Apparently, sleeping all night isn’t a modern industrial invention:

The volunteers also slept continuously. They would toss and turn like everyone does, but they almost never woke up for a concerted window in the middle of the night. This contradicts a growing idea, popularized by historian Roger Ekirch, that sleeping in eight-hour chunks is a modern affectation.

Ekirch combed through centuries of Western literature and documents to show that Europeans used to sleep in two segments, separated by an hour or two of wakefulness. Siegel doesn’t dispute Ekirch’s analysis; he just thinks that the old two-block pattern was preceded by an even older single-block one. “The two-sleep pattern was probably due to humans migrating so far from the equator that they had long dark periods,” he says. “The long nights caused this pathological sleep pattern and the advent of electric lights and heating restored the primal one.”

Interesting. Also some good advice for better sleep.

Standing desks don’t extend lifespan?

I don’t know, it still seems like you’ll expend more energy by standing than sitting. But now I don’t feel as bad that I’ve never gotten around to getting/making one.