Özet:

Abstract Keeping in mind that avarage human life ends up in 75 years; 25 years of this life time period, which can not be underestimated, is being spend during asleep. For that reason, since man is being able to produce thoughts about himself, sleep was one of the subjects that has been wished to be discovered. The answers to the questions: “why are we sleeping?, what is exactly happening during sleep?, what makes sleep different from being awake?” were under the influence of mysticism and religious beliefs, till systematical doubt had came into forefront with Descartes, in 17th century. In Ancient Egypt sleep disorders and dream analysis, in ancient Greece the relationship between sleep and being in a healty state and in ancient China the effort of explaining sleep-wakefullness by ying-yang theory, those all of them stand out in relief. Moreover, all these different cultures and monotheistic religions correlate being wakefullnes with life and sleep with death. The correlation of sleep with death has caused perception of sleep as an inactive state, for a long time of period. The momentum of sleep research since 17th century and the discovery of REM sleep and basic sleep cycle enabled to be understood that mysticism about sleep has no basis. In this study, it is been aimed to point out the human perception of sleep in a chronological time line and to be able to comment on today’s sleep research situation, by the help of written historical records.

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