Did our ancestors really sleep nine or ten hours a night? Scientists put small sensors on the wrists of people who still live without electric light, and a lot of what we believed turned out to be wrong.

This video follows one night from sunset to the morning alarm. On the way: campfire gossip, a 200,000-year-old grass bed, the "first sleep" and "second sleep" in old English records, and a camp where somebody was almost always awake.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open
1:03 7 PM: Sunset
2:03 8 PM: Firelight
3:06 10 PM: The bed
4:49 11 PM: Falling asleep
5:35 1 AM: How long?
6:40 3 AM: The night watch
8:58 6 AM: Morning
10:22 7 AM: The alarm

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#history #sleep #science