The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
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Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#2Ekirch's theory has had many threads on HN over the years - some of them:
Humans used to sleep in two shifts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334769 - May 2021 (60 comments)
The History of Sleep - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9501610 - May 2015 (11 comments)
We used to sleep twice each night - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5542453 - April 2013 (107 comments)
Rethinking Sleep - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558569 - Sept 2012 (60 comments)
The myth of the eight-hour sleep - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3620742 - Feb 2012 (161 comments)
Can anybody find others?
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#3[deleted]
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#4Looks great but if you want to break up your own sleep pattern and do something useful for an hour in the middle of the night (like B.F. Skinner, who wrote for an hour from 2-3) it would be good to have some really low light for it, or a red lamp.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#5I believe this theory is largely thought false nowadays, or phrased too strongly at least.
I myself have weird sleep cycles. I prefer to stay up into the night and wake up around 12:00, but I vary my sleeping hours by up to 4 hours or so. I go to sleep when I feel like it, and don't feel much discomfort by falling asleep at different times. It leads to weird situations - especially in winter - where I might not see the sun more than a couple hours in 3 days despite being up and around a lot. I don't experience a lot of 'two sleeps', but they do occasionally happen.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#6I believe this theory is largely thought false nowadays, or phrased too strongly at least. I myself have weird sleep cycles. I prefer to stay up into the night and wake up around 12:00, but I vary my sleeping hours by up to 4 hours or so. I go to sleep when I feel like it, and don't feel much discomfort by falling asleep at different times. It leads to weird situations - especially in winter - where I might not see t…
This would almost work for me, except one of the “when I feel like sleeping” times aligns with the peak of workday, and “when I fell perfectly awake and refreshed” is too late.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#7I believe this theory is largely thought false nowadays, or phrased too strongly at least. I myself have weird sleep cycles. I prefer to stay up into the night and wake up around 12:00, but I vary my sleeping hours by up to 4 hours or so. I go to sleep when I feel like it, and don't feel much discomfort by falling asleep at different times. It leads to weird situations - especially in winter - where I might not see t…
>this theory is largely thought false nowadays, or phrased too strongly at least.
What theory? The article doesn't really claim that this kind of sleep is better or more natural, just that it was incredibly common. Is the idea that it was common now thought to be false?
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#8The most interesting thing about this to me is how it shoes just how little are know and likely will ever know about historical life.
This entire concept was just forgotten for centuries, and even now we can just sort of guess that it happened but are unsure why. How many other parts of daily life were just never written down? All our historical sources are so absurdly biased towards a wealthy few that our conceptions of historical life are inherently flawed.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#9I believe this theory is largely thought false nowadays, or phrased too strongly at least. I myself have weird sleep cycles. I prefer to stay up into the night and wake up around 12:00, but I vary my sleeping hours by up to 4 hours or so. I go to sleep when I feel like it, and don't feel much discomfort by falling asleep at different times. It leads to weird situations - especially in winter - where I might not see t…
This would almost work for me, except one of the “when I feel like sleeping” times aligns with the peak of workday, and “when I fell perfectly awake and refreshed” is too late.
Too late for whom? Apparently, not for you. With WFH, taking a nice little siesta isn't impossible (and anecdotally sounds like its more common than some would like to admit). Of course, forced to work in an office makes it harder, and probably surrounded by bosses much less sympathetic to the concept.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#10The most interesting thing about this to me is how it shoes just how little are know and likely will ever know about historical life. This entire concept was just forgotten for centuries, and even now we can just sort of guess that it happened but are unsure why. How many other parts of daily life were just never written down? All our historical sources are so absurdly biased towards a wealthy few that our conception…
We're not really sure what actually happens when two phalanxes meet. We're also not sure how the Romans swapped lines of men out during combat. Lots of the details about ancient combat just werent written about in detail and its not something we can (ethically) test