Have you winterized your horse yet? Even though global warming may have made our climate milder, many animals are still hibernating. It's too bad that humans can't hibernate. In fact, as a species, we almost did.
你给马过冬了吗？尽管全球变暖可能使我们的气候更加温和，但许多动物仍在冬眠。人类不能冬眠太糟糕了。事实上，作为一个物种，我们几乎做到了。
Apparently, at times in the past, peasants in France liked a semi-state of human hibernation. So writes Graham Robb, a British scholar who has studied the sleeping habits of the French peasants. As soon as the weather turned cold people all over France shut themselves away and practiced the forgotten art of doing nothing at all for months on end.
显然，过去的法国农民喜欢半冬眠状态。英国学者格雷厄姆·罗伯曾研究过法国农民的睡眠习惯。天气一转冷，全法国的人们就把自己关起来，连续几个月练习着被遗忘的无聊的艺术。
In line with this, Jeff Warren, a producer at CBC Radio's The Current, tells us that the way we sleep has changed fundamentally since the invention of artificial lighting and the electric bulb.
与此相一致，CBC电台《电流》的制片人杰夫·沃伦告诉我们，自人工照明和电灯泡发明以来，我们的睡眠方式发生了根本性的变化。
When historians began studying texts of the Middle Ages, they noticed something referred to as “first sleep”, which was not clarified, though. Now scientists are telling us our ancestors most likely slept in separate periods. The business of eight hours' uninterrupted sleep is a modern invention.
当历史学家开始研究中世纪的资料时，他们注意到一些被称为“第一次睡眠”的东西，但这并没有被澄清。现在科学家告诉我们，我们的祖先很可能在不同的时段睡觉。八小时不间断睡眠是一项现代发明。
In the past, without the artificial light of the city to bathe in, humans went to sleep when it became dark and then woke themselves around midnight. The late night period was known as “The Watch”. It was when people actually kept watch against wild animals, although many of them simply moved around or visited family and neighbors.
过去，在没有城市人造灯光的情况下，人们会在天黑时睡觉，然后在午夜左右醒来。深夜阶段称为“守夜”。那时，人们实际上一直在警惕野生动物，尽管许多野生动物只是四处走动或拜访的家人及邻居。
According to some sleep researchers, a short period of insomnia at midnight is not a disorder. It is normal. Humans can experience another state of consciousness around their sleeping, which occurs in the brief period before we fall asleep or wake ourselves in the morning. This period can be an extraordinarily creative time for some people. The impressive inventor, Thomas Edison, used this state to hit upon many of his new ideas.
根据一些睡眠研究人员的说法，午夜短暂失眠并不是一种疾病，这是正常的。人类可以在睡眠时体验另一种意识状态，这种状态发生在我们入睡或早上醒来之前的短暂时期。对于某些人来说，这段时期可能是一个极具创造力的时期。令人印象深刻的发明家托马斯·爱迪生利用这种状态激发了他的许多新想法。
Playing with your sleep rhythms can be adventurous, as anxiety may set in. Medical science doesn't help much in this case. It offers us medicines for a full night's continuous sleep, which sounds natural; however, according to Warren's theory, it is really the opposite of what we need.
调节你的睡眠节奏可能很冒险，因为可能产生焦虑。在这种情况下，医学没有多大帮助。它为我们提供了整夜持续睡眠的药物，听起来很自然；然而，根据沃伦的理论，这实际上与我们需要的正好相反。
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