[surlyadopter]

This is an interesting hypothesis, even though on first blush it seems obviously wrong. I'm glad the article was more nuanced than the headline.

This reminded me of an interesting tidbit from Graham Robb's book 'The Discovery of France'. He mentions the pre-industrial peasantry (in some extremely rural areas) living in a similar manner. During the winter when there were stretches of time where it was too harsh to do any productive work, the peasants just stayed inside. Food/calories were scarce enough even in the best of times so activity was limited to wake up, eat a bit, sleep, repeat.