The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’

Post by Vaphell » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 2:45 AM UTC

Jenk wrote: post #39

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…

Regarding teeth, one thought is that over/underbite was less frequent before cutlery became commonplace. Our ancestors had to bite/tear their food using their incisors and canines a lot more than we do, which meant their jaws would strengthen in the biting position - thus with their lower and upper incisors aligned. Personally I wonder if this would affect speech as well, so perhaps out ancestors sounded different to…

Post by teh_klev » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 2:53 AM UTC

cdot2 wrote: post #10

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…

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

Post by Der_Einzige » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 3:05 AM UTC

xhrpost wrote: post #65

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'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.

Post by int_19h » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 3:17 AM UTC

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…

Post by lionsdan » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 3:26 AM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #60

Terry_Roll wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.