


These are the king of things that happen when you don't get out enough.

An interesting read from my sleep app e-newsletter: https://blog.withings.com/2019/03/01/th ... -the-ages/
This paragraph is hilarious, but depicted in many a film pertaining to that period.End of biphasic sleep, late 17th century to early 20th century
This is a really big moment, not just in the history of sleep, but in the history of industrial civilization, full stop. Here’s the backstory: for a significant amount of time, humans slept in two distinct phases, bisected by a short period (about an hour) of wakefulness. This was called biphasic sleep. During this hour, people would wander around, have sex, smoke tobacco, and pray. It wasn’t just a midnight run to the pantry, but a time of day filled with activities.
According to Roger Ekirch, the historian who literally wrote the book on biphasic sleep, references to segmented sleep began to disappear around the end of the 17th century, and by the early 20th century, the concept was completely alien to most people. There have been many many different theories about the transition from biphasic sleep to monophasic sleep, from the industrial revolution to the advent of street lighting, but it’s clear that this is one of the major sleep developments to occur over the course of human history.