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Archaeologists in China have found a Swiss watch in a 400-year old tomb. According to archaeologists, the time was stopped at 10:06 a.m. On the back of the watch was engraved the word “Swiss.”
Chinese archaeologists say they do not know what happened since they believe the tomb had been undisturbed since it was created during the Ming dynasty 400 years ago.
So, what happened? Did a Swiss archaeologist travel back in time and left the watch there as a souvenir? Probably not.
The best explanation for this mystery is that someone had entered the tomb in the past. The discovery of this watch can teach us an important lesson about archaeology: archaeologists must be very careful in their work and avoid contamination of an archaeological site. Contamination can affect the dating of the site and can bring suspicion on the authenticity of what is found at the site.
Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary
Tags: Archaeology
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Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament 
>I am curious as to whether or not tests will be performed on this watch to determine the time period that it was manufactured. Has there been any other signs of disturbance of this site that confirms that this tomb has already been explored?
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>Sammy,From what I read, Chinese archaeologists do not know how to explain the presence of the watch. I am sure they will do some kind of test to find out how old the watch is. The Chinese authorities say that the tomb had not been opened.If I hear anything more about this situation, I will write another post.Thank you for visiting my blog.Claude Mariottini
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>An interesting sentence in the news report says:”When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, a piece of rock suddenly dropped off and hit the ground with a metallic sound,” said Jiang Yanyu, former curator of the Guangxi Autonomous Region Museum.”. . .hit the ground with a metallic sound.”There would be no discernable difference in sound between a rock and a ring/watch hitting a dirt floor. It would have had to hit something much harder than dirt–like a stone floor–to make a detectable difference.Maybe the tomb did have a stone floor but their using the word ‘ground’ instead of ‘floor’ would indicate otherwise.I’m leaning toward a hoax rather than contamination and hope there is an update of some sort.
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>The ‘piece of rock’ that fell was the ring watch. That was clear in the news report but not in my post above. Just wanted to make sure I didn’t create any confusion.
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>What if it is true? What if time traveling will be possible in future?
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>That would be great. But if that’s the case then the ring watch was left accidently or on purpose. If accidently, then why is a time traveler carrying what for him would be an antique? If on purpose why leave an antique? Is he just messing with us?There’ve been a lot of quirky, pseudo-science stories coming out of China in the last few years. I think this is just one of them.Anonymous Dave
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>are there any news about this discovery? nay testings on that watch? any kind of news about it?cheers 🙂
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>Did it occur to anyone that maybe the watch was a gift to the guy buried in the tomb presented to him during his lifetime? Maybe!I doubt anyone will hear much more about this story, the scholars will do their level best to bury this story and make sure everybody forgets about it. Cant have this sort of thing, screwing up the paradigm, now can we?
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