© wikipediaIn Brittany, the closed-bed (French: lit-clos) is a traditional furnishing. In homes with usually only one room, the box-bed allowed some privacy and helped keep people warm during winter. Similar enclosed bed furniture was once also found in western Britain… Box-beds were also used to protect people of the home from the animals (pigs, hens) also living in the house, or even to protect them from wolves who might enter houses and snatch babies.
And yet, despite the fact that we spend one-third of our lives in bed, they're more of an afterthought.
I certainly didn't think much about beds until I found myself talking about their history with the executives of a mattress company. These humble artifacts, I learned, had a big story to tell - one that's 77,000 years old.
That's when, according to archaeologist Lynn Wadley, our early African ancestors started to sleep in hollows dug out of cave floors - the first beds. They wrapped themselves in insect-repelling grasses to avoid bed bugs as persistent as those of today's seedy motels.
Much about our beds have remained unchanged for centuries. But one aspect of the bed has undergone a dramatic shift.
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