Can Medieval Sleeping Habits Fix America’s Insomnia?

Anthropological studies of pre-industrial hunter-gatherers have also dispelled a popular myth about how humans should sleep.III Around the close of the early modern era (circa late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries), historical texts suggest that Western Europeans would take two long bouts of sleep at night, separated by several hours of w

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With artificial light, we believe we defeat the sleep-wake cycle; with climate control, the seasonal cycle; with refrigeration, the agricultural cycle; and with high-tech medicine, the rest-recovery cycle. Triumphal linearism has shaped the very style of Western and (especially) American civilization. Before, when cyclical time reigned, people valu... See more

Im Mittelalter, so lese ich beim US-Historiker Roger Ekirch, gehörte die Wolfsstunde zum Alltag, beziehungsweise zur Allnacht. Die Leute lebten im Rhythmus von Sonnenauf- und -untergang, man konnte nicht im Homeoffice den Abend durcharbeiten. Man schlief vier Stunden, dann standen viele auf, legten ein paar Scheite aufs Feuer, aßen etwas, gingen au

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references to a “second” or “morning” sleep. The picture he began to piece together of human sleep before the industrial era was not one anyone had ever remarked on before. It appeared that people slept in two bouts: an evening bout, which lasted from about 9 p.m. to sometime after midnight, and a morning bout, which lasted from around 2 a.m. to da

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