This sounds like it’s a hoax, but, incredibly, c’est vrai!
In Revolutionary France, the French countryside used to shut down for half the year. When the cold weather came whole towns and villages would effectively hibernate, spending all their time sleeping indoors for months on end.
The same tradition operated in more cold climes, too. In the Pskov region in northwestern Russia, peasants would sleep for 6 months of the year, but the French peasants adopted the tradition in their more moderate zones.
“the human beings settled in with their cows and pigs. They lowered their metabolic rate to prevent hunger from exhausting supplies”
Source: New York Times
