The volunteers also slept continuously. They would toss and turn like everyone does, but they almost never woke up for a concerted window in the middle of the night. This contradicts a growing idea, popularized by historian Roger Ekirch, that sleeping in eight-hour chunks is a modern affectation.
Ekirch combed through centuries of Western literature and documents to show that Europeans used to sleep in two segments, separated by an hour or two of wakefulness. Siegel doesn’t dispute Ekirch’s analysis; he just thinks that the old two-block pattern was preceded by an even older single-block one. “The two-sleep pattern was probably due to humans migrating so far from the equator that they had long dark periods,” he says. “The long nights caused this pathological sleep pattern and the advent of electric lights and heating restored the primal one.”
Someone conducts an experiment in contemporary time with a limited subset of population with very specific critera, and their result somehow falsifies written historical account what went down in the past?
There is rather scant evidence of two-shift sleep presented here; a single quote from some unknown writer and a single experiment with broadly interpreted results.
Not to mention that the "single quote" in the article is hardly from a "unknown" author (Charles Dickens), this BBC article on the same topic [0] has several other quotes from well known literature in the same period.
I don't know about books but this isn't the first time people have written about this. Doing a quick search on "between the sleeps" yields articles from early 2000s and 2010s.
And it’s one of those articles I read which had the tidbit about the books, and even some choice quotes. Not sure which article it was, but google should find it for you.
The article isn't a scientific enquiry, but it reports on the theme of the book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past (98 citations on Google Scholar)[1]. This book apparently packs a great amount of endnotes and sources.
What part are you skeptical of...the waking up and doing stuff in the pitch black of the night, or the splitting sleep into two segments?
The waking up and doing stuff in the black of night doesn't seem too farfetched, considering that in much of the world a large fraction of people do that nowadays. For a good fraction of the year in much of the world the duration of night is longer than the duration of sleep, so you've really don't have much choice about waking up and doing stuff in the blackness of night unless you just want to lie awake in bed waiting for dawn (or you went to bed late enough to sleep until it is getting light--but then you were awake in the blackness before going to sleep).
Congrats! I found that as my child aged, the hardest point was when the cycle time allowed for three hours of sleep for the parents[1]. When it was only two hours, it seemed bad, but was way more restful than three hours. Once it got to four hours, it was much better. If possible, lean on external help during the three hour sleep cycle (grand parents, etc).
[1] we needed both parents for feeding logistics, although often it's not required.
Yeah, I feel like the past couple weeks have been the hardest so far, even though she's moved from sleeping 2 hours at a time to sleeping 3-4 hours for her nighttime sleep. Mind you, this is partly due to feeding/changing logistics -- she's less cooperative now that she has learned to crawl.
Leaning on external help is unfortunately not a great option for us.
It depends on the child. My first slept about 4 hours a night until he was about 2 or so. Getting him to sleep could be a multi-hour ordeal.
My second dropped off the second he was set down. We could pick him up and he'd wake up and be happy to be passed around - then he'd drop right off when we set him down again. The rest of my sons were more typical.
Personally I never slept well until they were post SIDS age.
> In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted a laboratory experiment in which he exposed a group of people to a short photoperiod – that is, they were left in darkness for 14 hours every day instead of the typical 8 hours – for a month.
> It took some time for their sleep to regulate, but by the fourth week, a distinct two-phase sleep pattern emerged. They slept first for 4 hours, then woke for 1 to 3 hours before falling into a second 4-hour sleep. This finding suggests bi-phasic sleep is a natural process with a biological basis.
Yes, a natural process for being in darkness 14 hours a day. I personally prefer to use electric light and be out of the dark ages.
I can see an extended two stage sleep rhythm making more sense at times of year when daylight is short (9 hours of daylight at my latitude) than when it's long (15 hours). It's much harder to extend your night downtime to last 10-11 hours when it overlaps at one/both ends with sunshine.
With the increase in physical activity during Summer, two stage sleep seems more biologically useful in Winter anyway. In days of yore, what else was there to do during all that dark?
I personally maintained a two-shift sleep schedule for about a year, with a 2-3 hour gap between shifts. It did work surprisingly well for me, leaving me feeling both physically and mentally refreshed and rested. Societal obligations forced me to move back to a traditional sleep schedule, but I could definitely see going back to that if conditions allowed it.
I still do it. And I feel much better if I take a 1.5 to 2 hour sleep after lunch. Of course, I don't go immediately after lunch. But I sit in /Vajraasana/ for 15 mins and 15 min quick reading; and then sleep.
One reason it will be difficult to restore natural sleep cycles is that life has become increasingly complex; we have exponentially more responsibilities than our ancestors had.
In short, we are unlikely have a couple more hours to add to our sleep periods.
I'm not really responsible for getting edible food, drinkable water, warmth, cover, shelter from the elements, protection from hostile animals or enemy humans.
I also don't have to actually make anything with my own hands.
So, yeah, indirectly I do some of these things by earning a salary, paying bills and buying stuff, but I not sure that the work I do day to day is much more complex or responsible than what an equivalent neolithic hunter gatherer would be doing.
