3 ms·

Some recent research suggests that normal human sleep has always been in one continuous block in places near the equator. Then segmented sleep developed after

Some recent research suggests that normal human sleep has always been in one continuous block in places near the equator. Then segmented sleep developed after humans migrated to places like Europe where sunrise/sunset times vary more. According to this hypothesis, segmented sleep was only a temporary phenomenon, before electric light caused a return to continuous sleep. https://athensscienceobserver.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/the-science-of-sleep-unraveling-biology-and-culture/ https://athensscienceobserver.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/the-s... http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/112251/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/112251/

jusben1369 11y ago
Thank you for this. There's always this huge elephant in the room never addressed in these articles on sleep - particularly prior to the use of internal electrical lighting; the time of year. Your amount of sleep and how you sleep would change substantially based on whether there was 4 hours or 14 hours of darkness. Yet it never comes up in these catch all types of articles.
TheCondor 11y ago
The fantastically great podcast, backstory, did a piece on it as well. There was supposedly a stage of the us temperance movement against second sleep. http://backstoryradio.org/2014/11/02/sleep-well/ http://backstoryradio.org/2014/11/02/sleep-well/