Sleeping Well? Our Ancestors Knew How To

Experts always recommend sleeping 7-8 hours a night without interruption. In this way, the quality of sleep can also improve our quality of life.

Following this advice, when we wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep for an hour or two, we start to worry. This phenomenon is often referred to as a “sleep disturbance”. In reality, it is a much more natural process than you think and can even be healthy for our bodies.

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr carried out an experiment in which he plunged a group of people into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month. It took him some time to get results, but by the fourth week he was able to discover that the subjects’ sleep patterns and habits had changed.

Although all of them were used to sleeping for more than 6 consecutive hours, after four weeks from the start of the experiment they began to sleep for only 4 hours, then wake up for 1-2 hours and then fall asleep again for another 4 hours.

The results of the experiment amazed many sleep experts. Despite this, they decided to continue to argue that it is necessary to sleep 8 hours a night without interruption.

Sleep well: different sleep habits in different historical periods

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (USA) published a study that lasted more than 15 years. Ekirch revealed historical evidence to support an interesting theory: in ancient times, humans slept in two different stages.

Just 4 years later, in 2005, Ekirch published the book At Day’s Close: Night in Times past , in which he included about 500 testimonies proving the existence of “segmented” sleep. Such testimonies include diaries, volumes of medicine, literature and many other sources, from Homer’s Odyssey to Nigerian tribes.

This lengthy study managed to show that humans are not always able to sleep 8 consecutive hours without interruption. According to Ekirch, in fact,  for many of us it is easier to sleep during two shorter phases which, added together, amount to the number of hours recommended by the experts.

In ancient times, our ancestors slept 3-4 hours, followed by 2 or 3 hours of wakefulness, after which they went back to sleep until late in the morning. All this took place over a period of 12 hours, necessary to obtain a proper rest. However, at the end of the 17th century, the way of sleeping changed and the method we know today was adopted.

According to the findings of Ekirch’s research, this two-stage way of sleeping began to disappear in the 17th century among the upper class in northern European cities.

It took only 200 years for sleep habits to begin to change in the rest of Western society as well. By the 1920s, the idea of ​​sleeping in two shorter phases during the night had disappeared altogether.

According to some experts, segmented sleep is a natural phenomenon of the body and many people experience it frequently at night. Based on Ekirch’s conclusions, many of the problems that keep us from sleeping well are due to the human body’s preference to segment sleep into two stages.

To develop this theory, Ekirch relied on the fact that, towards the end of the 19th century, what we know today as “maintenance insomnia” began to manifest itself. Those who suffer from it wake up in the middle of the night and then have a hard time falling back asleep. This problem first appeared just as segmented sleep began to disappear.

Psychologist Greg Jacob says that sleeping in a single phase without segmenting it can be harmful. This could be the cause of severe anxiety attacks during the night. This can make it very difficult to fall asleep, to the point of staying awake until the next morning.

In ancient times, the intermediate period between the two phases of sleep was used to meditate on one’s dreams, read, pray or carry out spiritual activities. Jacobs says these types of activities are essential for controlling stress naturally.

Precisely for this reason, today it is very common to suffer from, for example, anxiety, stress, depression or alcoholism. The picture gets worse if we include technology and think about how technology has changed our habits when it’s time to go to sleep.