A holiday from history

After all this history, a word on some people who just don't bother with it. The culture of the Pirahã tribe in the Amazon rainforest is so unconcerned with the past or future that for a long time their language was believed not to have tenses. There is some debate on which of these phenomena - that they don't have any history, or that they don't talk about it - is the cause and which is the effect. Cause and effect is also something they have difficulty expressing, because their language doesn't really have subordinate clauses.
Another thing they don't have is words for left and right: your left hand is your upriver hand or your downriver hand, depending on which way you are facing.

The best non-academic read about the Pirahã, (short of an actual book, obviously) is probably this New Yorker essay.


History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet