We have all suffered from the condition where we wake up in the middle of the night but have trouble getting back to sleep.

We most probably find ourselves twisting and turning as the clock ticks away but before you can grab a few rapid eye movements, the alarm goes off and it is time to wake up. Many of us blame this on stress or a busy work week, but new research shows that we could simply be reclining to our medieval or pre-industrial default sleeping regimen, when human beings had “two sleeps” as opposed to the now familiar eight hour sleep, which researchers now consider “unnatural”.

In the early 1990s, the phenomenon of two sleeps was first discovered by the psychiatrist Thomas Wehr.

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Clik here to view.In the process of undertaking research about sleep patterns in human beings,  Wehr lumped a group of participants into 14 hours of darkness for a period of one month and placed them under observation.  After a few days of adjustment, the men fell into distinct sleeping patterns where they would sleep for some 4 hours, wake up for one two hours before plunging into another 4 hour of sleep.  This mode of sleeping was referred to as a segmented or bi-phasic sleeping pattern, which is believed to have existed from time immemorial but was disrupted by changes in nocturnal behaviour which has led to the now more compressed or consolidated sleep. This is what we normally call the eight hour sleep.

There are several historical anecdotes that allude to this segmented or bi-phasic sleep.

According to the book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past by historian Roger Ekirch, there are more than 500 references to segmented sleeping patterns. Segmented sleep was so common that it was considered a fact of life and people used the interlude between the two sleeps to chat, have sex, and visit friends amongst other activities before resuming the second phase of sleep. Ekirch’s research reveals this interlude or breaks involved a great deal of activity that was generally accepted as the norm.

So how did we lose our natural bi-phasic sleep pattern?

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Clik here to view.Blame progress. As the middle ages drew to a close cities began to light up. One of the earliest cities to put up street lights was Leipzig, although by the close of the 17th century almost all of the major European cities were lit up. A process began to take form called nocturnalisation, particularly amongst the upper classes where activities such as reading, telling of stories and prayers were more commonplace. Coffee houses, salons and bars were opened.  Based on his book The Night Empire, associate professor of history Craig Koslofsky said nocturnalisation simply meant an increased utilization of the night hours. A lot of the day time activities were thus being transferred into the night. 

This period of colonization of the night also coincided with the European colonization of the new world.

It is the process which contributed to the compression of segmented sleep into one block, with most people now sleeping from midnight to 8am in the morning. People who have 8 hours of solid sleep can therefore be said to have adapted well to the demands of modern society. On the other hand, the so called insomniacs are still enjoying the sleeping patterns of their great ancestors and are thus sleeping more naturally than others.  When facing “sleep deprivation”, there is no need to worry about your health status as you are perfectly normal. Instead, like your ancestors of yore, you can engage in some low-stimulus activity before the phase two of your very normal sleep sets in.

What will YOU NOW do in between your sleeps?