Your Ancestors Didn’t Sleep Like You

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by mello, Nov 10, 2013.

  1. mello Registered Member

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    41
    We used to sleep in two shorter periods, over a longer range of night. This range was about 12 hours long, and began with a sleep of three to four hours, wakefulness of two to three hours, then sleep again until morning.

    References are scattered throughout literature, court documents, personal papers, and the ephemera of the past. What is surprising is not that people slept in two sessions, but that the concept was so incredibly common. Two-piece sleeping was the standard, accepted way to sleep.

    “It’s not just the number of references – it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge,” Ekirch says.

    http://slumberwise.com/science/your-ancestors-didnt-sleep-like-you/
     
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  3. arauca Banned Banned

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    I believe the body slows down at about 10 pm. then rises at about 3 am and 3.30 you can go to sleep again
     
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  5. mello Registered Member

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    Why?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
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  7. laura89 Registered Member

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    10
    It is very interesting.
    Who can you imagine that we sleep in day and work in night.
    I think this is all up to our habits...
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    My first exposure to this as normal came in a book by the fine writer Bil Gilbert, "A Year Among the Coatimundis" - he mentions it as an adaptation to the sheer length of the night when away from electricity in a temperate zone winter, one of the interesting and valuable experiences of camping as he was at the time described; and something that was the norm among the original people in North America before artificial light.
     

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