Pormpuraawans arrange time from east to west. Europeans left to right. Arabs right to left.
New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world.
For example, in Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, the indigenous languages don't use terms like left and right. Instead, everything is talked about in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), which means you say things like, There's an ant on your southwest leg.
Researchers gave Pormpuraawans sets of pictures that showed temporal progressions (for example, pictures of a man at different ages, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the correct temporal order.
“Pormpuraawans, we found, arranged time from east to west. That is, seated facing south, time went left to right. When facing north, right to left. When facing east, toward the body, and so on. Of course, we never told any of our participants which direction they faced. The Pormpuraawans not only knew that already, but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.”
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