In:Thinking and Speaking About Time: A cognitive linguistic approach
Edited by Rita Brdar-Szabó and Mario Brdar
[Human Cognitive Processing 81] 2026
► pp. 16–38
Chapter 1Metaphor, myth, and symbol in the grain of time
Published online: 27 January 2026
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.81.01sin
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.81.01sin
Abstract
This chapter explores the social and scientific
construction of spatialized concepts of time in evolutionary
theories from the late 18th century onwards. It analyzes the
“phylocultural complex” in which linear time is projected onto
theories of social evolution, and non-western peoples are
represented as “backward,” situating these in European colonialism.
It critically evaluates deterministic narratives of “agriculture as
destiny,” outlining contemporary counter-narratives of the “return
of coevalness” in relation to co-evolutionary theories of hominin
evolution and the social systems of historic human societies. The
chapter concludes by summarizing the evidence for a globalization of
time in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, set in train by the
European conquest of the Americas and ushering in the Anthropocene
epoch.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Linear time and progress
- 3.Evolution, culture and the return of coevalness
- 4.Looking back and looking forward in the Anthropocene epoch
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