Metaphor, myth, and symbol in the grain of time

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.