"The paper looked into some foraging and non-foraging peoples who live in hot climates near the equator, and found that only the nomadic foragers regularly sleep without bed coverings. Everyone else uses some form of covering, whether that’s plant matter or woven fabric, even in central Africa and Papua New Guinea, both tropical climates. Much more common than sheets or blankets are some form of padding; basically nobody sleeps simply on the ground as a matter of course...
Even in perpetually hot climates, nighttime temperatures drop, and the night is coldest, coincidentally, right at the time when our bodies are freaking out and unable to adjust to it. (The night is coldest right after dawn, in direct contradiction to aphorism.) So, like lizards, we have to have some way to externally regulate our body temperatures. You may think it’s unnecessary to use a blanket at 10 p.m., when it’s still hot, but by 4 a.m., when it’s colder and you’re unable to shiver? You might need it. So we may know from past experience that we’ll thank ourselves later for having a blanket, and thus force ourselves to use one (or at least have one nearby) when going to bed...
The other element that might explain our need for blankets is what Hoagland refers to as “pure conditioning.” “Chances are you were raised to always have a blanket on you when you went to sleep,” she says. “So that’s a version of a transitional object, in sort of Pavlovian way.” Basically, our parents always gave us blankets to sleep with—babies are a bit worse than adults at thermoregulation, meaning they get cold easily, meaning well-meaning adults put blankets on them—and so getting under a sheet or blanket is associated with the process of falling asleep. "
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/blankets-summer-hot
The science in here is trying a little bit, but it's a question I've asked myself - it just feels weird to sleep without a blanket.
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