E³ — Entertain Enlighten Empower

Putting the reader first

Follow publication

Member-only story

Interrupted Sleep or an Age-Old Pattern

Tom Hanratty
E³ — Entertain Enlighten Empower
3 min readJan 7, 2024

--

Works for me

Image by Johnny Hamster, sleeping quarters, Chateau de Ventadour, France

Because my sleep pattern, since I retired, consists of a waking period of about two hours during the night, I was interested in a short piece in an online BBC magazine about a historian investigating the term “first sleep.” Roger Ekirch, of the University of Virginia, was in England researching criminal trial records for a book he was writing on sleep habits in the pre-Industrial age world when he came across the term “first sleep.”

Apparently, before the Industrial Age, people didn’t sleep for one six to eight-hour period. They slept in two stages, as do I, with about a two-hour gap of wakefulness, usually from about 1 to 3 am.

As he expanded his research, he discovered that a two-stage pattern, called biphasic sleep, was the standard way people slept, as revealed in ancient records and literature.

Most people, whether peasant or nobility, went to bed at about 10 pm, woke up around 1 or 2, worked for about two hours, and then returned to bed until about 6, or sunrise, according to Ekirch.

This custom was noted in diaries, medical reports, military records, and literature. It’s mentioned in stories from Homer’s The Odyssey, in the 8th Century BCE, to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

--

--

Tom Hanratty
Tom Hanratty

Written by Tom Hanratty

Scribbler of stories, lover of mysteries, retired Forensic Investigator and Tracker of critters. tomhanratty@substack.com

Responses (9)

Write a response