I seem to hear from a variety of people that they struggle to fall asleep at night; but the difficult to fall asleep sounds like an evolutionary downside. Even as hunter-gatherers, being able to sleep whenever and wherever sounds like it would be an advantage.

Is it a recent product of modern times and people didn’t actually struggle with it a while back? In which case, what of modern life is causing this? If not, what is the evolutionary advantage of not falling asleep easily?

  • mattreb
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    1 year ago

    First, for something to be and evolutionary advantage, the people that struggle to fall asleep would have to die more easily or fail to reproduce, while in this case I can only see the opposite: dropping dead asleep regardless of the environment means to be an easy prey.

    Secondly, the reason you probably see it as a downside is because of the hectic way most people go through life today, were you can hardly find a time to sleep; but it’s not that during our evolution we could hunt 16 hours/day, nobody was in an hurry :)