decided to have the fires in the tree 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:16.400 with them. Yeah, that's not a good plan. Yeah, And 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:19.479 then uh, Fagan and Doroni go on to mention something 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.440 that's interesting. Now, this is speculation, but it is interesting 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:27.360 to consider the possibility that the introduction of camp fires 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.200 could very well have shaped the development of what we 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:33.760 see as major features of human social life. And they 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.640 give the example of huddling around fires for warmth and 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:40.679 for protection against predators during and adjacent to sleep time 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.840 that could have given rise to increasing habituation to prolonged 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:50.320 close physical contact. That this could somehow be related towards 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:54.240 repeated sex with the same partner in places otherwise used 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:59.360 for sleep, as opposed to opportunistic sexual pairing. The possibility 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:03.039 that if this is true, the author's right quote pair 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:06.560 bonding maybe a recent feature of human evolution, and it's 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:11.360 intriguing to imagine that technology fire and the bed played 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:14.600 a role in its emergence. Now, unfortunately, it's impossible to 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:16.920 know for sure at this point given the evidence we have, 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:21.200 but that is an interesting possibility, I mean even today, Uh, Like, 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:24.080 what do you think when you see um like this, 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:27.920 this this setting, a roaring fireplace and some in the 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:30.600 fur of some sort of animal placed in front of 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.880 it like it is? It is? It is on some level. 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:35.560 And this is of course probably a lot of this 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:38.440 is probably just cultural uh coding as well, but it's 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.600 it's an erotic situation. It's like they're a bed, they're 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.280 a fire, right, you're you are in James Bond and 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:48.200 the Russian Spies Shelley. But there is a certain point 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:50.640 at which we we don't have to speculate as much 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:52.600 what was going on, because we eventually do get some 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.559 physical evidence from archaeology that can tell us something about 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:59.040 the sleeping arrangements of our ancient human ancestors. Uh. And 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:01.960 this would be especially during the Middle Stone Age of 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:06.200 South Africa. Now, this next part refers to a study 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:12.160 by Lynn Wadley Christine Seevers, Marian Bamford, Paul Goldberg, Francesco Berner, 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:15.760 and Christopher Miller called Middle Stone Age bedding, construction and 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:19.520 settlement patterns at Subadu, South Africa. This was published in 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:23.440 two thousand eleven and Science and according to Widely at All, 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.960 there are a number of interesting adaptations that all appear 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:31.560 or emerge in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa. 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:36.160 We noticed the use of shell beads and engraving, uh 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:42.080 innovations in stone technology, the creation and use of compound adhesives, 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:47.120 so types of glue, heat treatment of rocks, and circumstantial 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:51.440 evidence for snares and for bows and arrows. But along 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:53.800 with this all all this stuff in the same period, 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:58.840 there's also early evidence of domestic innovations in betting. And 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:01.480 this evidence of betting comes from a place known as 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:05.080 the Seeboodoo Rock shelter. To read from Fagan and Durrani 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:08.640 quote in a cliff above the youth Ungathi River in 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:13.800 South Africa, forty kilometers north of Durban and fifteen kilometers 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:17.679 from the Indian Ocean. Modern people Homo sapiens, who were 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:21.520 physically and mentally like ourselves, visited the shelter at least 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:25.840 fifteen times between seventy seven thousand and thirty eight thousand 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:31.400 years ago, and slept there. Thick swaths of grasses, sedges, 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.320 and rushes that still grow by the river tell a 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:39.160 story of regular but careful slumber. Now about the archaeological 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.240 find the archaeologist Lynn Wadley, the lead author and the 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:44.880 study I mentioned, she said in a separate interview that 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.840 was quoted in an article I was reading. Quote, the 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:52.000 fossilized leaves were uncovered as a sheet of white plant 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:56.760 matter overlying layers of sedge leaves and stems. I suspected 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:00.559 whilst excavating them that the leaves were deliberately elected as 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.640 part of betting, because all of the leaves were clearly 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:08.200 the same taxon meaning of the same plant. If leaves 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:10.800 had simply blown into the site from the forest, there 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:14.839 would have been several different tree species represented. So that's 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.160 about the method of determining what this layer of vegetation 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:21.600 that was repeatedly found buried in the ground meant. But 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.680 Fagan and Durrani also mentioned that there was something careful 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:27.400 going on about the construction of this ancient betting. Here 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:30.679 where does the careful part come in. Well, when you're 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:33.120 sleeping in a cave or a rock shelter, it can 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:37.000 be extremely difficult to keep your sleeping area clean and 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.640 free of insects. I mean, obviously, you know you're laying 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:43.640 out there, and you are you and all the stuff 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.800 you're doing is probably pretty attractive to insects for multiple reasons. 