Anthropology of Dreams

Recent research suggests that sleep patterns vary significantly across human cultures. The most striking differences are between societies that have plentiful artificial light and ones that do not. Cultures without artificial light have more broken-up sleep patterns. This is called polyphasic sleep or segmented sleep and has led to expressions such as "first sleep," "watch," and "second sleep" which appear in literature from all over the world.

Some cultures have fragmented sleep patterns in which people sleep at all times of the day, and for shorter periods at night. For example, many Mediterranean and Latin American cultures have a siesta, in which people sleep for some time in the afternoon. In many nomadic or hunter-gatherer societies people sleep on and off  throughout the day or night depending on what is happening.

Sleep disorders plague millions of Americans. Western treatments focus on medications, routine setting and other tactic, which in some cases can be highly effective. However, recently, anthropologists have looked at sleep from an evolutionary perspective to see whether our modern approach to sleep is aligned with our biology and the answer is a resounding number. Pre-industrial people slept in ways that are totally different from our modern sleep habits and this difference lies at the root of all modern sleep disorders. One of the leading proponents of the new anthropology of sleep is Carol M. Worthman of Emory University in Atlanta. Worthman notes that clinical sleep research to date needs to be reassessed because few people have actually taken the time or effort to look at how people sleep in natural environments in contrast to the novel environments of the sleep lab or the bedroom of today.

Co-Sleeping and SIDS

Throughout the evolution of mankind, human beings have slept clustered together with friends, animals, parents and children. In traditional societies, according to Worthman, communal sleep is considered safer since there is always someone there to help in case of an emergency. In these societies people find that group sleeping reduces the risk of spirit loss, which is especially common when a person dreams.

Recently, studies have shown that this type of sleeping during ancient times, called co-sleeping which is directly in contrast to modern-day solitary sleeping patterns in today’s society, has real physiological benefits. James McKenna of the University of Notre Dame reports that babies in many countries outside the United States sleep next to or in the same room as their parents. He notes that infants who sleep alone slip into abnormal patterns of very deep sleep which prevents them from waking during an episode of apnea. This is due to the baby's less developed brain and resulting reduced control over automatic brainstem-initiated breaths versus controlled neocortical-driven breaths. Infants do not develop the ability to easily navigate types of breathing until they are at least three to four months old and are unable to consolidate periods of sleep. They also don't distinguish between day and night and spend more time in REM sleep than adults do.

Babies sleeping with their mothers react to her movements triggering more sleep stage changes and breathing transitions than when they sleep alone. Mothers awake babies with movement and touch when they experience apnea which is the main way co-sleeping prevents Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Our current model for healthy sleeping is based on a solitary sleeping style, which is against our evolutionary background and is the product of our cultural drive for individualism. In the recent evolutionary past even brief separations of the infant from the parent could mean certain death.

Other anthropologists make similar observations about sleeping locations. Most people today around the world live in one-room dwellings where all activities take place and multiple room dwellings first occurred less than 200 years ago. Anthropologist John Whiting found that in 50% of 136 societies (mostly polygamous) mother and child sleep together, with the father in another place. In 16% the baby sleeps with both mother and father. In cold climates, where winter temperature falls below 50 degrees, men and women sleep together as couples but have separate sleeping arrangements where the climate is warmer. In most cultures babies sleep with an adult while older children sleep with other siblings. It is only in industrialized Western societies such as those in North America and some parts of Europe that sleep has become a private affair.

According to another study, in 67% of 186 cultures around the world children sleep in the company of others, either in the same bed or in a bed in the same room, and in none of the 186 cultures do children sleep by themselves before age one.

In yet another study of 172 societies all infants co-sleep at night even if it is only for a few hours. Anthropologist Gilda Morelli noted that among Mayan Indians in Guatemala all babies sleep with their mothers for the first year and feeding is easier since the mothers just turn over and expose a breast when the baby cries from hunger. She contrasts this to the US where most parents complain of having to stay awake for night-time feedings. In addition, she notes that American parents use lullabies, stories, special clothing, bathing, and toys to help their babies fall asleep without them being there when the babies are alseep, whereas Mayan parents simply let their babies fall asleep when they do.  US health professionals often tell parents that sleeping alone is "safer for the baby." Among immigrants to England and the US co-sleeping is one of the last traditions to be abandoned. In the US Hispanics, African-Americans and Appalachians (a long-term population that is resistant to social change) co-sleep with their babies more often than whites who co-sleep primarily when babies are perceived to have sleeping problems.

a. compression of infant by parent (overlaying/suffocation)
b. covering of external airways by bedding (suffocation/rebreathing),
c. enclosure of infant's head with bedding (overheating).

What was concluded during another study was that for normal healthy infants bedsharing may be associated with slight increase in average temperature associated with a greater proportion of REM sleep, more frequent covering (and uncovering) of head and external airways, and the rare possibility of compression by a parental limb - when compared to cot-sleeping by-the-bed - but none of these events appeared to have adverse consequences for the infants concerned.

Excerpts taken from this article are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. They use material from Wikipedia topics "Lucid Dream" and/or "Sleep".