Between the 29th of February and the 6th of May, the Lagoa Municipal Archive presents the exhibition “Going through the Times / Throughout Time”, by Ron B. Thomson, with calendars from all times and around the world.
The exhibition "Going through times" reveals the importance of timekeeping in everyday life, making known the science of making the Western calendar, the history that preceded it, as well as examples of different calendars that existed or coexist with the more generalized, the Gregorian, and also calendars with different cycles, coming from other regions and cultures.
As Ron B. Thomson says, “The cycle of nature was always recognized – planting, growing, harvesting, resting – and it was always understood that this cycle was being controlled by the sun. When a cycle completes, we automatically move to the next, recognizing it as being the same, though different from the previous one. And so, this concept of years, made up of days, comes to be recorded in a repetitive pattern that we call a calendar. The importance of keeping abreast of changes throughout the year was, as stated, associated with the agricultural cycle, and, quickly, with our religious system. By organizing ourselves into communities, it was easily linked to our civil life, allowing us to function, both in groups and individually, with cohesion and regularity”.
The calendar show recalls, according to Ron B. Thomson, “the success we had in unraveling this complex cycle. This success has been repeated in many ways, in different communities around the world, using different patterns in our lives. In the end, the Western calendar became the world calendar, adopted by each nation to organize not only its international relations but also its internal affairs. The accuracy of this calendar depended on astronomers who managed to describe with ever more precision the movement present in the sky, particularly of the sun, which is the main cycle of our existence, here on earth”.
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