A different view of time
In almost every language studied, from English to Japanese to Bantu, time is conceptualized as a forward motion. The future lies ahead, and the past is something we leave behind. The Aymara language, spoken by over half a million people in Peru, primarily in the Puno region around Lake Titicaca, reverses this arrangement. For Aymara speakers, the past is in front, and the future is behind. This is not a figure of speech; it's a cognitive model reflected in both language and gesture.
The core of this concept is tied to the idea of sight. The past consists of events that are known and have been "seen." Therefore, it is positioned in front of the speaker. The future, being unknown and unseen, is located at one's back. This is expressed directly in the vocabulary. The Aymara word for past, nayra, also means "eye," "sight," or "front." The word for future, qhipa, translates to "back" or "behind." So, a future day might be called a qhipa uru, which literally means "back day." This linguistic framework makes Aymara one of the only languages known to possess this "past is front" conceptual metaphor.
Gestures that point to the past
The definitive evidence for this unique temporal view came from a 2006 study by cognitive scientists Rafael E. Núñez and Eve Sweetser. They analyzed the words but also the spontaneous gestures of Aymara speakers. During approximately 20 hours of recorded conversations, they observed a consistent pattern. When speaking of past events, such as ancient times, speakers would gesture forward, sweeping their hands out in front of their bodies. When discussing the future, they would thumb or wave over their shoulder, indicating the space behind them.
This gestural evidence confirmed that the "future is behind" concept is a fundamental part of Aymara thought. This contrasts with the "moving-ego" metaphor common in other languages, where we see ourselves as advancing into the future. The Aymara model appears more static, with a strong emphasis on whether an event has been personally witnessed. In fact, the Aymara language requires speakers to specify through grammatical suffixes whether they have firsthand knowledge of an event they are describing. This focus on the seen versus the unseen explains why the past—the known world—lies ahead.