The Art of Lying Down (8 page)

The box spring bed—a high bed with a mattress construction that can rest on the floor—represented a minor mattress revolution. A fabric-covered frame with steel springs, the box spring provides cushioning support for the mattress itself, which also contains a spring mesh. There’s no need for slats or even a bed frame, and the combination of mattress and box spring gives exceptional comfort.

Each after his own fashion: a fakir with his favorite mattress

Those willing to make the investment can choose a particular spring and even tailor the structure of the mattress to their sleeping habits. People who sleep on their sides, for example, can select a softer design for the shoulder area and, in theory, enjoy improved circulation and a better night’s sleep. But no matter how sophisticated the mattress may be, subjective factors play a large role in whether we feel comfortable on it. Identifying these factors is difficult, probably even impossible. For some, it’s practically an article of faith that certain mattress components can be made only of synthetic materials—or, for others, natural ones—and this conviction influences how they feel about their mattresses. Can a mattress with steel springs really intensify electromagnetic fields in the vicinity?

It may come as a surprise that supersoft mattresses designed to shield the sleeper from any sort of disturbance, such as mattresses for preventing bedsores, can have negative consequences. The lack of stimulation can change one’s perception of one’s own body. Participants in a study of this phenomenon report highly unpleasant sensations: “My arms and hands disappeared, legs and pelvis were like a squished, shapeless mass and I felt as though I had melted,” and “I felt like a ball, round and without contours, slowly revolving—and cold.” On the other hand, “disturbances” in the form of a certain level of tolerable discomfort can help make lying down and sleeping pleasurable overall. Having a patient lie completely still, even if medically necessary, is not without problems. The body’s movements are precisely what enable us to sense ourselves as a whole. Preventing such movements can result in abnormal sensations, coordination problems, and even severe identity crises.

In the universe of mattresses, water beds hold a special place. Although we often associate water beds with the 1960s, the first experiments with water-filled mattresses took place in the early nineteenth century. Neil Arnott, a Scottish physician, invented a “hydrostatic bed for invalids,” a water-filled basin topped with a fabric-covered slab of rubber, as a way to provide bedridden or other highly sensitive
people with a flexible, largely pressure-free surface to lie on. It’s easy to predict the resulting problems. Wouldn’t the weight of the patient affect the pressure in the basin and cause it to overflow? How could the water be heated so the bed wouldn’t be too cold? It was many years before these critical questions could be answered.

In his 1961 cult novel,
Stranger in a Strange Land
, the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein described a pump system for water beds that adjusts their water levels as well as a thermostat to control the temperature. Although his design was never demonstrated in the real world, its existence was enough to prevent Charles Hall, whose 1968 prototype is considered the invention of the modern water bed, from patenting his design.

Water beds are most popular in the United States. People with problems in their joints find them comfortable. Furthermore, since they produce less dust than normal mattresses, they are a good choice for allergy sufferers. But despite a host of design improvements over the last several decades, water beds still have several disadvantages: they are so heavy that they require especially stable foundations; heating the water to body temperature uses a lot of energy; and there’s always the possibility that the mattress will spring a leak.

Like humans, animals lie down. Of course, comparisons with those that exhibit some rough physical resemblance to humans—a lounging cow chewing her cud, for example—are more useful than others. Snakes, for example, can’t do anything other than lie down, even when they are moving.

Do animals need beds? Doting pet owners may provide furniture for their furry friends, but otherwise we would hardly apply the term
beds
to the places where animals sleep. At the same time, animals can go to extraordinary lengths to prepare comfortable spots to hibernate.

Unlike many animals, humans have neither fur nor especially thick skin. Since we can’t expose our sensitive bodies to wind, rain, and frost, we have to make adequate preparations for sleeping. A place to sleep is a fundamental human need. But the difference between people and animals is not simply physiological. Many animals can perceive signs of danger even while sleeping and can react accordingly. In humans, these senses are not well developed. As Elias Canetti once wrote: “Anyone who lies down disarms himself so completely that it is impossible to
understand how men have managed to survive sleep.” Solutions to this problem can include activities such as constructing a dwelling—so in a way, human culture can be viewed as a side effect of our ancestors’ efforts to get a good night’s sleep.

When does a spot for sleeping become a bed? We could list criteria, such as the presence of a bed frame, a mattress, a blanket, a pillow. But the term
bed
contains a number of meanings. Although the Germanic root of the word means “a resting place dug into the earth,” we use it to refer to something more comfortable. A bed is not just a provisional spot quickly organized at the side of a path, but attempts at further definition often give way to cultural prejudices. Would a typical Maasai construction of twigs covered with cowhides qualify as a bed for us? It’s a tough question. But we should remember that sleeping on the floor is considered a sign of poverty in only Europe and North America; it rarely carries a stigma in other parts of the world.

Nevertheless, having some space between the ground and our bodies does have practical advantages. In addition to protecting the sleeper from dampness, which can creep into any kind of bedclothes, elevation makes it harder for insects or small animals, tame or otherwise, to pay a call. History begins at the point where memory ends. We know more about past battles and coronations than we do about
the lounging habits of our forefathers. Like archaeologists studying the remnants of a forgotten language or the ruins of a temple to gain a sense of its former entirety, we can search for clues to people’s lounging habits over the ages. The idea that we can fully project ourselves into their experiences is an illusion, but scattered objects and thoughts from the anonymous history of lying down help us reconstruct and begin understanding the past. For example, in 2011 a team of geoarcheologists in South Africa made a sensational find under a projecting cliff near the coastal town of Ballito: they discovered the oldest known beds. About seventy-seven thousand years ago, early Homo sapiens was already making mats of branches, sedge, leaves, and rushes to lie on, covering them with laurel leaves to keep away insects.

