Lithien wrote:
>The Maya perceived and lived the mysteries posed by a universe whose deepest
>level is time. For centuries they cultivated their obsession and it colored
>their reality. i'm wondering, thiago, if there is any correlation with any
>of the Brazilian tribes you mention? what is their concept of time?
Brazilian indians have a much more simpler culture (if that term can be used for defining something as complex as culture) than the mayas, aztecs, incas or other societies like those.
Most of them actually live in stage very near early hunting and gathering, take one example, for instance the Arawete' tribe: "Social and economic life of the Arawete' thrives to a binary pace: forest and village, hunting and farming, rain and drought, scattering and concentrating." (1). This is also the way their notion of time is organized, it is not even close to the maya concept, but a much more down to the ground, practical and simple way of looking at the thing. The tribe knows the times of the year by direct experience, it doesn't have a calendar or some way of marking time, only a tradition and natural cycle: "At the first rainfall in November and December, cornfields are sown. As each family completes sowing, they abandon the village for the field, where they remain until the corn is about to he harvested - approximately three months. Men hunt, catch tortoises, harvest honey; women pick Brazilian nuts, babassu nuts, grubs, fruits, roast whatever little corn was left over from the previous crop
which they brought along with them. This scattering stage is called awacï mo-tiara, "to make corn ripen"- they claim that is they do not go to the forest, corn will wilt and die.".
Not only in this aspect brazilian tribes are different to pre-colombian and other south american cultures, but in almost everything. If you want more info on this you can go to http://www.socioambiental.org/povind/english/index.htm, it's a very good site on brazilian indigenous people mantained by a group of anthropologsts and sociologists.
(1) All the quotes from : Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, "Arawete', Povo do Ipixuna", CEDI/ISA, 1992.
[]'s
thiago
homepage - http://www.moq.org
queries - mailto:moq@moq.org
unsubscribe - mailto:majordomo@moq.org with UNSUBSCRIBE MOQ_DISCUSS in
body of email
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:49 BST