Aymara time

A friend shared this link with me on how the Aymara people of South America perceive time.

They see the past in front of themselves, because it is known and they can see it; and the future behind them, because it has not yet happened and they know and can see nothing of it. I found this concept fascinating. Some of the elder Aymarans, so the article reports, refuse to even discuss the future, because nothing sensible can be said about it.

The interesting thing is, the article also points out ambiguities of direction of time in the English language too - where we might say that we have arrived ahead of time (that is, earlier than we expected), where it kind of sounds like time is somehow moving backwards and we see ourselves as moving through time. Similarly with 'the meeting was moved forward a day from Wednesday'. Grammatically, it appears to be correct to understand this as Tuesday - a day ahead of time; or Thursday, where the meeting itself is moved forwards into the future by a day.

It's great to know that it's not just me that gets confused by the direction of time. I really think we should just give up on this linear concept anyway. It's just too confusing!

Here's the link again, if you didn't notice it earlier on the page: Aymara perception of time