An Amazonian tribe has been discovered that has no concept of time or dates (1).
The Amondawa people of Brazil do not even have words for "time", "week", "month" or "year", said Chris Sinha, of the University of Portsmouth.
He argues that it is the first time scientists have been able to prove (2) time is not a deeply entrenched universal human concept, as previously thought.
According to Professor Sinha we can now say without doubt that there is at least one language and culture (4) which (3) does not have a concept of time as something that can be measured, counted or talked about in the abstract, which doesn’t mean that the Amondawa (6) are "people outside time": they (5) live in a world of events, rather than seeing events as being embedded in time.
There are no words for such concepts as "next week" or "last year", only divisions of day and night and rainy and dry seasons. It was also found nobody in the community has an age. ________, they change their names to reflect their life-stage and position within their society. For example, a little child (11) will give up his or her name to a newborn sibling (12) and take on a new one.
Professor Sinha said: "We have so many metaphors for time and its (7) passing - we think of time (8) as a ’thing’ - we say ’the weekend is nearly gone’, ’she’s coming up to her exams’, ’I haven’t got the time’, and so on, and we think such statements are objective, but they aren’t. We’ve created these metaphors and they have become the way we think. The Amondawa don’t talk like this and don’t think like this, unless they learn another language. For these fortunate people time isn’t money, they aren’t racing against the clock to complete anything, and nobody is discussing next week or next year (10). You could say they (9) enjoy a certain freedom".
(Adaptado de: Daily Mail, 20 mai 2011. Disponível em:
Assinale a alternativa que apresenta a tradução mais adequada para o trecho scientists have been able to prove (2).