Read related article here
Last month, archaeologist were caught by surprise when they found a 100 year old tiny swiss watch in an ancient tomb that was sealed more than 400 years ago. They believed they were the first to visit the Ming dynasty grave in Shangsi, southern China, since its occupant's funeral. This discover occurred while the archaeologists were filming a documentary with two journalists from Shangsi town.
But inside they uncovered a distinctly tonneau-shaped miniature watch in the shape of a ring marked 'Swiss' thought to be just a century old. The mysterious timepiece was encrusted in mud and rock and had stopped at 10:06. Watches were not around at the time of the Ming Dynasty and Switzerland did not even exist as a country, an expert pointed out.
"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.
"We picked up the object, and found it was a ring. After removing the covering soil and examining it further, we were shocked to see it was a watch," he added. The Ming Dynasty - or the Empire of the Great Ming - was the was ruling dynasty in China from 1368 to 1644.
The People's Daily reported the watch had stopped at 10:06 am, and the word "swiss" was engraved on the back.
Now there are several things I found weird about this story:
a) The watch was found in a undisturbed 400 year old tomb.
b) The watch is tonnneau-shaped. Tonneau shaped watches was unveiled by Cartier in 1906
c) The watch is extremely slim and if the watch is 100 years old its thin case can be compared to Concord's Delirium 1 which was unveiled in the 1979 - the flattest analog watch ever made at under 2mm.
d) The tiny size of the watch. It seems a ring watch but the clasp seems so small. It could have been a cuff link which was quite popular at one time.
e) The watch has the words "Swiss" on it rather than "Swiss Made"; however, there were many fakes made in that time so the word "Swiss" meant little.
f) The news articles all claimed the watch stopped at 10:06 AM. Why AM? It does not seem to be a 24 hour watch. Why not PM.?
So now I have asked loads of questions, I have a few scenarios. Not all are mine some I picked up from web pages, black back round with stars twinkling about them ,writing about time traveling objects and tiny holes in time and space whereby objects slip through into other dimension. I am sure you can come up with your own too. Please share!
a) This 400 year old tomb had previous visitors, and one such visitor was wearing a tiny ring watch on her baby finger.
b) This watch is not real but rather an advertisement gimmick used to promote the new torneau shape. This watch could have been placed on a store front mannequin. In the early 1900's there was no T.V or Internet to announce new styles, companies had to be inventive like creating small gimmicky models of their products.
c) This watch is actually a time traveler that fell through a doorway in the early 1900's and arrived 400 years earlier to rest beside a tomb.
d) This whole thing is a hoax, a clever marketing ploy for something or other.
Remember the You-Tube Cellphone popping popcorn sensation?
Well I suppose only time will tell!
