.png)
Researchers’ discovery of a Swiss watch in China while filming a documentary in 2008 came as a big surprise. Not only was it as small as a ring, but it also came from a tomb from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).
“When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, suddenly a piece of rock dropped off and hit the ground with metallic sound,” said Jiang Yanyu, former curator of the Guangxi Museum, according to the Daily Mail. “After removing the covering soil and examining it further, we were shocked to see it was a watch.”
Although the watch doesn’t appear functional because of its small size, it is scaled perfectly proportional to a regular-sized modern one. It shows the time of 10:06 and has the word “Swiss” etched on its rusty backside.
“Watches weren’t around in the Ming dynasty and Switzerland as a country didn’t even exist then,” an archaeologist said in an Austrian Times article.
The tomb in which the watch was found, located in Shangsi, Southern China, is believed to have been sealed more than 400 years ago and not been visited since the funeral in the Ming dynasty, but researchers estimated that the watch was only 100 years old.
While the timepiece can be categorized as a so-called Oopart, it presents itself in a distinct and radical way. An Oopart, or out-of-place artifact, is an object from ancient times with features impossible for that time period, such as technology level. While conventional Ooparts seem to be technological artifacts made by ancient races, the Swiss watch leads to the speculation that there was contact between a time traveler from the last century and people from the Ming dynasty.
The absence of explanation has led many to imagine that a modern time traveler left an offering to a Ming whom he might have taken a liking to during his stay long ago. Or, maybe he threw his memento from the future in the mud when it stopped running at 10:06, the exact time the watch’s hands were pointing at four centuries later.
