Despite the commonly spread opinion of cognitive linguistics that the spatial perception of time is a result of the development of Indo-European thinking, the available empirical material clearly indicates that in this issue we should not speak about the Indo-European heritage, but the cultural continuity (pre-Indo-European → Indo-European). To a large extent this is evidenced by the facts of the ancient pre-Indo-European language of Atlantic Europe - Basque, the relics of which are still present in the South-French and Ibero-Roman areas.