Entertainment
Man Appears To Hold Something Like A Smartphone In Ancient Painting
The picture painted in 1937 by the late Italian semi-abstract painter Umberto Romano,
shows a scene of a pre-Revolutionary War meet between two prominent New England tribes, the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc, and English settlers at the village of Agawam where Massachusetts is today, this took place about 200 years before electricity was invented.
Titled “Mr Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield” commentators have discussed what the black, rectangular object the man in the lower right is looking at. Could he be scrolling through and staring at a smartphone (laugh out loud), seemingly oblivious to all those around him.
A commentator on the picture wrote: “It’s not clear exactly who this man is, but he might as well be popping off a selfie or thumbing through his news feed.
“He seems to gaze into the handheld device in such a way that renders all-too-familiar today, as if he’s just read a bad tweet or recoiling from a Trump-related push notification from the Times.
“He would almost look unremarkable, if only he and the world around him existed at any point in the past decade.”
Conspiracy theory website Ancient Code said in a discussion about the painting: “Could this parting be evidence of time travel?
“According to a scene drawn on a painting, a native American man seems to stare at an artefact that according to some is eerily similar to a modern-day smartphone.
“In fact, in the painting created in 1937, the native American man holds the ‘device’ while staring at it, and according to many, its as if he’s actually holding a smartphone.”
However, historians have dismissed the suggestion as nonsense.