Quakarot

Quakarot t1_j95e7nb wrote

Reply to comment by otaku_108 in [Image] Be selfless. by otaku_108

I feel like the people who leave the biggest impact also tend to leave a large legacy, though?

Like, I’ve heard of Albert Einstein and he was both successful and famous. I get what this is saying, particularly in the modern age where clout chasing is a bigger deal than ever, but because of large figures that do plenty of both it really doesn’t resonate.

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Quakarot t1_iszfw5l wrote

The bbc article suggests otherwise:

> Biphasic sleep was not unique to England, either – it was widely practised throughout the preindustrial world. In France, the initial sleep was the "premier somme"; in Italy, it was "primo sonno". In fact, Eckirch found evidence of the habit in locations as distant as Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Australia, South America and the Middle East.

So it’s unclear, at least, but the bbc article also suggests compelling evidence that biphasic sleep exists even today in Africa, and other places without artificial light

> Back in 2015, together with collaborators from a number of other universities, Samson recruited local volunteers from the remote community of Manadena in northeastern Madagascar for a study. The location is a large village that backs on to a national park – and there is no infrastructure for electricity, so nights are almost as dark as they would have been for millennia.

> The participants, who were mostly farmers, were asked to wear an "actimeter" – a sophisticated activity-sensing device that can be used to track sleep cycles – for 10 days, to track their sleep patterns.

> "What we found was that [in those without artificial light], there was a period of activity right after midnight until about 01:00-01:30 in the morning," says Samson, "and then it would drop back to sleep and to inactivity until they woke up at 06:00, usually coinciding with the rising of the Sun."

> As it turns out, biphasic sleep never vanished entirely – it lives on in pockets of the world today.

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