|Roger Ekirch says this 1595 engraving|
by Jan Saenredam is evidence of activity at night
The Myth Of The Eight-Hour Sleep, BBC, 22 February 2011
Do you wake in the middle of the night and have difficulty returning to sleep? Historian Roger Ekirch says that before the Industrial Revolution, two chunks of sleep with a 1-to-2-hour period of wakefulness between was the norm.
"His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.After the Industrial Revolution, we became more time-conscious and set aside the second sleep - as well we could since light was available throughout the night:
These references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.
During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed."
"And then, if they turn upon their ear to take a second nap, they will be taught to look upon it as an intemperance not at all redounding to their credit."It may have come at a cost to health:
"For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology."The article ends with: "Lying awake could be good for you."
Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally.
"Today we spend less time doing those things," says Dr Jacobs. "It's not a coincidence that, in modern life, the number of people who report anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up."