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I recently read At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past by A. Roger Ekirch. While this historical account of how we dealt with those hours when the Earth faced outward of its home in times past only peripherally touches on science, the author does develop an hypothesis late in the book concerning how all of us living in the post-Thomas Edison and friends period sleep. He claims we're doing it wrong, or at least, quite differently from the way our ancestors did it. Of course, we're all aware of how electricity has made considerable inroads into established sleep patterns built up over countless generations of evolution, but he goes one step further. He claims that until the last couple of hundred years, when gas and especially electrical lighting forever changed things, that people normally slept in two discrete chunks. The mid-night period after the "first sleep" was generally used to reflect upon the day's events, contemplate those things for which the day allowed little time, and to consider the dreams that had visited us in that first slumber and ponder their meaning. He claims that, as a result, we've lost a bit of insight into our own natures. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's an interesting proposition, and one that I hope sleep researchers will look into.
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