These mats were not yet woven or braided. All that remains today are barely recognizable traces, which could be identified only through complex analyses. Other such discoveries are “just” thirty-seven thousand years old. Until these finds came to light, remnants of beds dating back twenty to thirty thousand years that were dug up in Spain, Israel, and South Africa were considered the world’s oldest.

The oldest beds discovered in more solid form are significantly younger. In the winter of 1850, the Orkney Islands of Scotland were pummeled by a powerful storm. The pounding waves unearthed
parts of a Neolithic settlement, soon given the evocative name Skara Brae, that had been buried beneath a dune. Some of the five-thousand-year-old houses were preserved up to the roofs. Because wood has always been scarce in the area, the “furniture” in these ancient homes was made of stone, a boon for later historians. Some of the objects found were clearly identifiable as beds. Placed next to the hearth in the middle of the house, these generally rectangular masonry compartments of various sizes jut out into the room. Presumably they were filled with straw or heather and covered with animal skins. In other houses, the beds are built directly into the walls. We can only speculate about the inhabitants’ sleeping practices. Perhaps the men slept curled up in the longer beds with their knees to their chests, or perhaps women and children shared them.

In general, early humans likely prepared places to sleep from stone, wood, or earth and covered them with layers of fur, leaves, grass, moss, or straw to make them more comfortable. As long as humans have existed, they have slept, but lying down to sleep was by no means always a given. In fact, our ancestors probably slept while squatting. In many Stone Age graves, the skeletons were found in a squatting position with drawn-up legs, sometimes bound together. It seems plausible that these early humans viewed death and sleep as related states, death being a special form of
sleep and vice versa. The squatting position could have been due to a lack of space in the caves and other places where these early humans sought refuge for the night and to the fact that they slept bunched together to protect themselves from wild animals and other dangers. Squatting down, they might have been more alert to the sound of an approaching threat than if they had stretched out. Viewed in this light, lying down to sleep is a sign of the progress of civilization. Sleeping outside was only possible in certain regions and at certain times of the year, so lying down to sleep presupposes the appearance indoors of a relatively large room, which would require tools to build, as protection from human and animal threats.

What had changed by the time the first great civilizations arose? While the poor still made do with plain woven mats, the beds of wealthy Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians looked a lot like ours. Reconstructions of these beds show them to have been astonishingly delicate and elegant. They consist of a frame of palm wood that slopes slightly up at the head end and is strung with a resilient weave of palm leaves, rushes, or leather straps. Furs, tapestries, or blankets were spread on top. Instead of pillows, sleepers rested their heads by using neck supports of wood, ivory, or alabaster, often fancifully shaped or even decorated with figures. These constructions
protected the users’ impressive hairstyles from otherwise certain destruction. In addition, the beds featured canopies and curtains that helped keep mosquitoes at bay.

Hebrew beds were similar, but the frames were made of Lebanese cedar. In colder latitudes, the struggle for warmth played a greater role in shaping the bed’s development. In northeastern China, for example, people slept on platforms that were at least thirteen feet long and could be heated through a hole on the side. This multifunctional
kang
was used as a table during the day.

The people of classical antiquity or at least the more socially elevated among them are known for spending a lot of their time lying down, whether eating, writing, or receiving guests. The
kline
, a frame of wood or bronze elevated at the head and strung with bands supporting a straw mattress, originally served wealthy Greeks exclusively as a bed. Later it was also used as a place to eat. Starting about 600
B.C.
, Greek men would recline together and enjoy the symposium, a ritual of dining and elevated conversation. Among the Romans, beds were highly specialized: the matrimonial bed, the lower sickbed, the catafalque for the deceased, the daybed, and the sofa-evoking dining bed with a cushion to support the arm differ clearly from one another. These pieces often boasted inlays of gold or tortoiseshell. In contrast, the masses
simply slept on piles of leaves covered with sheep- or goatskins. Diogenes is said to have preferred sleeping in a wooden cask filled with straw.

Germanic peoples were unfamiliar with any kind of bed-related luxury, at least until the Romans invaded their territory. Rolled up in furs, they slept on the ground. And Roman historians reported that Celts slept in holes filled with leaves. But the years brought improvements to northern European homes: people later slept in beds that were attached to the walls and held sacks of straw. More prosperous households even had pillows and covers filled with down and feathers.

In the Middle Ages, mattresses were filled with a mixture of straw and feathers. Wealthy citizens had beds made of wood shaped by lathes. Ideas for improvements often came from cloisters, where such issues received careful consideration. This seems surprising since the monks themselves slept on simple wooden cots, perhaps with straw mattresses. St. Benedict ordered his followers to sleep on sacks of straw or leaves with felt blankest and pillows. Resulting from the body hatred and self-punishment typical of the time, the bed of a Capuchin monk, which was so hard that a sleeper left no trace on it, was held up as the ideal. Even outside monastery walls, soft beds were an object of derision. Charlemagne refused to use a mattress filled with feathers, claiming such a
bed would promote effeminacy. His concerns raise the perhaps unanswerable question of just how much comfort any person needs and whether accounts of such supposed ruggedness are just myths that take on an air of truth, becoming impossible to deny or doubt.