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.120 There are mosquitoes that want to bite you and suck 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.400 your blood. There are probably other opportunistic insects that are 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:56.640 attracted to whatever foods you're eating around your dwelling space. 0:10:56.720 --> 0:11:00.600 You know, you're like a magnet for insect life. But 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:04.839 the Stone Age inhabitants of this cave discovered away to 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:08.840 to improve their their odds with insects. Essentially, they invented 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:13.120 an insect repellent mattress. Now, this mattress was made out 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:15.959 of not just any leaves and grasses, but very importantly, 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:19.400 it contained the aromatic leaves of the Cape laurel tree 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:23.800 or Cryptocaria woody eye, which smells very nice to humans, 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:25.559 I'm told, I'm not sure if I know what that 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:30.480 would smell like. But it also bears insecticidal compounds that 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:34.040 can drive away mosquitoes and other pests. And this would 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:36.280 have been not only to make the beds more pleasant, 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:38.959 but to some extent this was a question of life 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.640 and death, because insect borne illnesses were and are a 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:46.760 real threat to survival, especially to young children. But beyond that, 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:50.400 there's also evidence that the people who lived here frequently 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:54.400 burned their bedding and then replaced it with fresh layers 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:57.640 of foliage. And this would be to kill any insects 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:01.200 that had taken up residence despite the repell leaves, and 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.160 to get rid of trash and garbage. Because one thing 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.800 is quite clear from the archaeological remains, these people liked 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.880 to eat in bed. The remains showed that they would 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:15.000 consume food on these grass mats that served as their beds, 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.280 but they would also do other stuff. Tools, debris, and 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.920 charred bone indicate that they probably worked and did other 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:24.760 activities in bed, because hey, beds are nice, you know, 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:27.160 it's it's a soft layer, Like, why leave if you 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:31.320 don't have to. They also clearly liked large beds. Fagan 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:34.960 and Dorani described these as king sized quote. Most of 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:39.040 the bedding covers at least three well trodden square meters 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:42.760 uh and the fact that they were burning their bedding 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.719 and replacing it at regular intervals shows early human use 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.599 not just to fire for warmth, cooking protection, and tool manufacture, 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:54.360 but also for sanitation, which is an important milestone in 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:56.760 the history of human hygiene. But I thought this was 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:59.040 interesting for a number of reasons. I mean, one is 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:03.040 the ancient insight into the insect repellent properties of these 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:06.920 particular leaves that would be woven into the bedding material 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:10.840 to keep the insects out. But another thing is what 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.120 kind of role this bed location would have played in 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:18.520 ancient culture, Because, at least in American culture today, we 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:22.240 usually think of beds as well several things private right 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.719 hidden from view, Like if you're showing somebody around your 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:28.440 house that you know, you don't usually start with the bed. 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:30.600 You might not even show them the bed at all. 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.400 We think of beds as solitary or at least secluded 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:37.559 with a single partner. We think of beds as primarily 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:41.440 for sleep, with secondary uses maybe including sex and low 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:46.040 energy activities like reading. But historically and around the world, 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:48.080 none of this is a given. Like for much of 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.400 human history and for many people even today, beds have 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:56.000 been more public or in plane view, often shared by 0:13:56.000 --> 0:14:00.240 many people sometimes even by strangers, and used for lots 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.160 of activities other than sleep in sex like beds have 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:07.160 many times in place has been used for socializing, eating, 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:11.440 preparing food, working on projects, etcetera. And I wonder what 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:15.640 kind of difference does this make in our lives. Well, 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:18.280 I was thinking about this, and I think of thinking 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.440 about like my current living situation and past living situations, 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:24.200 and I think one thing we have to to to 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:28.880 recognize is that in the sort of you know, stereotypical 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:32.760 American home, you have the bed, but you also have 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:36.800 the couch. And the couch is a place where we 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:38.480 do a lot of the same things that we do 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:41.520 in the bed. It's certainly where we I don't know 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:44.520 about you, but I certainly get in the occasional nap 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.360 on my couch. Uh that there have been you know, 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:49.800 there have been times. It was particularly recently I lived 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:52.120 near some train tracks. There's a lot of bright lights 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:55.520 that were visible through the bedroom window. So if it 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:57.240 was too bright for me out there, I would come 0:14:57.240 --> 0:14:59.560 and I would sleep on the couch as well, because 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:01.200 it was dark here in the living room. So you know, 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:03.560 you can you can sleep on the couch. You can. 