Ancient Sleeping Patterns During and before the 15th Century, we used to sleep in two shorter periods over 12 hours. Due to a lack of artificial lighting and candlelight, our ancient ancestors went to bed at dusk for around four hours, woke in the middle of the night and were active, then slept again until dawn.
Typically, they went to sleep three hours and 20 minutes after sunset and woke before sunrise. And they slept through the night. The result of these sleep patterns: Nearly no one suffered from insomnia. In none of their languages is there even a word for insomnia.
Sleeping like a person living in the Victorian times is the new strategy to combat sleeplessness or insomnia it seems. Before the industrial revolution and rise of electricity, most people would go to bed when it got dark. They would sleep for around five hours and then wake up.
Each block of sleep would be around four hours, with most people staying awake for an two to four hours in between. This in between waking period was often seen as a good time for those nocturnal arts, such as procreation and pillow talk.
They found that average time the members of each tribe spent asleep ranged from 5.7 to 7.1 hours per night, quite similar to the reported sleep duration in more modern societies.
In the Victorian era the public would typically fall asleep at 7pm when the sun disappeared, however this dramatically moved to 10pm in the Edwardian era, finally settling at 12pm in the modern age. Although our bedtime has become later throughout the years, we've continued to wake up around a similar time.
Polyphasic sleep – people typically slept 8-10 hours per night, broken into two periods with a 1- to 2-hour break between periods. Children most often all slept in one room.
Even if artificial lighting was not fully to blame, by the end of the 20th Century, the division between the two sleeps had completely disappeared – the Industrial Revolution hadn't just changed our technology, but our biology, too.
The Industrial Revolution was in its prime during the 19th Century. Long working days and regimented factory schedules (including two shifts) meant that people could no longer take a nap break whenever they wanted to. Instead, for efficiency, they began compressing their shuteye into a single cycle.
Caveman beds
Dating back more than 77,000 years, the bed was surprisingly well preserved. It was found in a rock shelter in South Africa, and it's the earliest sign of sleeping behaviour yet. The archaeologists found a mattress complete with soft bedding.
Before Thomas Edison's invention of the electric light in 1879, most people slept ten hours each night, a duration we've just recently discovered is ideal for optimal performance. When activity no longer was limited by the day's natural light, sleep habits changed.
Humans were making themselves comfy on plant mattresses as long as 77,000 years ago, a study has found - and our ancestors were surprisingly clever at getting a good night's sleep. Scientists discovered early evidence of bedding made from compacted stems and leaves at a rock shelter in South Africa.
Anthropological studies suggest that sleeping in two phases used to be the norm. Centuries ago, before the industrial era, people in many parts of the world, including Europe, Africa, North America, South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Australia, followed a segmented sleep pattern.
A typical circadian rhythm in humans is one where peak alertness is around 2-3 hours after awakening and 8-9 hours after awakening, and where fatigue is most likely at around 3 AM, if you wake up like most people do at around 7-9 AM in the morning. However, this rhythm is impacted by many factors and it can be shifted.
The earliest recorded use of the modern human device dates back to the civilizations of Mesopotamia around 7,000 BC. During this time, only the wealthy used pillows. The number of pillows symbolized status so the more pillows one owned the more affluence they held.
Rip Van Winkle is an amiable farmer who wanders into the Catskill Mountains, where he comes upon a group of dwarfs playing ninepins. Rip accepts their offer of a drink of liquor and promptly falls asleep. When he awakens, 20 years later, he is an old man with a long white beard; the dwarfs are nowhere in sight.
First/Second Sleep Schedule: The original biphasic sleep schedule, from the preindustrial era, split sleep into two segments during the night. People would have their first sleep around 9 p.m. or 10 p.m., wake up around midnight for an hour or two, and then have their second sleep after that.
People would first sleep between around 9pm and 11pm, lying on rudimentary mattresses generally filled with straw or rags, unless they were particularly wealthy and could afford feathers.
Einstein Slept Only 3 Hours a Year.
The easy experimental answer to this question is 264 hours (about 11 days). In 1965, Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old high school student, set this apparent world-record for a science fair. Several other normal research subjects have remained awake for eight to 10 days in carefully monitored experiments.
The study carried out by Professor Ekirch from the University of Virginia, has revealed that ancient people used to sleep about 8 hours per night... but not all at once!
Other weird records
Previously, Peter Tripp held the first record at 201 hours and suffered from hallucinations for several days after. Between Peter and Randy, Honolulu DJ Tom Rounds made it to 260 hours. Randy tapped out at 264 hours, and slept for 14 hours straight after.
A study of hunter-gatherer societies suggests that our prehistoric ancestors slept for about the same number of hours we do today. And, contrary to the claims of siesta aficionados who say that we are biologically wired to sleep in the middle of the day, our ancestors likely didn't nap.
Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life, health and longevity and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first-century society, with devastating consequences: every major disease in the developed world - Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity, diabetes - has very strong links to deficient sleep.
Can we go further, putting people to sleep for decades and maybe even the centuries it would take to travel between the stars? Right now, the answer is no. We don't have any technology at our disposal that could do this. We know that microbial life can be frozen for hundreds of years.