The myth of the eight-hour sleep
The myth of the eight -hour sleep is a brilliant article on a history of human sleep patterns. In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.
…references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.
These references start to disappear during the late 17th Century. By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness. Doctors urge parents to force their children out of the pattern. At this point, people have become increasingly time-conscious and sensitive to ideas of efficiency and are recommended to sleep in an 8 hour block.
Why were people encouraged to sleep in an essentially unnatural manner? At the turn of the century, with the help of photography, criminals could be more easily tracked and archived so perhaps it was to keep people off the streets and on the straight and narrow. Perhaps it was to ensure that the working masses could work long shifts at the factories?
I wake up every night and feel the need to get up and have a drink, read, go online etc. After reading this article, I am starting to understand that my night time habits are actually more natural than most of my friends.
Hurra for the bi-modal sleep pattern!
Queen of Sleep 
Hey, that’s really interesting because I find that I tend to be wakeful during those hours and, and often will get up for a while until I get sleepy again. That couple of hours in the middle of the night I find that my creativity just flows when I write during those couple of hours. I have sleep apnea, and narcolepsy with cataplexy. Now I take Xyrem and still wake up around that time, but of course that’s when I take the prescribed second dose and then I go right back to sleep.
shekinah419
October 11, 2012 at 12:25 am
I actually had every intention of getting up to work for an hour or so last night between sleeps last night, but the first sleep session went poorly….so I opted to take my next dose straight away without getting out of bed, and sleep some more.
At least most of the servers that I was to update don’t need to get updated during a maintenance window.
thedreamer68
October 11, 2012 at 2:25 pm