We tend to think of perfect sleep as eight uninterrupted hours, head to pillow until the alarm goes off. But that’s a very modern idea of sleep.
If you look back at how our ancestors lived, rest wasn’t so much about hitting a number, but about syncing with natural rhythms, like the rise and fall of the sun, the safety of the group and even the occasional night-time wake-up to check the campfire. And it turns out, our brains and bodies might still be wired for that.
Why your sleep rhythms are ancient
Some of us leap out of bed with the sunrise, while others don’t hit their stride until the evening. These tendencies are often described as being a “lark” or a “night owl” and they’re not just quirks of personality. They’re genetically influenced variations in circadian rhythm, known as chronotypes.
Anthropologists believe that in early human groups, this natural spread of sleep-wake patterns was beneficial. If one person slept, another stayed awake to watch for predators, tend the fire or respond to changing conditions.
In short, your internal clock is anything but random. The challenge, of course, is that for night owls, the modern working world isn’t always designed with their rhythm in mind.
Waking up in the night? Maybe that’s normal
If you’ve ever woken up at 2am, restless and annoyed, you might think your sleep is “broken.” But historically, humans often slept in two shifts.
Some historians call it “first sleep” and “second sleep”, with a natural wakeful period in between. During that time, people prayed, tended fires, even chatted quietly before drifting back down.
Modern research on segmented sleep shows that a brief wake-up in the night doesn’t necessarily harm rest quality, especially if you don’t stress about it. The problem now is that we panic, check our phones and flood our brains with blue light, making it harder to drop off again.
Why modern life messes with ancient sleep
If our biology is so well set up for rest, why does modern sleep feel so broken? Enter artificial light, 24/7 work culture, and, more recently, the ripple effects of the pandemic.
Lockdowns blurred the boundaries between work and rest. We spent less time outside, lost our daily commutes (a natural transition between day and night) and turned to screens for connection and entertainment.
All of these disrupted circadian rhythms, the natural ebb and flow of hormones that regulate sleep. The result? More people lying awake at night, struggling to fall asleep or waking up groggy even after enough hours in bed.
So what does it mean to sleep like a caveman?
It doesn’t mean throwing out your mattress or camping in the wild. It means bringing small elements of those natural rhythms back into your modern life:
- Sync with the sun: get morning light on your skin and dim lights in the evening to signal to your brain when it’s time to wake or wind down.
- Don’t fear a midnight wake-up: a brief stirring isn’t “bad sleep,” it’s part of our evolutionary wiring. Stay calm, avoid your phone and let your body settle back.
- Know your type: if you’re a night owl, don’t fight it. Find ways to align your routine with your natural preference where possible.
- Rebuild rhythms lost post-Covid: create cues that mark the shift from day to night: a walk after work, a screen-free wind-down or even just dimming the lights an hour before bed.
Rest doesn’t need to be perfect
The more we try to force perfect sleep, the more elusive it becomes. Instead, think of sleep as a rhythm, a cycle shaped by light, dark, activity and rest.
Our ancestors didn’t obsess over eight hours straight. They trusted their bodies, their environment and their community to create the conditions for rest. Maybe it’s time we did the same.