I don't on a daily basis do things that could get me or my family members killed if I did them wrong.
Also a lot of what we consider primitive skills take a lot more art or technique than we appreciate. Flint tools look like they might take real skill do do well.
Though currently during the pandemic the amount of driving I'm doing is limited and tends to low speeds and short distances.
I found it ironic a few years ago when I did a bungee jump that the jump crew had no significant jump injuries after more than a 100k jumps, but they had lost several crew members to road accidents.
Driving is certainly the most stressful activity I’m doing on a regular basis - the stakes are really high, death is just a few seconds away. It feels strangely archaic to have this level of risk built into day to day life. I recently got a car with modern safety features and life really feels safer just because of that. I know that the car will start beeping if I drift off course, and on the highway it’s quite unlikely to crash into the car in front of me.
On a daily basis? No, I don't. And I live 15 minutes outside of the nearest town, a mile from my nearest neighbor, so if I get by driving once or twice a week, surely those who actually live in cities can get by without driving as well.
Me, too. In my 30 years of works across numerous metro areas, I've been able to commute by train, bus, bike, or walk for 25 out of 30 of those years. Most people I worked with likewise could do it without a car. Some people chose to drive, but it was not at all a requirement.
> I'm not really responsible for getting edible food, drinkable water, warmth, cover, shelter from the elements, protection from hostile animals or enemy humans.
You seem to be disregarding the countless unplanned for things that people assume aren't going to clutter up their lives.
A tiny, tiny portion of the things that consume meaningful time each week: trying to turn health insurance into usable medical care or getting any insurance to pay out filed claims - complex family finances such as tracking multiple credit cards to maintain a credit rating - tracking multiple income streams for tax purposes - shopping for clothes such as trying to figure out how to buy shoes online without scoring a pair that sat so long the soles won't hold, doing that again when they're out of stock, and again, and again - helping kids with homework, inc puzzling out unfamiliar educational methods that school districts change every few years - time spent commuting - time spent maintaining older vehicles - shuttling kids to and from activities - civic and community responsibilities - years of education followed by ongoing education and certifications in your field - every part of being self employed - caring for a family member who has profound, chronic disabilities - personal medical maintenance for a chronic condition - locating a product that that is suddenly not available because it's the only one that doesn't make your kid sick - taking pets to the vet - keeping the property up to keep the HOA off your back - suing the HOA when they're on your back anyway - fighting to get your street repaved - proving to Amazon your 7k box arrived empty - fixing your appliances - researching which appliances won't fall apart months after you buy them - pursuing an appliance warranty claim because your research didn't pan out - researching medical claims to see if changes to diet or sleep would reduce exhaustion - handling the aftermath of a traffic accident - protecting your family from surveillance capitalism - contacting your county about a traffic light issue - doing anything at all at the DMV - filing local, state and federal taxes - getting your car inspected - getting it inspected again after some arcane violation is spotted - fighting with ISP every month over bogus recurring charges - adopting out the kittens that appeared in your front garden - perusing a service connected disability when the VA lost your military records - documenting a bad neighbor - handling CPS when your bad neighbor figures out they can report you anonymously - handling the estate of a loved one who sucked at organization - putting your own post-death affairs in order - proving a SS disability claim - researching each political candidate and issue instead of party-line voting - being a payee - mental healthcare - handling the recurring fallout from someone else's MI - helping people move - helping someone who is elderly and lives alone - finding a new homeowner's policy when your insurer won't renew, doing that again next year, and the year after that....
Anyone could post a completely different list.
All of these time estimates go way up if you're poor, work two jobs and have $100 to cover $500 of need.
One reason Lewis Mumford suggested that if you include the care and feeding of cars and earning taxes to pay for roads and regulations, it could be quicker to walk or use a wheelbarrow.
> I’d wager an average person from any previous century would trade places with you in a heartbeat. Indeed, I bet an average resident of many third-world countries would do the same.
Sure. Many would. Others would be overwhelmed by the complexity of not just required hours in the day (which tend to increase for the very poor) but also by the many thousands of laws and regulations that can ding us if we run afoul of them. Past that are myriad of requirements from different corps in our lives.
As with some others here, you seem to be confusing (or maybe conflating) 'hard' (as in starvation, disease and invasion) with complex (as in complex).
> In fact, I bet the average resident of the average trailer park ten miles from where you live would trade places with you.
I'll take that bet. Over the last decade we were frequently without food and my wife's mental illness brought ceaseless, life-changing misery to our household. I could go on for many paragraphs but I think this sets the stage.
Sorry to hear about your wife. And your lack of food.
Similar items were in your list. I ignored them.
Because those issues are universal at all times and at all places.
Dealing with a mentally ill wife in the 1300s was, I would bet, a bit more ‘complex’ and draining that dealing with a mentally ill wife in a modern city with emergency psych wards, effective drugs (available for convenient pick-up at pharmacies on nearly every corner), and entire industry of psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, etc.
