ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connection between history and time. The very idea of time, its relationship to human history and our understanding of it as either circular, coming back on itself, linear where it moves inextricably forward or as existing in isolated pockets of experience, differs within and across cultures. To live in any modern Western society is to be a narrative junkie. Understandings of the passing of time are dependent upon social factors such as age and gender as well as culture. Educationalists and psychologists have suggested, for example, that children understand the passing of time in wholly different ways from adults. Divisions between pre-industrial and industrial approaches to time and history are profound. Pre-industrial societies or pre-literate societies had no idea of time running either forwards or backwards. Sociologists and anthropologists have revealed something of the comprehension of time in different parts of the world.
