- Ok, maybe your grandparents probably slept like you. And your great, great-grandparents. But once you go back before the 1800s, sleep starts to look a lot different. Your ancestors slept in a way that modern sleepers would find bizarre – they slept twice. And so can you.
you don't know the half of it.The same mass dormancy was practiced in other chilly parts. In 1900, The British Medical Journal reported that peasants of the Pskov region in northwestern Russia “adopt the economical expedient” of spending one-half of the year in sleep: “At the first fall of snow the whole family gathers round the stove, lies down, ceases to wrestle with the problems of human existence, and quietly goes to sleep. Once a day every one wakes up to eat a piece of hard bread. ... The members of the family take it in turn to watch and keep the fire alight. After six months of this reposeful existence the family wakes up, shakes itself” and “goes out to see if the grass is growing.”
Wild. Would you recommend the book? The author is one of the primary architects of the Cold War. I had no idea he went through a "Jack London" phase.
Yes. Absolutely. But this Kennan is that Kennan's cousin. George was involved in Russian politics a bit too. I only read it because a random dude tried to sell me an early print of it in a Detroit basement for $100. I didn't buy the print, but the title stuck in my head and I picked it up at Powell's a couple of years later. It's a pretty unique moment to record: "Find a path for our telegraph cable across Siberia just in case the second transatlantic one fails." It reads a bit like Twain, but Kennan wasn't as witty.