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:07.720 But also I find that generally some of us that 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:11.000 are maybe not okay with, say, eating dinner in their bed, 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:14.640 you you're probably perfectly okay eating dinner at your couch, 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:17.720 like in front of the television. Right, So the couch 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:19.960 is basically a bad I mean, it's doing all the 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:22.160 same things that a bed does, but it I think 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:26.400 in many cases ends up absorbing some of the activities 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:30.200 that then we we don't do in bed proper, you know, 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:33.800 like eating a meal. That's a really interesting point. I mean, 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.680 I mean, one very obvious thing is the way that 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:40.680 a couch plays a role for like visiting and socialization. 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:45.880 Socialization that maybe means something different socializing that would you 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:48.040 know it's normal to like have friends over and I'll 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:50.160 sit on the couch. It would be kind of weird 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:52.520 for a lot of people in America today to have 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:55.680 friends over and have everybody get in your bed. Right. 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.760 But but I think the cases where like you and 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:02.800 I I have been on the road doing podcast stuff 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:04.080 and then what do you what do you do? You're 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:05.800 in a hotel room and you gotta go over notes 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:08.320 you end up in a hotel room is generally a 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:11.080 space in which there is a bed, you know, you. Granted, 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.600 you can go to a business center if they have one, 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:15.240 and sometimes you have more of a little study in 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:17.040 the room, but a lot of times it ends up 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:19.760 like sitting around on the bed laying out notes. I 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:22.040 mean that's what I think back to, say college, I 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.200 think a lot of us and probably have this experience, 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:26.720 like you don't have a lot of space. Your bed 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.000 ends up being a place where you can print, take 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:33.480 printed sheets and organize them. Uh it becomes a sort 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.400 of a table half the time. Well no, I but 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:39.440 I gotta say, as an adult, I have felt awkwardness 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:42.280 before when you're like trying to hang out, say like 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:44.200 when we've been on the road for the show and 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:45.600 had to hang out in a hotel room and you 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:47.160 just have to sit on the bed, Like it feels 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:50.560 weird because yeah, you know this, it feels like you're 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:53.680 doing something wrong. But uh no, I think I think 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:56.760 it's just like you know, we're we're enculturated to think, no, 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:59.120 you don't do that with this kind of furniture. The 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.240 furniture should be shaped a little bit differently in order 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:05.560 to do what you're doing right. But then again, we 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.480 also have like thinking of meals and bad breakfast and 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:11.439 bad still has a certain attractiveness to it. I don't know. 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:14.200 It's not something I want for myself, but I I 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:17.000 am at least led to believe it is something that 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:19.520 other people want. It's a good way to make a mess, 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:24.320 a good way to find find crumbs later the following night, 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:26.680 you know. Way, Yeah, but I don't know. But also 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:28.880 like a good reminder to to clean your betting right 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:31.359 if you're if you're actively eating dinner in there, maybe 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:34.200 the betting gets clean more often, I don't know, possibly, 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.200 or you could just burn it and start over, yeah, 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:39.879 just to be sure. Well, so something though, I was 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.720 just thinking about that. Maybe this is a psychologically insignificant. 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:46.879 But I wonder if there are a lot of times 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:49.879 in history when it's been more normal to gather around 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:52.879 to bed and and socialize, even for like adults with 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:56.359 their own living space or something. Um. But I wonder if, 0:17:57.000 --> 0:18:00.360 even in a culture where that's not very normal, does 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.560 the effect somewhat reverse with how much we bring social 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.520 media into our beds through mobile devices, like you know, 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:11.879 you tweet from bed, you graham from bed and so forth. Uh, 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:13.879 I don't know, I mean, it's I mean, from one level. 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:16.840 On one level, we have always been bringing media into 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.240 our beds. Uh, social media being a like a way 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.800 of communicating. I mean, given that you're generally I mean, 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:27.640 unless you're talking about like a video conferencing type thing. 