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I have a theory

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I believe people are neither diurnal nor nocturnal. I think we are designed for dawn and dusk. We are meant to sleep during the hottest part of the day and when we don't we get sleepy around 3pm. I think the average person is designed to get up at dawn, scavenge until it gets too hot, head back to the cave for a nap, scavenge some more at dusk, then meet back at the fire to cook whatever they found and listen to the shaman tell stories.

My evidence for this is the fact that our eyes are pretty much useless in the pitch dark and the bright sunlight is too bright for them (if we were meant to run around in the brightest sunlight we wouldn't need or want sunglasses nor would we squint). We find sunrises and sunsets universally appealing. Almost everyone has a story-telling machine that flickers like a fire that they sit in front of in the evening (and studies have shown that watching TV actually triggers something in us that relaxes us).

I also believe there is a certain subset of the population that is not designed for the mornings at all. They are the shamans and the "night watch". They are designed to get up *at* the hottest point of the day to keep and keep an eye on the people who are sleeping, stay in the camp while people are doing the evening foraging and get the fire started. They are the ones telling the stories, tending the fire and keeping watch until dawn when the others start getting up.

I think creative people in general fall into the latter category. It's why we prefer to sleep until noon, prefer to spend out afternoons making up things to play "show and tell" with around the fire at night, and why we prefer to spend our nights dancing in the electric bonfire simulations called nightclubs.

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Oringinal post: http://mbarrick.livejournal.com/102246.html