3 - Time

Summary

One of the most unique features of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican thought, in comparison to that of other parts of the world, is its development of and the centrality of particular conceptions of time, the creation of time, and the role of time. In Mesoamerican thought, time plays a crucial role in the continual creation or maintenance of the cosmos. It is an organizational principle and structure, interconnected with other aspects of the world and containing features of non-temporal aspects of the world. We can determine that time has a key significance in much of Mesoamerican thought not just because many of the textual sources document time and its features, but because time is continually linked with correlated features of reality, and described to be a fundamental feature of objects and events in the world, as we will see in this chapter. Time clearly has a central role to play in the philosophical thought of Mesoamerica, though just how it plays this role is a matter of debate among scholars, and as we will also see, differs between and within traditions.