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.199 If you're like actively doing like an Instagram story or 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:31.639 something from your bed, I could see where that might 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:33.920 be a little weird. Otherwise, it's like you have are 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:37.520 people tagging themselves as being like this, here's my missive 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:41.879 from the bed. Um. You know. Otherwise you could be 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.120 in your bed, you could be on the toilet. Uh, 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:46.960 nobody's gonna know. Isn't it weird how people just read 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:50.480 tweets all day without even acknowledging that a good number 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.560 of these are sent from the toilet. Yeah, I think 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:56.960 they should be required to tag them. You know. It's like, 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:59.240 did you where where are you tweeting from? And the 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:03.840 immediate drop down menu is toilet? Um, you're in all 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:06.520 or I don't know. I guess the bed would be 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:11.879 on the list driving train, doctor's waiting room supposed to 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.360 be paying attention in a meeting. All right, on that note, 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:16.919 we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:25.280 right back. Thank you, Thank you, Okay, we're back alright, 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.200 So we talked a little bit about the prehistory of betting, 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.000 what some some innovations in Middle Stone Age South Africa 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.560 can can tell us about Stone Age life betting in 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:39.000 under rock shelters and things like that. But later on 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.280 in history we do get more kind of constructed beds, 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:46.600 beds that become sort of permanent furniture within dwellings. Uh. 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:50.639 So maybe we should explore something about that. Yeah. So 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:55.120 I immediately turned, of course to Brian and Fagan, same 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:58.240 Fagan that we mentioned earlier. His his book The Seventy 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:01.240 Great Inventions of the Ancient World, and there is indeed 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:05.360 a section in there not about betting, but about furniture. Uh. 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:09.480 And this was written with Jeffrey P. Killing, a specialist 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:13.959 in ancient furniture and woodworking, particularly ancient Egyptian furniture. So 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:16.399 they point out that to have furniture of any kind, 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:18.919 you of course need specialized tools and the ability to 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:23.720 work natural materials into new forms. Now, at first you 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.160 would have been limited to materials in your immediate surroundings, 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:31.800 um within your range at least, right, but eventually trade 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:35.720 opens humans up to more materials and this would expand 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:38.439 what they were able to create. So they point to 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:42.359 a particular example, uh that stands as one of the 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:47.040 earliest examples of furniture within a domestic environment. That's supposed 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.280 to say, within a tomb, as will explore in a 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.680 bet And this example certainly includes a bed. It's from 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:56.320 the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland circa thirty 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:02.520 one hundred to b c. E. Now, Uh, wood is 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:05.960 scarce on the Orkney Islands, so stone was the primary 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:10.720 building material. So there were stone dressers, stone cupboards, and yes, 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:15.560 stone beds are more particularly stone bed boxes. Okay, so 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:18.520 this might be imagining something that looks a little bit 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:21.400 more like a stone bath tub that you could fill 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:25.639 with betting material exactly. Yeah. And and if you you 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:27.640 travel to the Orkney Islands you can you can actually 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:29.840 see an example that The site here in question is 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:33.640 called Scara Bray. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Uh. 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:37.159 The domicile here features two beds, one smaller one a 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:40.239 bit larger, often interpreted as belonging to the husband and 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:43.120 wife of the people who would have lived here. Now 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:45.560 we don't know for sure, but there there might have 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:47.600 been based on the evidence. There might have been a 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:50.120 curtain of some sorts separating the beds from the rest 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:52.600 of the domicile. Uh though there would have had little 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:55.679 privacy either way. And these stone beds would have been 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:59.760 filled with a mattress of bracken or heather, and for 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:02.399 covers they would have used animal skins. I feel like 0:22:02.440 --> 0:22:05.560 I should know what bracken and heather are. What are they? Well, 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:08.000 by bracken, it's a you know, it's a type of fern. 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:11.520 Oh okay, that's nice. And head there is an evergreen 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:15.399 flowering plant. Okay, okay, Oh well, the brackens I just 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:19.040 looked up they have their their immature fronds or fiddle heads, 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:22.560 like fiddle head ferns. Yeah, so you know that it 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:25.159 doesn't doesn't sound horrible at all. I mean, I encourage 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:27.520 you to look up examples of this out there as 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:29.280 you're listening to this episode, if you have a chance 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:32.800