Social Clock and Social Sun as Adaptive Strategies of Human Behavior Without Time Cues and Sunlight in an Underground Environment

Abstract

This research action focuses on the multifunctional adaptation of a small social group composed of men and women from different backgrounds living in extreme conditions. An anomic environment is a situation encountered during 40 days in underground cavities. That is the definition of the DEEP TIME mission. In this environmental and experimental framework, the ethological approach was implemented. It offers complementarity and enriches the knowledge resulting from the investigations in the space domain but also from the wide range of analogous situations that are confined and isolated environments. The first object of the study is to follow day after day, cycle after cycle, relevant behavioral indicators through a quantitative description of the social dynamics of the "timonauts".