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>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 bett

>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?

rtsil 5y ago
The "it was incredibly common" part is the theory. I don't know if anyone else besides Roger Ekirch supports it, which doesn't mean it's false of course. Our ignorance of things past is gigantic and not helped by the fact that history (and stories) tend to be constantly rewritten.
notahacker 5y ago
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 without comment - because of widely available artificial light, although it actually makes less sense to dedicate midnight hours to stuff like household chores and reading in the middle of the night without easy light sources, especially in northern European summer when it's about the only time there isn't daylight. Null hypothesis: early humans slept much like today's humans, sometimes waking or being woken in the night, occasionally even intentionally but generally not making a big deal of it and trying to sleep through. People sometimes described periods of broken sleep as "first sleep", "second sleep" and even "third sleep" but commentary on the practise of biphasic sleep and importance of midnight waking is harder to find because most people didn't do it that way. A lot of references to "first sleep" can be found if you search digitized records with that string and its foreign language equivalents, but so can references to obviously non-systematic things like "first injury" or "first marriage". You can't generalise human behaviour in the absence of electricity from one tribe that does have a midnight break when numerous others studied don't.
- Izkata 5y ago
  > or even a name for that gap From the article: > The period of wakefulness that followed was known as "the watch" Other terms for that time of night: The witching hour (which almost sounds like a corruption of "the watch") - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witching_hour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witching_hour Wee small hours - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wee_small_hours https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wee_small_hours
  - notahacker 5y ago
    Erkich's own words, both his original paper and his website, acknowledge the lack of a distinct name. He suggested generic terms "watch" and "watching" may have been used throughout a long period of British history to describe the hypothesised universal period of wakefulness based on one primary source each. One appears to be a prayer which refers to "between one morning watch and another" without hinting what a "morning watch" is, another is a devotional text calling on people to watch their first waking thoughts are set on God, where there are rather obvious alternative interpretations of the words "watch" and "first"... The notion of "witching hour" is predicated on the idea that spirit activity takes place when most people are asleep, and "the wee small hours" is a reference to the entire period between midnight and dawn. If the closest word a language had to "lunch" was "afternoon", I'd probably conclude that culture generally didn't have an important midday meal! https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/SleepWeHaveLostPre-industrialSlumberintheBritishIsles_TheAmericanHistoricalReview_2001_Ekirch.pdf https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/SleepWeHaveLostPr... https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/roger-ekirch/sleep-research/segmented-sleep https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/roger-ekirch/sleep-research/...
- sooheon 5y ago
  > Null hypothesis: early humans slept much like today's humans [...] That's a terrible null hypothesis, as there is no reproducible, controllable test for it, other than a time machine. A better one might be "people exposed to pre-industrial revolution photoperiods (<12h per day) will settle into a biphasic sleep pattern". This was empirically tested with a small N (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.1992.tb00019.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.1992...). At least it's testable.
axiolite 5y ago
> The article doesn't really claim that this kind of sleep is better or more natural It does: "the benefits of dividing up sleep" "single periods of slumber might not be 'natural'." THIS article soft-peddles such claims biphasic sleep is better and more natural ONLY because those theories have been largely discredited since it was first put forward. Try an older article: "Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep" "a consolidated eight-hour sleep may be unnatural" https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783 > Is the idea that it was common now thought to be false? Yes, that part is likely false, too: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many-myths-of-paleo-sleeping/410707/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many...
quietbritishjim 5y ago
> The article doesn't really claim that this kind of sleep is better or more natural, just that it was incredibly common. (Emphasis mine.) For a start, the article suggests that it wasn't just common but actually the dominant pattern of sleep, but the evidence seems a bit thin on that. Moreover, it says that "Ekirch began to suspect that the method had been ... an ancient default that we inherited from our prehistoric ancestors". But I seem to remember an anthropologist on a TV programme (many years ago so I forget which one sadly) saying this isn't obvserved in isolated tribal cultures today, so we can reasonable expect that our pre-agriculture anscestors wouldn't have slept this way. Edit: A reply to a sibling comment found a good citation: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many-myths-of-paleo-sleeping/410707/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many... Interestingly, like the BBC article it mentions Ekirch as the proponent of the two sleeps theory. So I wonder if the whole idea is the pet theory of this one person.

