Posted by badhaircut on May 24, 2005, at 11:54:36
Interesting...
<snip>
A good night’s sleep for people in pre-industrial society was, at best, a long shot. There may not have been car alarms, ambulance sirens, or pneumatic drills, but there were watchmen shouting, bells ringing, dogs howling, mice scampering, roofs leaking, timbers shrinking, and chamber pots smelling. Most people slept on straw pallets or rough mats, or perhaps shared a cot with two or three siblings, along with fleas, lice, and bugs. Chronic fatigue was the norm, and sleep was valued in ways that we probably can’t imagine. What rouses us from our own dogmatic slumbers, however, is [the] assertion that “until the close of the early modern era, Western Europeans on most evenings experienced two major intervals of sleep bridged by up to an hour or more of wakefulness.” People, evidently, awoke after midnight and, instead of tossing and turning, they regularly got up to talk, study, pray, and do chores.
<snip>The change in sleep patterns brought about by artificial light also made for changes in endocrine release and brain-wave cycles through the night. The consequences of *those* changes are not yet clear. Someday I would like to try a "pre-historic sleep schedule."
From a review of the book "0393050890" At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past by Roger Ekirch. The whole review can be read free (for now) at
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/050530crbo_books[Sorry for the ISBN. I couldn't get the book link to work otherwise.]
poster:badhaircut
thread:502232
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/health/20050411/msgs/502232.html