A night in two parts
A historian examining court records, diaries, and letters found recurring phrases: first sleep and second sleep. They appeared matter-of-factly, without explanation, as something everyone understood.
The pattern was roughly this. People went to bed soon after dark, slept for several hours, woke around midnight, and stayed awake for an hour or two. Then they fell asleep again until dawn.
- SunsetWork ends when it gets dark; lighting is dim and expensive.
- MidnightPeople wake on their own, without an alarm and without worrying about it.
- An hour or twoThey pray, talk, mend small things, and visit neighbors.
- DawnThey get up with the light and start the day.
This interval was described as a peaceful time, convenient for talking and reflecting. Some texts specifically recommend it for prayer; others for conceiving children, because by then a person had had time to rest.
Where did it go?
Its disappearance is linked to the arrival of cheap, bright lighting. The evening grew longer, bedtime shifted later, and there was no longer enough darkness to divide the night into two parts: there was just enough time for one sleep.
Two-part sleep is the natural norm we should return to.
This pattern appears during long periods of darkness: in an experiment where people were kept in fourteen hours of darkness a day, some participants' sleep split in two. But this is a response to the conditions, not the only correct schedule.
There is another, more useful takeaway. Waking up during the night does not necessarily mean something is wrong: brief periods of wakefulness can be normal too. Worrying about it causes more trouble than waking up itself.
It is also worth remembering the limits of this finding. It concerns European sources from a particular period, not all of humanity. Societies with different climates and daily routines describe different sleep patterns.
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Sources
- References to first and second sleep have been found in European sources from the early modern period
- in an experiment with prolonged darkness, some participants' sleep split into two episodes