Name: Why Humans Are Supposed to Sleep in Two 4-Hour Phases
Uploaded: 2023-12-23T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 6 min 20 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

You're reading book four of Homer's the Odyssey in its original Greek.

Adverbs of degree

And just as you get to the best part, which obviously is when the nymph is giving Menelaus, king of the Spartans, instructions on how to catch Proteus, the old man of the sea.

When I read this passage in my 1932 translation of the Odyssey by Te Lawrence, it said that Menelaus should wait until he sees Proteus settle down.

But given the πρώτα is Greek for first, the more accurate translation isn't that men should wait until Proteus settles down, but to wait until his first sleep.

Well, jeez, then you must not be historian, A. Roger Eckrich, author of the seminal 2001 paper, Sleep We Have lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles.

But while I have you here, why don't I tell you about why a mistranslation of Homer is actually proof that Western society has been fundamentally misunderstanding human sleep patterns for over 200 years?

You lay down on a soft table, close your eyes and watch a strange confusing improv show starring your mom, your third-grade teacher and all your greatest fears until the sun comes up, right? Wrong.

It turns out that the modern monophasic sleep pattern, 18-hour period of sleep or let's be honest, 15-hour period of insomnia and self-hatred is just that modern.

Before we had new-fangled technology like candles and light bulbs and five-hour energy sleep occurred in two, two distinct periods.

People would typically go to bed a bit after sundown sleep about four hours and then wake up in the middle of the night for an hour or two and then go back to sleep for around four more hours until the sun came up.

During that wakeful night time period, people would do a number of things; pray, interpret dreams, write, visit neighbors or even do the thing adult couples tend to do when they love each other very much: argue.

And if you look closely at the historical and literary record, you would have known that.

Now, you probably don't even know where the historical and literary record is.

He found over 500 references to interrupted sleep in 15th-century prayer books, Charles Dickens novels, Don Quixote, old ballad's diaries, even a 16-century French doctor's manual that recommended couples conceive during the wakefulness period as they will quote, have more enjoyment and quote, do it better.

But because historians and translators spent about 200 years assuming that the past couldn't possibly have been different from the present,

we've been misinterpreting and mistranscending some of these references for years, including that passage and the Odyssey.

And this biphasic sleep schedule isn't just supported by historical research, but experimental research.

In fact, it may be that biphasic sleep is the natural human sleep pattern.

We've known for a long time that animals typically exhibit polyphasic sleep.

If you know what poly means because you took Greek or you're on some very specific subreddits, you can probably piece together that polyphasic sleep means sleeping in multiple periods.

Many species including most mammals specifically show a pattern of biphasic sleep.

Now, for a long time, researchers thought that humans were fundamentally different than other animals and that we naturally exhibited monophasic sleep.

But it turns out that naturally, we're actually probably the same as other animals and that researchers had just forgotten that other animals don't use light bulbs.

But one day, one valiant researcher did what no one before him had done and remember that light bulbs do in fact exist.

Thomas Wehr, who in 1992 did an experiment to determine people's natural sleeping cycle.

He rounded up seven men because while we had heroically remembered that light bulbs exist he had unfortunately forgotten that women also exist and forced them to experience darkness for 14 hours each day for one month.

Over time, the experimental subjects settled into a distinct pattern.

They would go to sleep for about four hours, wake up for 1 to 3 hours and then go back to sleep for another four hours.

Now, you may be wondering, "Hey, Sam, why did we stop sleeping that way?"

And if you are wondering that, I'm disappointed because I literally just reminded you about how light bulbs exist.

You see, back before artificial lighting, night was considered a terrifying time full of various thieves, vagabonds, miscreant swindlers, scoundrels, ruffians and scallywags.

When the sun went down, anyone who wasn't a licensed scally wag went to bed.

But much like Robert Downey Junior, the night became more reputable over time.

Fueled by the reformation and counter-reformation, church services began to be held at night, so congregants could avoid persecution, A trend that eventually bled into social life for those who could afford candlelight.

Later, as cities developed street lights and we invented cheaper oil and lamps.

And eventually the say with me, light bulb going out at night became more fashionable.

And all the while the industrial revolutions focus on efficiency and time consciousness, ushered along widespread adoption of monophasic sleep schedules.

And just by the way to all you Spanish commenters who I know are absolutely foaming at the mouth right now, I know about siestas, and you're right.

Siestas a short afternoon nap, usually after lunch are historically common in many parts of the world, including Southern Europe, the Mediterranean, mainland China, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

Although prevalence of midday naps is down, as many countries adopt a more westernized work culture.

But first of all, siestas and interrupted sleep are different things.

And second of all, I can't fit everything into every video.

If I go over it, then I get cut off before I can finish.

Nebula is a streaming service I started with a bunch of my creator friends and while I've talked about it in a lot of videos today, I wanna come clean and tell you guys the truth about Nebula.

Nebula ot only has ad-free versions of all the YouTube videos you know and love,

it's also got originals you can only get there, including an HAI Brick special and trivia show.

Win over documentaries and companion videos to HAI episodes including ones where we show you all the extra jokes, my writers wrote for episodes, but that I heartlessly cut for time/ appropriateness.

And we partnered with another incredible streaming site Curiosity Stream to offer a pretty crazy bundle deal, $14.79 during the current sale for an entire year of Nebula and Curiosity Stream,

which is home to thousands of fantastic documentaries, including Curious Minds: The Science of Sleep.

So to get that bundle and support HAI, click the button on screen or go to curiositystream.com/haI.

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Why Humans Are Supposed to Sleep in Two 4-Hour Phases

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