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A group of French volunteers emerged from a cave after passing 40 days subjected to a study that explored the limits of human adaptability in isolation conditions.
The 15 participants lived in the Lombrives cave in southwestern France without telephones, watches or sunlight.
They slept in tents, generated their own electricity and had no contact with the outside world.
The aim of the project was to test how people respond when they lose their sense of time and space .
The so-called Deep Time experiment culminated on Saturday, with the exit of the cave of eight men and seven women, aged between 27 Y 50, who had taken part.
The scientists supervising the project entered the cave a day earlier to tell them that the experiment was about to end.
Smiling, but looking confused, the group left voluntary isolation amid applause. They wore dark glasses to allow your eyes to adjust to the sunlight.
The project manager, French-Swiss explorer Christian Clot, said that time seemed to pass more slowly in the cave.
A volunteer, Marina Lançon, from years, explained that the experiment “it was like pressing the pause button” of life.
During isolation, the group had or to organize tasks without having the measure of time to set deadlines.
Instead, they had to rely on their biological clocks and sleep cycles to structure their days.
In the cave, they had few modern conveniences at their disposal. For example, volunteers had to . meters deep.
The scientists who organize n the project they claim that it will help them understand how people can adapt to living under extreme conditions.
Before the volunteers entered the cave, the brain activity and cognitive functions to later use these data in subsequent comparative studies.
The objective of the study is a particular relevance during the coronavirus pandemic , a time in which the confinement measures have put millions of people in isolation.
“Our future as humans on this planet will evolve,” declared Clot. “We must learn to better understand how our brains can find new solutions, whatever the situation.”
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