I blame it on alcohol. If I drink I’m always up for a few hours in the middle of the night. And I’m quite sure they were doing a lot of that back in that time.
The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
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Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#12If my cats are any indication of their larger wilder relatives, 1-3am is prime attack time. Might have been beneficial to be on guard during those hours when the felines were larger and more murderous.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#13The article does not mention it, but mothers with small children have to nurse babies every couple of hours, even at night. So given that in middle ages, families had "copious numbers of children" (quote from the article), it is for sure that mothers would need to get up to feed a baby. And then possibly the whole family would woke up too. And if multiple generations were living in the same house, then even more probably there were babies too. I can imagine such a basic need being the root of the habit.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#14The 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
How would you unethically test ancient combat tactics? Unless you mean have people try it until it seems to work, in which case, I'm sure you would find many willing LARPers
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#15The 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
..and these things were of major concern to important, literate people whose writings we do have.
What actually happens when two phalanxes meet was (intermittently) a really major determinant of world events for a long time. It was top of mind for Alexander, Cesar, and other generals and kings until the renaissance. Generals who wrote about pikes and shields and war stuff. Still, we don't know.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#16I had this sleep schedule for a few months in college. It was awesome and horrible.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#17Ekirch'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.ycom…
"Polyphasic sleep" was a popular topic here for a while.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#18The article does not mention it, but mothers with small children have to nurse babies every couple of hours, even at night. So given that in middle ages, families had "copious numbers of children" (quote from the article), it is for sure that mothers would need to get up to feed a baby. And then possibly the whole family would woke up too. And if multiple generations were living in the same house, then even more prob…
If that were the origin of it, then wouldn't there be three or four sleeps, not two?
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#19The article does not mention it, but mothers with small children have to nurse babies every couple of hours, even at night. So given that in middle ages, families had "copious numbers of children" (quote from the article), it is for sure that mothers would need to get up to feed a baby. And then possibly the whole family would woke up too. And if multiple generations were living in the same house, then even more prob…
The parent not caring for the baby learns to sleep through. My wife and I swap roles when we wean babies, we need just a couple nights to get used to the changed role.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#20Considering this has been in the news for 10 years and pretty much no one does it, not even a weird sub community, we can safely say this is not a legitimate sleeping pattern for humans.