[defrost]

Hardly a singular obsession of one person when we have both Vigil and Matins as standards of the canonical hours for much of the past two thousand years of church records.

The article outlines multiple examples of references to first and second sleep periods in official court documents, and points to sleep studies of farmers in rural areas who still 'almost wake' not long after midnight.

As a pre industrial habit it makes sense - in colder areas fires don't last all night and rising after midnight to stoke fires, check animals, etc. fits right in with rural life.

[bemusedthrow75]

> Hardly a singular obsession of one person

The parent post means the study of the practice, not the practice itself.

It might make sense -- I think it probably does -- but that doesn't mean that it's not true, when you dig into it, that the major study here is Ekrich and all the articles about it, articles about Ekrich.

Making intuitive sense isn't really enough. It's difficult to study the habits of the long dead, but the parent poster is right to be skeptical of the nature of coverage.

[defrost]

Aside from Ekrich - who can at least point to the extracts he has found in historic archives, there are sleep study results that suggest humans still have remnant night waking behaviour; these fall into the intuitive.

Which leaves what I first raised - a thousand years of documented broken sleep by monks in monestaries getting up to pray late at night and again early in the morning.

Some might write that off as hair shirt behaviour by religuous fanatics intent on punishing themselves, others might take it as evidence that people of those times were living with punctuated sleep cycles and those that went to serve their God took to praying when they woke as a matter of course.

There's also the evidence of sleep in Spain and other warmer climes, with additional sleeping during the hottest parts of the day, staying up later, sleeping less during the night and rising earlier before the sun.

It's Ekrich's hobby horse, many niche areas have few champions, but it's not exactly the case that he is drawing on forged entries with no other examples to be found.

[bemusedthrow75]

> but it's not exactly the case that he is drawing on forged entries with no other examples to be found.

Did anyone suggest this? I think it is rude to suggest that the comment you are replying to did any such thing.

(I have noted the long Spanish siesta elsewhere)

[defrost]

Not that specifically but that's certainly one whisp of smoke that might be found should:

> (Has this) evidence been examined sceptically?

The implication there is that the "evidence" quoted might not exist, might be a stretch of translation, misreading of spidery handwriting, or spun whole from new cloth to fit a narrative.

[bemusedthrow75]

No, that's your implication.

I personally read "sceptically" to imply the idea of seeing whether the study falls victim to significance bias -- e.g. once you see it, you see it a lot, but is it an indicator of a widespread habit, or just a not-particularly-unusual one?

Edit: And indeed if you read on a bit about Ekrich, he suffers from sleep disorders for which he takes medication. That's a potential risk factor for significance/confirmation bias here, I'd have thought. But there's no reason to jump to the conclusion that fabrication is being suggested.

[defrost]

That's my partial, not exhaustive, list of the kinds of things that have turned up in past skeptical examinations of researcher claims.

Many times, of course, researchers are supported in their claims by skeptical examination.

It's of interest that you personally chose a limited reading of "skeptical examination", whether that's due to limited experience or an innate tendancy to only imagine the best behaviour in people I wouldn't speculate.