I mean, if we are comparing apples to apples, I’d much rather have a mental illness issue in a family member today versus 100 years ago. I’d rather not have the issue present at all, but that’s not a comparison. I mean, you could just as well say, “Trade places with me?! I’m a balding quadriplegic typing this with my nose! I challenge you to find any 13th century peasant who would be willing to trade places with me!”
Edit: I’d chime in with the other response. Namely, you sound very stressed out. I wish your situation wasn’t so complex. Seriously. Hang in there.
> Dealing with a mentally ill wife in the 1300s was, I would bet, a bit more ‘complex’ and draining that dealing with a mentally ill wife in a modern city with emergency psych wards, effective drugs (available for convenient pick-up at pharmacies on nearly every corner), and entire industry of psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, etc.
It'd be simpler then because there was simply nothing to do.
> I’d chime in with the other response. Namely, you sound very stressed out. I wish your situation wasn’t so complex. Seriously. Hang in there.
Thanks. This is hardly just me tho. My challenges are mid-grade. Just in the US are many millions who have far more difficult challenges. That something so prevalent might not be well-known is interesting.
> Similar items were in your list. I ignored them.
I've noticed a trend here to fixate on individual items on the list. This obfuscates it's point - which is that the modern life = simple bliss analysis omits the vast bulk of everything that is required of us.
Over the course of a year, about how many laws, regulations and requirements do you figure you'll be forced to consider?
Few will only need to be handled once. And all that together is a minor requirement of all that's expected of us.
Honestly tho. Resisting the notion that our lives are immensely complex compared to any point in history is an odd thing to do.
I won't go as far as to tag it complexity-denialism. Not even in a passive-aggressive way.
I hope I don’t offend you by suggesting this, and I’m ready to face a hard rejection - but you could probably benefit from saying No to obligations/responsibilities more often, and caring a little bit less about always doing the right thing. Murphy’s law means people fill their life with complexity until there’s no room left.
> I hope I don’t offend you by suggesting this, and I’m ready to face a hard rejection - but you could probably benefit from saying No to obligations/responsibilities more often
A couple of things. I'm outlining common challenges so your advice would have to be applied broadly. You'd be asking a large chunk of the population to not be engaged in their community, etc.
Past that, my not-absolutely-critical activities did wind down when catastrophe after catastrophe became the new norm. In that phase, what was left was minimal for survival. Letting any of that go would just tack-on another catastrophe.
Again - the larger point is that I wasn't an outlier for the whole of the US. However, within the group that have the resources to post here, midday, I might be an outlier.
I'm from the EU, and we do approach things differently here - e.g. we pay more taxes and social security (net income is probably 70% or less of what a dev with my experience makes in the US), but as a result don't have to take care of the community so much. Cities/state/church are taking care mostly, and they do get paid for that.
Roads are most of the time not a problem - where I'm living at least. We had a pothole in our street three years ago, I called a number, and a week later it was fixed.
With two kids, I could get away for a few weeks with just driving them and the wife to school/kindergarten/work, and ordering groceries online. I have an electric car which I charge at home and which doesn't need any maintenance besides the once-a-year checkup. Aside from that, there are hardly any must-dos.
I did help friends move when we were younger, but now they just hire companies for that. Certainly wouldn't feel obligated to help someone move, what with having the kids at home and all.
If there's time for more activities, fine (we usually do loads of stuff); but if catastrophe hits, then the week might be boring for everybody, but the freed up energy can be spent to work on the issue at hand. I understand and appreciate that it is a _very_ privileged situation I'm in, but I also know that I'm not really an outlier among software developers in my country.
Maybe this is not feasible where you are living and in your situation. But maybe you can scale down even more than you thought.
This is a wildly romantic and patronizing view of our ancestors. Our ancestors had FAR harder lives with more complex responsibilities than anything you have today.
It's just so ludicrous to sit on your couch, eating takeout food, paid for either by social welfare or white-collar work (also done from your couch) and spitball "oh, our lives are just so complicated and hard now".
No, your life is stupidly easy now. That's probably a source of problems in-and-of itself, but that's another issue. You aren't worrying about starving to death, tracking prey through the forest, gathering enough roots to survive the winter, your children being eaten by wild predators, or jesus, the other thousand things your ancestors had to worry about on a day-to-day basis just to stay alive.
Modern life is far more mentally taxing and stressful, so we want to go back to the "good old days".
Pre-industrial (and pre-agricultural) life was more physically taxing and stressful, so they wanted to move on to something better and easier.
At least today you can just save up, move to the middle of nowhere and live exactly like they did 500+ years ago, but with much better safety. You can even add some modern tools without much expense.
> Modern life is far more mentally taxing and stressful
No, I'm not conceding this point. It ignores that our ancestors evolved large brains (note, before agriculture, _they were even larger_) to deal with a wildly complex natural environment. Knowing the details of the dozens of food sources necessary to survive. How to deal with different seasons. Which of hundreds of animals were edible, which would eat you, and which were fine to ignore.
Life was, in every single way, harder and more complex before technology. Trying to equate our comfortable and materially opulent existence with theirs is wrong.
To paraphrase what the Saudis are said to say about oil wealth: things are easy enough now to insure that the grandchildren will experience problems that used to be.
