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The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

bbc.com

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Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#191

Post by tremon »

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…

I sometimes do sleep from 20h-23h, but I always have problems going back to sleep at 3. Lying awake until 6am really isn't helpful if you want to have productive days as well as productive nights.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#192

Post by notahacker »

Izkata wrote: post #56
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…

> or even a name for that gap From the article: > The period of wakefulness that followed was known as "the watch" Other terms for that time of night: The witching hour (which almost sounds like a corruption of "the watch") - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witching_hour Wee small hours - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wee_small_hours

Erkich's own words, both his original paper and his website, acknowledge the lack of a distinct name. He suggested generic terms "watch" and "watching" may have been used throughout a long period of British history to describe the hypothesised universal period of wakefulness based on one primary source each. One appears to be a prayer which refers to "between one morning watch and another" without hinting what a "morning watch" is, another is a devotional text calling on people to watch their first waking thoughts are set on God, where there are rather obvious alternative interpretations of the words "watch" and "first"...

The notion of "witching hour" is predicated on the idea that spirit activity takes place when most people are asleep, and "the wee small hours" is a reference to the entire period between midnight and dawn. If the closest word a language had to "lunch" was "afternoon", I'd probably conclude that culture generally didn't have an important midday meal!

https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/SleepWeHaveLostPr... https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/roger-ekirch/sleep-research/...

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#193

Post by shawabawa3 »

lopis wrote: post #138
m_eiman wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a nice graphic showing a baby's sleep pattern during the first 15 weeks: http://www.eiman.tv/misc/somnrytm.jpg Since the text is in Swedish, here's roughly what it says: Every row is a day, black is sleep, white is awake.

Oh wow. Babies sleep a lot.

This chart is just bullshit, there's absolutely no way a 15 week old baby sleeps from 11pm to 7am, then from 8am to 12pm, and then _another_ 4 hour nap from 2-6pm??, that's absolutely insane. Like, a doctor would be extremely worried about this baby

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#194

Post by koheripbal »

perth wrote: post #172
INTPenis wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but one could argue that it's a time of more headaches because we have it so well that we have plenty of time to think about our lives. While people of old were busy working and were more exhausted than we are today. Of course this is the very definition of a 1st world problem but I think it holds some water in modern western society.

Ancient humans worked like 3 hours a day https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-human...

The article talks about hunter-gatherers. I'm not sure the word "work" applies in the same way.

Maybe they only hunted for 3 hours on average in the good time. ... But they had other more existential threats. There is a reason they all switched to agricultural societies.

Seeing your babies die of starvation will do that.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#195

Post by [deleted] »

hatmatrix wrote: post #103

"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…

[deleted]

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#196

Post by shawabawa3 »

gambiting wrote: post #159
m_eiman wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a nice graphic showing a baby's sleep pattern during the first 15 weeks: http://www.eiman.tv/misc/somnrytm.jpg Since the text is in Swedish, here's roughly what it says: Every row is a day, black is sleep, white is awake.

As a parent of an 8 month old baby who wakes up literally every hour - what is that solid line from 10pm till 6am at around 10 weeks :P Feels like fantasy

there's something wrong with that baby

They're sleeping _way_ too much for 15 weeks. two 3-4 hour naps?? 8 hours overnight is definitely possible but rare

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#197

Post by quietbritishjim »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #7
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #5

I 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?

> The article doesn't really claim that this kind of sleep is better or more natural, just that it was incredibly common. (Emphasis mine.)

For a start, the article suggests that it wasn't just common but actually the dominant pattern of sleep, but the evidence seems a bit thin on that. Moreover, it says that "Ekirch began to suspect that the method had been ... an ancient default that we inherited from our prehistoric ancestors". But I seem to remember an anthropologist on a TV programme (many years ago so I forget which one sadly) saying this isn't obvserved in isolated tribal cultures today, so we can reasonable expect that our pre-agriculture anscestors wouldn't have slept this way.

Edit: A reply to a sibling comment found a good citation: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many... Interestingly, like the BBC article it mentions Ekirch as the proponent of the two sleeps theory. So I wonder if the whole idea is the pet theory of this one person.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#198

Post by hnbad »

flatiron wrote: post #11

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.

Oh, so it's not just me. I've always interpreted it as the first sleep (hah) being my body being busy trying to sober up and the second sleep being the actual normal sleep now that the body can focus on something other than getting rid of all that poison.

Of course actual blood alcohol takes longer to go down than that but no matter how much I had, I'd invariably feel significantly more sober after the initial sleep than if I just stayed awake and stopped drinking.

Given that alcoholic drinks (especially various concoctions we'd hardly recognize as "beer" today) were fairly widespread especially when pure water was not always potable, I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't at least factor in for some of the reports. Then again this doesn't explain the observation of polyphasic sleep developing under experimental conditions.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#199

Post by tartoran »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #175
bloak wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really talking about lice, or do you mean bedbugs? If you mean lice, do you mean head lice, body lice, or pubic lice?

I've had lice before, both head and body types, and they were so benign and not bothersome that I allowed them to stay voluntarily out of kindness and generosity. They are really amazing little creatures.

If you loved them so much what made you rid of them?

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#200

Post by jgilias »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #5

I 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…

I used to be an adventurer like you, then I got kids.
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