rtsil 5y ago

The "it was incredibly common" part is the theory. I don't know if anyone else besides Roger Ekirch supports it, which doesn't mean it's false of course. Our ignorance of things past is gigantic and not helped by the fact that history (and stories) tend to be constantly rewritten.

notahacker 5y ago

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 without comment - because of widely available artificial light, although it actually makes less sense to dedicate midnight hours to stuff like household chores and reading in the middle of the night without easy light sources, especially in northern European summer when it's about the only time there isn't daylight. Null hypothesis: early humans slept much like today's humans, sometimes waking or being woken in the night, occasionally even intentionally but generally not making a big deal of it and trying to sleep through. People sometimes described periods of broken sleep as "first sleep", "second sleep" and even "third sleep" but commentary on the practise of biphasic sleep and importance of midnight waking is harder to find because most people didn't do it that way. A lot of references to "first sleep" can be found if you search digitized records with that string and its foreign language equivalents, but so can references to obviously non-systematic things like "first injury" or "first marriage". You can't generalise human behaviour in the absence of electricity from one tribe that does have a midnight break when numerous others studied don't.

Izkata 5y ago
> or even a name for that gap From the article: > The period of wakefulness that followed was known as "the watch" Other terms for that time of night: The witching hour (which almost sounds like a corruption of "the watch") - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witching_hour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witching_hour Wee small hours - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wee_small_hours https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wee_small_hours
- notahacker 5y ago
  Erkich's own words, both his original paper and his website, acknowledge the lack of a distinct name. He suggested generic terms "watch" and "watching" may have been used throughout a long period of British history to describe the hypothesised universal period of wakefulness based on one primary source each. One appears to be a prayer which refers to "between one morning watch and another" without hinting what a "morning watch" is, another is a devotional text calling on people to watch their first waking thoughts are set on God, where there are rather obvious alternative interpretations of the words "watch" and "first"... The notion of "witching hour" is predicated on the idea that spirit activity takes place when most people are asleep, and "the wee small hours" is a reference to the entire period between midnight and dawn. If the closest word a language had to "lunch" was "afternoon", I'd probably conclude that culture generally didn't have an important midday meal! https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/SleepWeHaveLostPre-industrialSlumberintheBritishIsles_TheAmericanHistoricalReview_2001_Ekirch.pdf https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/SleepWeHaveLostPr... https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/roger-ekirch/sleep-research/segmented-sleep https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/roger-ekirch/sleep-research/...
sooheon 5y ago
> Null hypothesis: early humans slept much like today's humans [...] That's a terrible null hypothesis, as there is no reproducible, controllable test for it, other than a time machine. A better one might be "people exposed to pre-industrial revolution photoperiods (<12h per day) will settle into a biphasic sleep pattern". This was empirically tested with a small N (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.1992.tb00019.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.1992...). At least it's testable.

axiolite 5y ago

> The article doesn't really claim that this kind of sleep is better or more natural It does: "the benefits of dividing up sleep" "single periods of slumber might not be 'natural'." THIS article soft-peddles such claims biphasic sleep is better and more natural ONLY because those theories have been largely discredited since it was first put forward. Try an older article: "Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep" "a consolidated eight-hour sleep may be unnatural" https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783 > Is the idea that it was common now thought to be false? Yes, that part is likely false, too: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many-myths-of-paleo-sleeping/410707/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many...

quietbritishjim 5y ago

> The article doesn't really claim that this kind of sleep is better or more natural, just that it was incredibly common. (Emphasis mine.) For a start, the article suggests that it wasn't just common but actually the dominant pattern of sleep, but the evidence seems a bit thin on that. Moreover, it says that "Ekirch began to suspect that the method had been ... an ancient default that we inherited from our prehistoric ancestors". But I seem to remember an anthropologist on a TV programme (many years ago so I forget which one sadly) saying this isn't obvserved in isolated tribal cultures today, so we can reasonable expect that our pre-agriculture anscestors wouldn't have slept this way. Edit: A reply to a sibling comment found a good citation: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many-myths-of-paleo-sleeping/410707/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many... Interestingly, like the BBC article it mentions Ekirch as the proponent of the two sleeps theory. So I wonder if the whole idea is the pet theory of this one person.