<story><title>The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Arwill</author><text>The article does not mention it, but mothers with small children have to nurse babies every couple of hours, even at night. So given that in middle ages, families had &amp;quot;copious numbers of children&amp;quot; (quote from the article), it is for sure that mothers would need to get up to feed a baby. And then possibly the whole family would woke up too. And if multiple generations were living in the same house, then even more probably there were babies too. I can imagine such a basic need being the root of the habit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>m_eiman</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s a nice graphic showing a baby&amp;#x27;s sleep pattern during the first 15 weeks:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eiman.tv&amp;#x2F;misc&amp;#x2F;somnrytm.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eiman.tv&amp;#x2F;misc&amp;#x2F;somnrytm.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since the text is in Swedish, here&amp;#x27;s roughly what it says: Every row is a day, black is sleep, white is awake.</text></comment>
<story><title>The medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Arwill</author><text>The article does not mention it, but mothers with small children have to nurse babies every couple of hours, even at night. So given that in middle ages, families had &amp;quot;copious numbers of children&amp;quot; (quote from the article), it is for sure that mothers would need to get up to feed a baby. And then possibly the whole family would woke up too. And if multiple generations were living in the same house, then even more probably there were babies too. I can imagine such a basic need being the root of the habit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>divbzero</author><text>It’s funny that you mention that. When I was reading the article, it occurred to me how biphasic (or multiphasic) sleep resembles the schedule of a newborn’s parents. To me the lack of artificial lighting is a more compelling explanation, but who knows there could be many factors that contributed to the habit.</text></comment>