[link] we used to sleep twice each night
This isn't the first time I have contact with this subject, my friend Luis Cavaco once brought the subject up but it wasn't until I got this link that I read more about it. The, at times, dramatic way our bodies adjust to artificial factors is amazing, and given that society's memory is generationally short-sighted, these historic discoveries - and the fact that we can replicate the way our bodies behaved back then - help us take another look at our current reality.
"From his cocoon of books in Virginia, Ekirch somehow rediscovered a fact of life that was once as common as eating breakfast. Every night, people fell asleep not long after the sun went down and stayed that way until sometime after midnight. This was the first sleep that kept popping up in the old tales. Once a person woke up, he or she would stay that way for an hour or so before going back to sleep until morning -- the so-called second sleep. The time between the two bouts of sleep was a natural and expected part of the night and, depending on your needs, was spent praying, reading, contemplating your dreams, urinating, or having sex