I've heard in the past it was common to sleep for a few hours, get up and enjoy the night, and then go back to sleep for a few hours. How true is that?

by TheOssuary

Title basically says it all. Are there notable individuals or times in history when this was common? Why did we move away from it?

Bodark43

u/indyobserver led off with a good answer in a discussion of this here. As he notes, it's not a settled matter: that is, not everyone, everywhere did it. And, in one way, it is rather obvious that in winter in northern latitudes there will be more hours of darkness than most people need for sleeping....so they would have been likely to get up, anyway.