Aymara People: Backs to the Future.

We think it's natural to base our perception of time on our body's orientation and locomotion: we place the future ahead of us and the past behind us.

It turns out that this isn't universal: for the Aymara people of South America, time is the other way around - the past is ahead and the future behind!

"Until now, all the studied cultures and languages of the world – from European and Polynesian to Chinese, Japanese, Bantu and so on – have not only characterized time with properties of space, but also have all mapped the future as if it were in front of ego and the past in back. The Aymara case is the first documented to depart from the standard model," said Nunez.

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