Amazon tribe with no abstract concept of TIME.

[Indian]

An Amazonian tribe has no abstract concept of time, say researchers.

The Amondawa lacks the linguistic structures that relate time and space - as in our idea of, for example, "working through the night".

The study, in Language and Cognition, shows that while the Amondawa recognise events occuring in time, it does not exist as a separate concept.

From BBC.

[Dr. Drake]

That's the headline, but the article itself suggests that they do, just embedded into the langauge in a very unusual way.

'"We're really not saying these are a 'people without time' or 'outside time'," said Chris Sinha, a professor of psychology of language at the University of Portsmouth. "Amondawa people, like any other people, can talk about events and sequences of events," he told BBC News.'

[Bosstone]

But they at least get Newsweek, surely.

[lieu]

Boy, I bet that's the last time the Amondawa show up late for an interview.

[Rachellelogram]

Mexican culture has no concept of time, either, but you don't see me crowing about it.

in b4 whoosh

[Musicat]

BBC? Heh. Margaret Mead was fooled, too.

[janeslogin]

Somewhere, perhaps Slate, someone wrote that we must be in the summer news doldrums because there is yet another store about a tribe with no concept of time.

[An Arky]

In my admittedly limited experience, I've found that pretty much every culture except for northern European and some Asian cultures pay any attention to being on time.

[Farmer Jane]

There's a difference between sequencing of events and 'four years ago'.

I think that there's a knee jerk reaction to this kind of linguistic study because it sounds racist, lingo-centric, or judgmental.

I think that a lack of vocabulary can hurt your ability to build concepts, but it doesn't mean you don't understand the concept of the original vocabulary. I can't imagine any culture that doesn't have some kind of calendar.

[Mangosteen]

Nepal, 1981.

I'm alone staying at a very small two room inn run by two local girls about 18 years of age in the Mt. Everest area. The girls speak conversational English pretty well, but they seem to have little concept of "clock-time".

There is a sign that says "Baths 5 Repees". Seeing how I hadn't showered for 3 weeks, it sounded like a good idea! I had a whole day to kill as I was supposed to stay at the altitude I was at to acclimate before going higher. Yak dung was the only fuel to burn to heat the water because we were at about 13,000' and there weren't any trees around.

I asked the girls how long it would take to heat the water. "An hour?, two hours?" (I wanted to take a hike, but didn't want to be gone too long.), they just looked at each other and didn't seem to know how to respond. "Do you know what I mean by "an hour"?" "No", they replied.

I also wanted to know how long the shower would last. I didn't want to be all soaped up and have the water stop, but they just didn't seem to understand, "How many minutes does the shower last?"

Neither one had been to the capital, Kathmandu and they said they rarely go to the rather large town of Namcha Bazaar which is about a three days walk away. As far as the concept of "time" goes for them, anything beyond, morning, afternoon, evening and night didn't seem to exist.

[Walther Ego]

Ok so people who hang around at Amazon all day long have no sense of time, but how is it different from people who hang around at SDMB?

[Nava]

Originally Posted by Mangosteen

Neither one had been to the capital, Kathmandu and they said they rarely go to the rather large town of Namcha Bazaar which is about a three days walk away. As far as the concept of "time" goes for them, anything beyond, morning, afternoon, evening and night didn't seem to exist.

I've heard it said that's how things used to be for most people before industrialization in general and trains in particular: there might be some local way to mark specific points in the day (such as the bells tolling Angelus to mark noon), but the day was just divided in chunks. But if the train left at 11:53, going to the station "noonish" suddenly wasn't good enough, thus leading to the generalization of watches and to a concept of timekeeping (not of time per se) where the chunks are smaller.



The example from the article is... off for me. I'm not sure whether they picked it specifically because it includes the word "through", which can be used both to speak about time and about space, but in Spanish that same sentence would be "trabajar toda la noche", "work all night" - no "relationship between space and time" there. Mind you, newspaper articles about science where the reporter doesn't understand what he's talking about, therefore can't explain it well, aren't exactly new.

[the lone cashew]

Originally Posted by indian

[i]
An Amazonian tribe has no abstract concept of Time, say researchers.

They probably read Newsweek.

[Indian]

Originally Posted by the lone cashew

They probably read Newsweek.

Yes, see post #3

[the lone cashew]

Bosstone! I'll get you for this!

[Ponch8]

Somewhere in the universe, somebody is probably mocking Earth's humans for having no grasp of the fourth through tenth spatial dimensions.

[YaraMateo]

Originally Posted by Nava

I've heard it said that's how things used to be for most people before industrialization in general and trains in particular: there might be some local way to mark specific points in the day (such as the bells tolling Angelus to mark noon), but the day was just divided in chunks. But if the train left at 11:53, going to the station "noonish" suddenly wasn't good enough, thus leading to the generalization of watches and to a concept of timekeeping (not of time per se) where the chunks are smaller.



The example from the article is... off for me. I'm not sure whether they picked it specifically because it includes the word "through", which can be used both to speak about time and about space, but in Spanish that same sentence would be "trabajar toda la noche", "work all night" - no "relationship between space and time" there. Mind you, newspaper articles about science where the reporter doesn't understand what he's talking about, therefore can't explain it well, aren't exactly new.

