The most fun you can have in a bed is sleep. While you might disagree with this, you’re not an ancient virgin. We take our beds for granted, the places where we sleep and, if you’re attractive, do other things. Sometimes we hate the humble bed, fumbling over the sheets like a madman hellbent on revenge against the bed community. But sleep is important as, without it, you turn into me. A man into Day 14 of an epic migraine staring at a computer screen blurrier than one of van Gogh’s masterpieces…
We do not appreciate our beds. But after a long, hard day of everyone screaming at me, which is most days, there’s no better feeling than climbing into that lumpy wonder. So why don’t we appreciate the most important place on Earth?
It is in our beds where we spend the majority of our time. One-third of our lives, in fact. But how much do we know about them? How many of us stare at them and see them as little more than a piece of furniture? Do you think the bed appreciates that? I don’t appreciate people seeing me as a piece of furniture. Which a lot of people do. Some kind of knackered old wardrobe, usually.
I was thinking about this last week as I wriggled around in bed all night as my migraine-addled brain refused to shut down. So few of us have any idea about where our beds come from. And no, not Amazon. Like mine did. How can we possibly hope to appreciate something if we don’t take the time to get to know it?
Looking back over the 80,000-year history of beds will help us to do just that. They are not just some afterthought, but one of the most fascinating pieces of furniture in our homes. So let’s travel through the annals of history and ignore the fact I’ve run out of blog post ideas…
One Mattress to Rule Them All
Have you ever wondered what the first mattress was? No? Oh. That’s a shame. Well, I won’t bother telling you, then. No, no, you’ve made your position clear on this matter. You won’t be interested to learn, then, that the first mattress dates back to 77,000 years ago. Or that they were found in caves in South Africa. You see, the problem was that caves weren’t very comfortable in those days and probably still aren’t.
People didn’t mind sleeping on the floor, per se, but they did mind the bugs crawling into their various orifices. Burping up cockroaches was an unpleasant experience, you see. So these ancient cavepeople wove mattresses. The problem was that they did everything on these mattresses. Not just sleep, not just bonking, but they also ate. As you can imagine, the mattresses became greasy after a while, what with all the pig fat and such.
It made sex a very slippery experience.
So what did they do? That’s right. After a while, they wove new mattresses and set fire to the old ones. If you did this nowadays, the council would fine you for fly-tipping.
People then knew the value of a good night’s kip, you see. But bedding did not improve much over the centuries. By the Crusades, bedding was a bunch of straw tied together. It wasn’t until the Crusaders went to the Arab world that they discovered the Arabs had invented cushions several decades earlier.
“Are you sleeping on straw? Would you not prefer a cushion?”
The Arabs named their sleeping cushions ‘matrah’, coming from their word for ‘throw’, as in ‘throw cushion’. It’s from ‘matrah’ where we get ‘mattress’. These early mattresses were made of the pods that cover peas.
I’m assuming they’re sowing the pea pods together but now I think about it, that might have been a tad tedious…
The Rock of Broken Spines
Pea mattresses were a great improvement over what came before. 6,000 years ago, in Skara Brae in the Orkneys, people slept on piles of stones. By the time of the Egyptians, people had elaborate beds that were beautifully carved, with animal feet on the bottom of the four posts. I’m not sure if they were representations of animals’ feet or actual animals’ feet. That would be horrifying for the children.
“Well little Layla, it’s very sad Babu the cat has died, but you’ll be delighted to learn we put his feet to good use…”
Screaming Egyptian children aside, Egyptian beds were far from ideal. They bowed in the centre so your feet were lower than your head. It was a similar problem to the slippery intercourse mattresses of South Africa.
The Romans and the Greeks hardly learnt the lessons of the South Africans. They used their beds for mealtimes. They reclined on one side and reached out to pick food from the table alongside the bed. This is where we get the word ‘recline’ from, from the Greek word for ‘bed’. So next time you feel like a slob eating in bed, remember:
You’re simply following in the footsteps of the Roman elite.
Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite
Until Victorian times, beds were made of wood. But then people started to become aware of germs. Wooden beds were a target for the dreaded bedbug and pubic lice. So people started to make iron beds. They were also more hygienic as they were easier to wipe down…
The mattress of choice back then was an elaborate latticework of cords made of natural fibres, but they became loose due to endless nights of tossing. So they had to be tightened every so often by the bed tightener man. Hence the phrase ‘sleep tight’. If you ‘slept loose’ your arse would be on the floor and, presumably, ravaged by bedbugs.
In Victorian times, beds were expensive and so all families slept together in the same bed, leading to some very traumatising horny nights. You could get up to 12 people in one bed, some arse to face, which wouldn’t have been pleasant, but worse if they were naked…
It was the Victorians who struck upon the idea that this wasn’t a good idea. Victorian health experts recommended that children sleep in a separate bed from their parents to prevent the adults ‘sucking out the children’s youthful energy’.
Huh.
Still, could be worse. At the time, Christians believed they were vulnerable to spiritual attack as they slept. This resulted in many bedtime rituals. And not just prayer. People adorned their beds with amulets and charms made from coral to ward off the devil. They also wore wolves’ teeth around the neck. Oh, and they hung iron knives above the cribs of babies.
No, really.
The Passion of Powerful Loins
So beds were clearly very important to a great many people, but they were also important to great people. For Louis XIV and King Charles II, the bed was the centre of political life. In those days, people believed that the power of a state was held by the person in charge. So the closer you could get to a monarch’s body and their daily routines, the more favoured you were. At Versailles, the most favoured courtiers were invited to observe the king waking up.
Yes, that’s not creepy at all.
The bed really was a status symbol. Families invested an incredible amount of money, time and resources in beds. Some wealthy people bought many mattresses to stack on top of one another, a symbol of great power. Super important people stacked six mattresses on top of one another. No, really.
Shakespeare famously left his second-best bed to his wife. But this was not a snub. In Shakespeare’s day, the best bed in the house was left to the guests, while the second best bed was the bed where a couple went at it. You have to remember that men did not have to leave their wives anything in those days, so the fact he left her the symbol of their love says a lot about Shakespeare.
Do you still think the bed is an afterthought? Or do you think there’s more to this humble piece of furniture than meets the eye?
The Glory of Sleep, Glorious Sleep
When you think about it, sleep is brilliant. Climbing into bed after a long, hard day to rest is wonderful, while climbing into bed to go at it is also wonderful, I assume, I’ve never had sex. We all love to sleep but is that all a bed should be?
You might see a bed as a means to an end. Why the hell should I show appreciation for a piece of furniture? I’m not bowing before my wardrobe every night, right? True. But that’s because you don’t want a bump on the noggin’.
The bed symbolised humanity crawling from the dirt into civilisation, before covering that civilisation in the dirt of food and sex, but never mind. It became a symbol of status and love. Of the most important aspect of our lives that we take for granted: sleep, glorious sleep.
Since humans have existed, they have needed their sleep and a place to sleep.
For too many people, the bed is an afterthought. But there are few delights more delightful than slipping between the cold sheets on a comfy mattress each night, forgetting the world and slipping into dreamland. We don’t realise that 80,000 years ago, you would have been sleeping on a pile of rocks. We’ve come so far!
A good night’s sleep is very important to our wellbeing. It’s good for brain health and improves memory and information retention. It’s good for our muscles. And controls our blood pressure, and reduces our risk of diabetes, obesity and heart failure. Simply put, without our beds, we would be well and truly fudged.
Your bed never judges you, despite all the regretful shags you’ve subjected it to. It is your kingdom, one you need to celebrate. So tonight as you go to sleep, whisper a sweet ‘thank you’ to the thing you should be far more grateful for.
Yes, this will look insane to a baffled onlooking partner, but if she stays with you after that, I’d argue she’s a keeper…
“Anything that can’t be done in bed isn’t worth doing at all.”
– Groucho Marx (comedian, actor, writer).
Peace Out :|:
Post DCLVIII: But how much do you love your bed, reader?
The Indelible Life of Me 
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