West Asian Beds

The earliest evidence of people using furniture anywhere in the world comes from West Asia, where people in Galilee (modern Israel) seem to have been sleeping in beds in the Paleolithic time period, about 23,000 years ago. These beds were made of grass covered with a thin coating of clay.

By the time of the Sumerians, people were using beds that looked a lot like yours, with a wooden frame. Instead of metal slats and springs, though, the Sumerians used hemp rope, tightly stretched across the wooden frame, to make the bed springy. A lot of poor people just slept right on these ropes, or put woven straw mats over the ropes for mattresses, but richer people had wool blankets to pad the ropes.