In the Middle Ages, people slept differently than they do today. Two-phase sleep was healthy and brought many other benefits

 Lenka Bělská

• Nine-year-old Jane stretched out and squinted into the darkness. It was 13. April 1699 around 23:00. Together with her mother, she woke up from a short sleep. Mrs. rowth put it in the oven and encouraged her daughter to make bread dough. At that moment, two men appeared at the window and ordered the woman to go with them.

As Jane later explained, the mother was expecting a night visit. She got dressed and told her daughter that she would be back soon. However, this did not happen. That night, Mrs. rowth was murdered, and the crime was never solved.

Three hundred years later, historian Roger Ekirch sat in the British National Archives and studied Jane's testimony. Something odd about him was present. He was struck by words he had never encountered before-the first sleep. "The little girl describes in court testimony that before the men appeared, she and her mother got up from their first sleep. That means there was another one to follow that night. I wondered if it was a family habit or something more,” the scientist recalled.

Two-phase sleep

Over the coming months, Ekirch searched through old documents in order to find more references to double sleep. He later admitted that he was surprised at how many he found. For example, Luke Atkinson of the East Riding of Yorkshire used the time between first and second bedtimes to "visit other people's homes and do sinister things."

Biphasic sleep is mentioned in one of the most famous works of medieval literature, the Canterbury Tale, or in the work of the poet William Baldwin beware of the cat. "But that was just the beginning. According to the researcher, "I discovered sporadic references in letters, diaries, medical and philosophical treatises, newspaper pieces, or plays. "He was widely practiced not only in England, but also in France as premier somme, in Italy under the name primo sonno, but also, for example, in Southeast Asia, Australia, South America, the Middle East and Africa.”

The historian was completely fascinated by this practice. He found that this was how humans spent the night for thousands of years. The practice has its origins in the time of the Roman Empire. Later it was adopted by monasteries, in which monks had to get up for Midnight Mass. The idea eventually spread to all social strata.

Other mode

The last signs of biphasic sleep can be dated to the early 20th century. century. In general, the family went to bed about nine o'clock in the evening, marking the start of the night for medieval and early modern man. I slept for two hours. From 23:00 to about an hour people were awake.

"The records describe that at this time there was cooking, hell, weaving and the care of animals. One servant even prepared a beer for his Westmorland employer between midnight and 2 a.m.,” says Roger Ekirch. "The so-called Watch was also suitable for prayer, meditation or procreation of children."Once the work was done, people went back to bed and slept until morning.

The scientist has long wondered whether biphasic sleep is more natural for a person. In 1995, he came across an experiment of the National Institute of mental health, which involved fifteen men who were deprived of artificial lighting. At first, everyone slept in one continuous shift. After four weeks, the regime changed. At night, for one to three hours, they themselves woke up naturally. Measurements of the sleep hormone melatonin showed that their circadian rhythms also changed.

This research was confirmed by David Samson, director of the sleep and human evolution Laboratory at the University of Toronto Mississauga in Canada, who studied volunteers from the remote Manadena community in northeastern Madagascar. Farmers, monitored by a device measuring their sleep rhythms, went to bed with the sunset, after midnight they woke up for about two hours. Then they fell asleep again until they woke up at the time of Sunrise.

According to Roger Ekirch, two-phase sleep was suppressed with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. "Gas and electricity caused people not to go to bed at nine in the evening. They had to get up at the same time. "Sleep has become shorter and deeper," he said. "However, this does not mean that the quality of today's attenuation-relaxation phase is worse," he points out. "Only the conditions have changed.”