I've noticed people have seasonal jobs, tend to be like this in the off season. They don't keep track or even what day of the week it is when they're not working.

[Max Torque]

Yeah, I remember reading once years back about such a thing; supposedly, their language had no way to express "past" or "future". If you wanted to say "he will jump", the closest you could get would be "I expect jumping."

[Freddy the Pig]

Originally Posted by Walther Ego

Ok so people who hang around at Amazon all day long have no sense of time, but how is it different from people who hang around at SDMB?

We're cool with time. We just have no concept of space. For example, I keep hearing that there's some "real world" in space beyond my monitor, but I have no concept of it.

[installLSC]

I remember reading that a couple of Amazonian tribes (the Yancos and Aimores) had no numbers above three. Was this true or were the people investigating them wrong?

[addamms3]

I once had a conversation with a man from deep jungle Guatemala. When I asked him how far it was to the nearest town his reply was: "as far as it takes to weave 3 hats, 4 if you hurry." Incidentally the conversation was in an American jail after he was arrested for illegal entry. I'm still amazed he made it as far as he did.

[Face Intentionally Left Blank]

Originally Posted by addamms3

I once had a conversation with a man from deep jungle Guatemala. When I asked him how far it was to the nearest town his reply was: "as far as it takes to weave 3 hats, 4 if you hurry." Incidentally the conversation was in an American jail after he was arrested for illegal entry. I'm still amazed he made it as far as he did.

It takes longer if you hurry? Clearly they have no concept of time!

[Dr. Drake]

Thank you for the delightful image of a Guatemalan running through the underbrush, hiding from La Migra and frantically weaving hats.

[tdn]

Originally Posted by Mangosteen

Nepal, 1981.

I have no idea what those numbers mean. Are they like a ZIP code?

[UncleRojelio]

Originally Posted by Face Intentionally Left Blank

It takes longer if you hurry? Clearly they have no concept of time!

I read it as if the man thought that getting the hats made was more important than the traveling. An enlightening thought for a time-obsessed person such as myself.

[Indistinguishable]

Originally Posted by Max Torque

Yeah, I remember reading once years back about such a thing; supposedly, their language had no way to express "past" or "future". If you wanted to say "he will jump", the closest you could get would be "I expect jumping."

Not so different from expressing "He will jump" using an auxiliary verb with the literal etymological meaning of "He wishes(/desires/intends) to jump", is it? English has no future tense either...

[Rigamarole]

Originally Posted by Face Intentionally Left Blank

It takes longer if you hurry? Clearly they have no concept of time!

That threw me for a second too, but it could mean that the hurrying applies to the hat-making and not to the travelling (although that would be a slightly weird way of expressing it). So if you're a fast weaver you could get 4 done in that time instead of 3.

[Boyo Jim]

If they breed the tribe with no concept of time to the tribe with no concept of space, they will have children without any limiting concepts of space-time, who will be be able to go anywhere and any time at any moment.

There's a catch. If you explain to them where and when you want them to go, you've contaminated their minds and they can't do it.

[Novelty Bobble]

Now I'm pretty sure that these guys had been contacted briefly before.
Sometime in the 60's for about 20 minutes?

I believe that 's the case but of course when they were asked they just looked blankly and shrugged.

[UncleRojelio]

Originally Posted by Rigamarole

That threw me for a second too, but it could mean that the hurrying applies to the hat-making and not to the travelling (although that would be a slightly weird way of expressing it). So if you're a fast weaver you could get 4 done in that time instead of 3.

It absolutely means that the hurrying applies to the hat making. Conversely, it means that the weaver has no concept of getting to the next town in a specific amount of time. It takes as long as it takes and making hats is more important than getting there. I wish I could be more like the weaver. My car has no 'stop and smell the roses' gear.

[Chessic Sense]

Originally Posted by Max Torque

Yeah, I remember reading once years back about such a thing; supposedly, their language had no way to express "past" or "future". If you wanted to say "he will jump", the closest you could get would be "I expect jumping."

Lots of languages don't inflect for time. Japanese, for example. They express time by adding auxiliary words like "Yesterday" or "In one month". So they'd literally say something like "Three weeks ago, I jump. And tomorrow, I jump." If true, you're just saying that they have a low degree of fusion. Nothing weird about that.

[Indistinguishable]

Originally Posted by Chessic Sense

Lots of languages don't inflect for time. Japanese, for example.

Or English.

[Lukeinva]

Originally Posted by rachelellogram

Mexican culture has no concept of time, either, but you don't see me crowing about it.

in b4 whoosh

Sure they do! A hora and mañana.

[Dr. Drake]

Originally Posted by Indistinguishable

Or English.

English does inflect for time, just not in every tense and not in every verb.

I (have) woven hats = past₁
I wove hats = past₂.
I (Ø/will) weave hats = present / future.

[Indistinguishable]

Whoops, sorry. I had my brain still stuck on reading "inflect for time" as meaning "inflect to indicate future time" specifically, which English lacks. English of course has past vs. present tense inflections (as well as the participles used in indicating progressive and perfect aspects), as you note.