Ancient humans did not sleep continuously. They commonly slept in two shifts each night, separated by a period of wakefulness ...

Continuous sleep is a modern habit, not an evolutionary constant, which helps explain why many of us still wake at 3 am and wonder if something's wrong.

It's a commonly held belief that before artificial lighting, human sleep was 'naturally' divided into two distinct periods, but how true is that?

On dry nights, the San hunter-gatherers of Namibia often sleep under the stars. They have no electric lights or new Netflix releases keeping them awake. Yet when they rise in the morning, they haven’t ...

For hundreds of years, night didn't mean a long sleep. Long before electric lights lit up homes and streets, people lived ...

Sleeping is known to help humans stabilize information and tasks learned during the preceding day. Now, researchers have found that sleep has similar effects upon learning in starlings, a discovery ...

A new study analyzed the sleep patterns of jellyfish and sea anemones and found they share some sleep traits with humans. The research could provide insight into the origins and function of sleep.

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...