研究人员发现，巴西亚马逊丛林中有一个名叫阿莫达瓦的部落，那里的人没有时间概念。在他们的语言中没有“时间”、“星期”、“月”和“年”等词语，只区分白天、黑夜、旱季和雨季。该部落的人们也没有年龄，而是根据每个人所处的生长阶段和在部落中的地位不断变换名字。比如，一个孩子长到一定阶段后就要换一个名字，他原来的名字就由新出生的小孩继续沿用。研究人员表示，这一发现说明时间并不是全球人们通用的一个计时概念；阿莫达瓦部落的人们不像我们这样受时间的负累，他们享受的是自由的生活。

An Amazonian tribe has been discovered that has no concept of time or dates, scientists have said.

An Amazonian tribe has been discovered that has no concept of time or dates, scientists have said.

Professor Chris Sinha, of the University of Portsmouth, led the research which found that the Amondawa people of Brazil do not even have words for "time", "week", "month" or "year".

In his study, published in the journal Language and Cognition, he argues that it is the first time scientists have been able to prove time is not a deeply entrenched universal human concept, as previously thought.

Prof Sinha said: "For the Amondawa, time does not exist in the same way as it does for us. We can now say without doubt that there is at least one language and culture which does not have a concept of time as something that can be measured, counted or talked about in the abstract.

"This doesn't mean that the Amondawa are 'people outside time', but they live in a world of events, rather than seeing events as being embedded in time."

Team members including linguist Wany Sampaio and anthropologist Vera da Silva Sinha, spent eight weeks with the Amondawa researching how their language conveys concepts like "next week" or "last year".

There were no words for such concepts, only divisions of day and night and rainy and dry seasons. They also found nobody in the community had an age. Instead, they change their names to reflect their life stage and position within their society. For example a little child will give up their name to a newborn sibling and take on a new one.

Prof Sinha said: "We have so many metaphors for time and its passing - we think of time 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; they don't even have words for 'week', 'month' or 'year'. You could say they enjoy a certain freedom."

First contacted by the outside world in 1986, the Amondawa continue their traditional way of life, hunting, fishing and growing crops. But now along with modern trappings such as electricity and television, they have gained the Portuguese language, putting their own language under threat of extinction.

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(Agencies)

（中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑）