According to CBC News (h.t. to Christine at Mirabilis) the Andean "Aymara people have a reversed concept of time". The story says they put "the past ahead and the future behind". The discussion of culture and gestures is fascinating stuff. My gripe though stems already from the second paragraph:
Until now, all studied cultures and languages in the world mapped the future in front and the past in back, said Rafael Nunez, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego.It is commonplace in discussion of Māori culture and language to say things like:
Quoted from maori.org.nz
article on "tikanga" = custom, tradition etc.
All Tikanga stems from this time. I nga wa o mua translates as from the times of front but this phrase means the past. Therefore the past is always in front of us, there for guidance and the future is behind us, as very few can see the future and what it has in store for us.So, unless I've misunderstood Prof. Rafael Nunez should scale back his claims...
¶ 7:31 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
Terry Pratchett has a nice one-liner in one of the Discworld books that asks around a similar idea:
Since we can see the past but not the future, are we walking backwards?
Something silly for Friday afternoon.
By 
Craig (mars-hill), at
June 23, 2006 11:31 PM
Yes, the great and hillarious Terry Prachett is just full of thought provoking one-liners. Maybe one day he'll rival Oscar Wilde. (Who's writing has been on my mind as I was looking to stuff I could enjoy reading for LibriVox, and exploring Oscar Wilde, shame Terry Prachett's not public domain, or I could "do" some of his ;-)
By Tim, at
June 24, 2006 7:05 AM
