Myth of eight-hour sleep

八小时睡眠的神话

Bā xiǎoshí shuìmián de shénhuà

在20世纪90年代早期,精神病学家Thomas Wehr主导了一项实验,他把一群人置于每天有十四个小时黑夜的坏境中度过一个月.测试者们调整睡眠养成了一种不同的睡眠方式.他们先睡上四个小时,然后醒来一到两个小时,之后又继续睡上第二个四小时.这表明连续八小时的睡眠也许并非自然.但是在大众思想中要不间断地睡上八个小时的观念依然是不可动摇.

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month. They who had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern, slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep. It suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural. But among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.

根据弗吉尼亚理工学院的历史学家Roger Ekirch发掘出的超过500份关于分段睡眠方式的参考文献,大量历史证据揭示了人类过去睡眠会分为两个时间段.这些有来自日记,法庭审理笔录,医学图书和文学作品（从荷马奥德赛到尼日利亚现代部落的人类学报告）的参考文献描述了夜幕降临后两小时后的第一次睡眠,接着是一到两小时的不眠期,然后开始第二次睡眠.

Historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech unearthed more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks. These references - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria, described a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

Ekirch发现文献记载的有关分段睡眠在十七世纪晚期开始逐渐消失.首先开始于北欧城市中的上流阶层,然后在接下来的200年后情况蔓延到了西方社会的其他地区.一直到20世纪20年代,分段睡眠的观念才完全从我们的社会意识中退去.他把这种初始转变归因于街道照明、家庭照明的提高改进,以及咖啡馆的大量兴起——它们有时通宵营业.由于夜晚变成了人们合法活动的一个时段,随着夜生活的兴起,人们用于休息的时间就缩短了.

Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society. By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness. He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled.

当今,很多人似乎已经很好地适应了八小时睡眠,但是Ekirch相信许多睡眠方面的问题可能源于人体对分段睡眠的自然偏好和普遍存在的人造照明."许多人半夜醒来伴随着恐慌,"他说道,"我告诉他们,他们的体验只不过是退回到了双模睡眠方式."

Today, most people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep as well as the ubiquity of artificial light. "Many people wake up at night and panic," he says. "I tell them that what they are experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern."

所以下次当你在半夜醒来,想想你工业时期前的祖先们并且放松下来.醒来躺着或许对你有益.

So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, think of your pre-industrial ancestors and relax. Lying awake could be good for you.

词语解释：

主导 (zhǔdǎo) conduct

置于 (zhìyú) plunge

不间断 (bù jiànduàn) consecutive

发掘 (fàjué) unearth

(Source: myechinese.com)