Hi so I may be biased because I sleep in a hammock in my house but I'm still curious as to why it isn't more common
Because they're pretty easy to set up for colder climates and they can be put into any house with framing
I've got a few theories
It's not traditional/ doesn't allow multiple people to sleep comfortably, which people through history have liked to sleep in large groups touching each other .
While being cheap to do today, it was just easier for common people to throw together straw mattress and the using so much strong rope and canvas just wasn't practical for the time
People just saw it as a navel thing and mattresses worked just fine so why try to re-invent the wheel ?
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!