Well, one can always look at other primates sleeping patterns.
The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
61–70 of 254 posts
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#62I 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.
yeah and after a day of labor? a little drink with some bread is all it takes…
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#63Earlier 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…
> 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.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#64I 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.
It was like that for me too when I worked 9-5 (or more like 6). Now I work "biphasal" days so to speak, from 12:00-16:00 and sometime later in the evening for a couple hours. I find that splitting it up helps me be more productive, I have more of my "software development energy" to spend. I'm lucky that my work offers very flexible hours since we hire around the globe and nobody in my team minds that I review their MRs in the middle of the night.
I usually use the day hours as "open office time" for support requests and meetings, and the later time as "proper work time". This helps me avoid context switches.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#65I 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've heard that this theory is true, I've also heard that it is a myth that it is true, and I've even heard that it is a myth that it is a myth.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#66I 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've heard that this theory is true, I've also heard that it is a myth that it is true, and I've even heard that it is a myth that it is a myth.
Hehe, yes. Since the literature is split I can offer my anecdata from living in low light conditions (in the mountains of Eastern Europe with no electricity):
It happens rarely. But enough times that one might notice it. If you experiment with lucid dreaming, you realize that the time you usually wake up is in between your REM cycles at the 4 hour mark. If you take a 15 minute break from sleep in your bed at this time, then fall asleep while trying to keep your mind awake (by, say, counting backwards, or just "willing it"), you can fall directly into a lucid dream. If you try this at the beginning of your sleep, you just fall into a long sleep paralysis and hypnagogia session. Your next REM cycle is too far away.
So, yes, it's real. But I think it's more likely that it was experienced much like nowadays, as a rare occurrence rather than a standard.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#67Maybe they didn't live that long due to this being a factor of lost REM sleep?
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#68The 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' l…
I think you may also be overestimating the quantity of current data that will actually survive. Computer records are pretty ephemeral unless actively maintained and archived.
Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#69Re: The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’
#70Ironically I am between my sleeps now. I’ve been casual about life for so long that I’ve fallen into medieval sleeping habits.