A few years ago, I crashed in a room that didn't have any windows. And, I felt like I lost all my sense of time. So I couldn't imagine living in a cave. Back in the 1960s, a man lived in a cave, cutting himself off from everyone else for two months. As you can imagine, the extended period underground had an effect on him.
French scientist Michel Siffre performed his feat in the name of science but discovered some personal things about himself. He felt inspired by the Space Race at the time. At just 23, he decided to live 130 meters below the Scarasson mountain in the Ligurian Alps. The explorer also got rid of his watch during his stay in the cave.
Michel told Cabinet Magazine in 2008, "This idea came to me - this idea that became the idea of my life. I decided to live like an animal, without a watch, in the dark, without knowing the time."
Living In A Cave
Your biggest question is probably when do you know when to sleep or eat or drink? Well, the explorer decided to listen to his body and let that guide him. He communicated to a research team whenever he did one so they could keep track of his activity. He also used the experience in the cave to conduct a psychological test on himself.
"I had to count from 1 to 120, at the rate of one digit per second. With that test we made a great discovery: it took me five minutes to count to 120. In other words, I psychologically experienced five real minutes as though they were two," he explained.
Time moved quickly in the cave. He thought only one month went by when it was actually time to say goodbye.
"My psychological time had compressed by a factor of two," Michel added. "I believe that when you are surrounded by night - the cave was completely dark, with just a light bulb - your memory does not capture the time. You forget. After one or two days, you don't remember what you have done a day or two before. The only things that change are when you wake up and when you go to bed."
He continued, "Besides that, it's entirely black. It's like one long day. Instead of studying caves, you ended up studying time. Yes, I invented a simple scientific protocol. Without knowing it, I had created the field of human chronobiology."
