The Odysseyof Homer, Cat with the cat of the poet William Baldwin and the Canterbury stories of Chaucer They have something in common, and it has nothing to do with literature. The first to realize that similarity was the Professor Roger Ekirch, of the Polytechnic Institute and State University of Virginia. In an investigation into the dream that led him to write At the end of the day: the night in past times, realized that many testimonies collected in old works (andqThey went from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution) They talked about something known as the “first dream.” He observed the same coincidence in a colonial story from Rio de Janeiro in 1555 what He described how the Tupinambá people also had dinner after that mysterious first dream. He arrived in the conclusion that our ancestors slept differently.
Then, he got to work. Through the investigation of Hundreds of letters, newspapers, philosophical writings, articles in newspapers Or even plays, he concluded that the habit of the first dream was not reduced to Europe, but that it had spread through Africa, the south and southeast of Asia, Australia, South America and the Middle East, until suddenly forgotten. It was about Biphasic or polyphase dreamwhich consisted that, instead of sleeping from the pull all night (about eight hours, as doctors recommend) it was made in two four -hour blocks, separated by a vigil period that lasted an hour or more.
During that time of vigil between the first and the second dream, some people stayed in bed (you have to think that before, until the mid -nineteenth century, it was also usual to share bed with friends or even strangers or travelersa kind of “social sleep” quite normal when the beds were scarce), they prayed, gave rides or talked to their partners. Some even performed some tasks or visited their neighbors. That can partially explain why enough Historical characters like Leonardo da Vinci They are known for sleeping about four hours per night and then throwing a small nap throughout the day. In fact, several studies estimate that more than 86% of mammals (including dogs, rodents or whales) sleep in several periods.
People prayed or talked to their partners. Some even performed some tasks or visited their neighbors
Something else, he says National Geographic, In 1992 Psychiatrist Thomas Wehr carried out a pioneering job On sleep with a group of individuals and observed that, after several weeks of confinement in a dark room for 14 hours a day, almost all the participants had entered a fragmented sleep cycle. On average, for the whole group the employer was bimodal and people tended to fall asleep soon at dusk and, again, at dawn. That reinforced the theories of many experts that it is indeed our real sleep pattern, although not everyone agrees.
Those who defend it indicate that They could fulfill a survival function because if in a group people wake up slightly at different times at night, there would be no time in which everyone was asleep, which from a Evolutionary perspective would serve to fulfill a sentinel function In societies such as primitive, which involved more risks. Those who are against this theory, however, advise him, because deceiving the body so that he sleeps less instead of waking up naturally after a restful dream is not advisable. In a 2021 article, Elizabeth Klerman, who analyzed the effects of artificial polyphásic sleep, compared it to stop a washing machine before a cycle ends.
But, Why do we change then? The most frequent explanation is electric and artificial light. This ended with our dependence on sunlight, which led us to work until later, we cancel natural darkness and, therefore, We reduce our sleeping possibilities. There are other experts who point out that, in reality, there would be no more “adequate” option and that everything is really based on the adaptability of the human being. But Ekirch did conclude with his study that Biphasic dream could explain in some ways those typical midnight insomnia, that they would be more logical and normal than we thought and we would have to take it naturally, which, paradoxically, would probably help them avoid them.
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