Abstract

FLORESCANO, Enrique. The vision of the cosmos of today's Indians. Desacatos [online]. 2000, n.5, pp.15-29. ISSN 2448-5144.

The author offers a synthesis of the vision of the world of contemporary indians, a subject that became to them an obsession: the origin of the cosmos (cosmogony), the composition and distribution of the universe (cosmography), the laws that keep the cosmos in equilibrium (cosmology) and the purpose of human beings on Earth (history). These subjects wove together the different ideas that indian groups had on the formation of the world and the destiny of man, and offers a review of the procedures they put together to transmit that legacy to their descendants. This means that the cosmovision of today's Indians is also a privileged way to understand the mechanisms they use to reconstruct and transmit the past. But before undertaking such research the author analyzes their vision of the cosmos and their ideas about the formation and organization of the universe.