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The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

bbc.com

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Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#51

Post by jay_kyburz »

kbenson wrote: post #26
spywaregorilla wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think the issue is that LARPing battle is a poor substitute for what the body can take and how people respond to real pain and damage. We might be getting to the point that we can get somewhat of a foot take on the damage with VR eventually.

You also have to grow up in a society that is completely alien to ours, your entire outlook on life, how long you might live, and how willing you are to give up your life is different.

Imagine living in a world where how tough you are, how well you can fight determines everything about your status in the world.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#52

Post by zem »

coincidentally, this was a fairly large plot element in the book i've just finished reading, colson whitehead's "harlem shuffle" (excellent book, recommended). the protagonist switched to a split sleep pattern to get some extra hours during the night to do things his day job didn't give him time for, and which would take away from his family if he did them in the evening.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#53

Post by Terry_Roll »

subsubzero wrote: post #31

This article got me thinking, if artificial light forever changed the way people sleep, what other modern changes have also altered life or physical characteristics of people long ago. 200 years ago everyone had perfectly straight teeth, some think heavily blended/processed foods may have lead to under developed jaws and crooked teeth for alot of modern people or possibly high sugar, its not known but something in th…

On the point of teeth (and bones), going hungry increase growth hormone, which was good for the skeleton and thus straight teeth. You see this today with dogs prone to hip dysplasia, as a puppy they were likely overfed with not enough tryptophan (60mg converts to 1mg nicotinic acid in humans) or nicotinic acid (vitamin b3) in their diet, ergo not enough growth hormone and so you get Labradors and other dogs getting hip dysplasia.

Dont we see two sleeps in the older generations, known colloquially as the afternoon nap?

Japense kids with depression, were found to be driven to school where as those that walked to school for just 10-15mins iirc didnt get depressed according to one study. Blue light stimulates or helps increase the serotonin in the brain which creates wakefulness.

Its like blue light from computer monitors can keep people awake for longer at night which is why M$ introduce the blue light monitor which is a rip off of the original AFAIK of https://justgetflux.com/

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#54

Post by Terry_Roll »

notshift wrote: post #41
fersho311 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t you make up for nutrition dense foods with supplements?

We're still discovering new plant molecules and the effects they have on us all the time. Supplements are never going to be able to completely make up for a diet lacking in real whole plant food & animal meat. With respect to the question about underdeveloped jaws, that development takes place primarily during your childhood, so if you didn't have optimal nutrition at that stage you won't be able to fix that retroact…

Plants picked in darkness have higher levels of melatonin (sleep hormone) in them than plants picked in daylight according to one study.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#55

Post by ch4s3 »

notshift wrote: post #36
subsubzero wrote: post #31

This article got me thinking, if artificial light forever changed the way people sleep, what other modern changes have also altered life or physical characteristics of people long ago. 200 years ago everyone had perfectly straight teeth, some think heavily blended/processed foods may have lead to under developed jaws and crooked teeth for alot of modern people or possibly high sugar, its not known but something in th…

The problem and solution has been known for almost a century now; check out the book 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration' by Weston Price. 'The Dental Diet' is also solid reading. I'm still working through the book, but the tl;dr is that it mostly just comes down to nutritional deficiency. People in the past ate pretty much strictly nutrient-dense foods, people today eat a lot of junk food, empty carbs, and generall…

People for the last 10k years in agrarian societies mostly ate cereal grains, with a few exceptions like Mesoamerica where they ate beans, squash, and a cereal grain. Hunter gatherers eat a stunning variety of diets and archeology suggests this has always been true. In polar regions people subsist primarily on meat and animal fat, in other places primarily shellfish and small fish.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#56

Post by Izkata »

notahacker wrote: post #29
boomboomsubban wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

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

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#57

Post by jacquesm »

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

Until it became a hot topic and then it ceased to be one.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#58

Post by agency »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #8

The 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…

It's also an interesting reflection on the historical moment we've find ourselves in. I'm sure the records of normal/daily life have been steadily increasing even before the computer age as earlier technologies made it cheaper to record these things but it feels like in my lifetime we have transitioned almost instantaneously to having more data than we could possibly ever sift through about every aspect of peoples' lives. What will history look like to future generations who have access to such a historical record?

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#59

Post by saalweachter »

subsubzero wrote: post #31

This article got me thinking, if artificial light forever changed the way people sleep, what other modern changes have also altered life or physical characteristics of people long ago. 200 years ago everyone had perfectly straight teeth, some think heavily blended/processed foods may have lead to under developed jaws and crooked teeth for alot of modern people or possibly high sugar, its not known but something in th…

Food preservation and international commerce have eliminated seasonal diets. All of our fruits and vegetables used to be largely seasonal with only a handful that could be kept edible in cellars before canning. Meats, dairy and eggs too had seasonal ebbs and flows -- you'd slaughter your hogs in the fall as their forage ran out, your cows might dry up, your chickens probably stopped laying. Winter diets would grow steadily more monotonous and you might spend a few weeks going hungry.

The range of our diet had also globalized. Potatoes are now a staple worldwide, and tomatoes flavor dishes around the world from where they were developed. Spices aren't very exotic, even if some of us like our food plain.

And salt! Salt had gone from a spice and vital preservative with a value comparable to hard currency to something we throw on roads in the winter.

Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

#60

Post by ch4s3 »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #54
notshift wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're still discovering new plant molecules and the effects they have on us all the time. Supplements are never going to be able to completely make up for a diet lacking in real whole plant food & animal meat. With respect to the question about underdeveloped jaws, that development takes place primarily during your childhood, so if you didn't have optimal nutrition at that stage you won't be able to fix that retroact…

Plants picked in darkness have higher levels of melatonin (sleep hormone) in them than plants picked in daylight according to one study.

Do you have a citation for that? Google scholar isn't turning anything up for me, and I'm interested.
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