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The hammock was developed in Pre-Columbian Latin America and continues to be produced widely throughout the region, including among the Urarina of the Peruvian Amazon. Though it is unknown who invented the hammock, many maintain that it was a device created out of tradition and need. The English language derivation of hammock and various European equivalents is borrowed from the Spanish hamaca or hamac around 1700, in turn taken from a Taíno culture Arawakan word (Haiti) meaning "fish net".
Hammocks were first introduced in Europe by Christopher Columbus when he brought many hammocks back to Spain from islands in the present day Bahamas.
One of the reasons that hammocks grew in popularity in the New World was because of their ability to provide safety. By being suspended, sleepers were better protected from snakes and other harmful creatures. It also allowed people to avoid water, dirt, and other unsanitary conditions that existed in the early New World.
They were not part of Classic era Maya civilization; they were said to have arrived in the Yucatán from the Caribbean fewer than two centuries before the Spanish conquest. They are made of various materials (including palm-based in western Amazonia), and the quality depends greatly on the thread and the number of threads used.
Mayan hammocks are made on a loom and are hand woven by men, women and children. Hammocks are so symbolically and culturally important for the Yucatecans that even the most humble of homes have hammock hooks in the walls; in rural El Salvador, a family home may have multiple hammocks strung across the main room, for use as seating, as beds, or as sleep-swings for infants.
The earliest hammocks were woven out of bark from a Hamack tree, and later this material was replaced by Sisal plant because it was more abundant.
Hammocks have also traditionally been used by sailors on commercial sailing ships and naval vessels. A hammock moves in concert with the motion of the vessel, so the sleeper is not at a risk of being thrown onto the floor during swells or rough seas. Prior to this, sailors would often get injured and sometimes even killed as they fell off of their beds. As well, hammocks do not take up as much space in the vessel as bunks. The sides of traditional hammocks wrap around the sleeper like a cocoon and
make an inadvertent fall virtually impossible. Also, many sailors became so accustomed to this way of sleeping that they brought their hammocks ashore and they became an item of leisure.
Hammocks are very popular in the Brazilian northeast region, but not only as sleeping devices: in the poorest areas of the sertão, if there is not a cemetery in a settlement, hammocks may be used to carry the dead to a locale where there is one; also, they frequently serve as a low-cost alternative to coffins. This custom inspired Candido Portinari's 1944 painting Enterro na Rede ("burial in the hammock").
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