Amazon Tribe Lacks Abstract Notion of Time

Today's North American edition of the BBC published a fascinating article about an Amazon tribe that lacks the concept of time. The piece summarized scientific findings first printed in the academic journal Language and Cognition.

Before you dust off your Tarzan books, keep in mind the Amandowa tribe can clearly define or articulate events snared in time. However, they don't have the linguistic structures "that relate time and space," according to the BBC. The Amandowans, though, pick up the more complex ways of relating to time rather quickly once they're exposed to it.

One novelty in the story is the Amandowans themselves. They only met their first humans from beyond the borders of their area in the 1990s. How the scientists found the Amandowans was not discussed in the article.

The illustration shows Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher who developed the idea of "natural Man" whom, in some ways, the Amandowans resemble.