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The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

bbc.com

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Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#101

Post by rootusrootus »

7thaccount wrote: post #97
wincy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah as a husband and father whose wife coslept and exclusively breastfed for the first year, this has little merit. My wife one day commented on how it was great how our 6 month old daughter slept through the night and didn’t complain or ask for food. My wife quite literally breast fed in her sleep. Waking up to feed the baby is a very WEIRD way of looking at the world.

I'm not sure how typical your experience is. My daughter needed to be fed every few hours for the first 11 months. Both my wife and I were freaking zombies. It was rough on us. My wife would basically get a couple of hours every time the baby went down, but no long and peaceful sleep. In talking with friends, it would seem like our experience was extra crappy and yours is uncharacteristically mild. So the reality may…

It varies quite a lot. One of my kids was needy all night long for most of a year, the other one started sleeping through the night maybe six weeks after we brought her home.

I've often thought that much of the difference between poor/adequate/great parents is the personality of the kid(s). Have a really easy one and then you think you're some of rockstar parent. Then number two comes along and shatters your delusions.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#102

Post by ctdonath »

wincy wrote: post #79
Arwill wrote: post #13

The 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…

Hah as a husband and father whose wife coslept and exclusively breastfed for the first year, this has little merit. My wife one day commented on how it was great how our 6 month old daughter slept through the night and didn’t complain or ask for food. My wife quite literally breast fed in her sleep. Waking up to feed the baby is a very WEIRD way of looking at the world.

Kids vary.

Daughter slept they the night from day one.

Son was up hungry every night at 2am.

Given that, power point of this thread, people pretty much went to bed at sunset, at European latitude that would mean a long night much of the year with kids wanting food and adults being sufficiently rested late at night. Once satiated amid a quiet daze of food/sex/meditation, they’d likely doze back off until daybreak. Two sleeps seems quite sensible without electricity’s prolonged days.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#103

Post by hatmatrix »

"Despite near-constant headlines about the prevalence of sleep problems, Ekirch has previously argued that, in some ways, the 21st Century is a golden age for sleep – a time when most of us no longer have to worry about being murdered in our beds, freezing to death, or flicking off lice, when we can slumber without pain, the threat of fire, or having strangers snuggled up next to us."

What a wonderful time we live in!

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#104

Post by square_usual »

tjoff wrote: post #99
square_usual wrote: post #98

I tried this for a few weeks in college and it was a pretty neat experience. I slept first from 9-12 and then 3-7/8. Those three hours between 12 and 3 ended up being super productive - I was very energized and had creative ideas about whatever I was doing. I had to stop because going to bed at 9 in college was like kissing your social life goodbye, but even these days if I naturally wake up in the middle of the nigh…

Oh, so, 21-24 and 3-7/8. Took me a while.

Yeah, should've bene clearer about that, my bad.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#105

Post by tyre »

square_usual wrote: post #98

I tried this for a few weeks in college and it was a pretty neat experience. I slept first from 9-12 and then 3-7/8. Those three hours between 12 and 3 ended up being super productive - I was very energized and had creative ideas about whatever I was doing. I had to stop because going to bed at 9 in college was like kissing your social life goodbye, but even these days if I naturally wake up in the middle of the nigh…

Were you able to fall back asleep at 3? Some of my most productive hours are later at night, but then even when I'm tired and decide to go to bed, my mind keeps running.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#106

Post by cyberge99 »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #17
dang wrote: post #2

Ekirch'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. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=polyphasic

DaVinci was a famous polyphasic sleeper.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#107

Post by markrages »

dang wrote: post #2

Ekirch'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…

I just submitted "The many myths of Paleo sleeping" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902569 (0 comments), on its way to total obscurity.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#108

Post by axiolite »

sooheon wrote: post #63
notahacker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about commonly thought to be false because I'm not sure it's commonly thought about at all, but it's a theory with considerable weaknesses Ekirch hypothesis: Early humans had two distinct phases of sleep with an important gap between. Lack of in-depth discussion or even a name for that gap in any language is actually evidence of it being so common it wasn't worth commenting on. It disappeared - again wit…

> Null hypothesis: early humans slept much like today's humans [...] That's a terrible null hypothesis, as there is no reproducible, controllable test for it, other than a time machine. A better one might be "people exposed to pre-industrial revolution photoperiods ( This was empirically tested with a small N ( https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.1992... ). At least it's testable.

A much better study:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many...

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#109

Post by 1123581321 »

markrages wrote: post #107
dang wrote: post #2

Ekirch'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…

I just submitted "The many myths of Paleo sleeping" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902569 (0 comments), on its way to total obscurity.

It’s a good article, especially in the second half where the two theories are synthesized into a narrow, compatible summary, but the clickbait title isn’t compelling and I don’t think really describes the content.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#110

Post by 1123581321 »

Arwill wrote: post #13

The 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 mother would either sleep with the baby or have it easily retrievable without significantly stirring. Dozing while nursing would provide some compromise between rest for her and the household, and enjoying/enduring some thinking time.
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