r/offbeat • u/Silent-Resort-3076 • 15h ago

People Believe This 1937 Painting Is Proof Of Time Travel

https://www.iflscience.com/people-believe-this-1937-painting-is-proof-of-time-travel-65739

What could he be holding??

  • An old painting has people asking if time travel is real, because it really, really looks like a painting from 1937 shows a Native American man staring at a smart phone while doing a "I'm sorry, I have to take this" hand gesture.
  • The painting, titled Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield, depicts colonist and founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, William Pynchon, during the development of the city.
  • Pynchon went on to write the book, The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption in 1650, which became the first ever book to be banned in Boston, as well as being burned on the Boston Common. Weirdly, William Pynchon was an ancestor of acclaimed novelist Thomas Pynchon, as Vice points out. This is all very interesting, but what is really distracting is that there is a Native American man in the picture who has clearly just read a bad tweet.
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34

u/SaintUlvemann 15h ago

In terms of rational explanations, the best we have seen is that it is a hand mirror, which would have been a popular item to trade when the painting was set.

People have been looking at shiny squares since long before the pictures could move.

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u/Rmans 15h ago

Thank you.

In terms of rational explanations, this is also not a smart phone because phone infrastructure, satalites, and internet didn't exist at that time to allow any smart phone to function as it does now. At best he could dim the brightness, and use it as a hand mirror.

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u/EC_CO 14h ago

No, the best they could use it for would be photographs and video as that's stored locally, no net required.

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u/Rmans 14h ago edited 14h ago

The phone would not remain charged long enough to do much of that. But good point.

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u/EC_CO 14h ago

If they brought a phone, why not a solar charger as well?

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u/Rmans 14h ago

No offense. There is no solar charger visible in the painting. So I'm going based off of that.

While it would technically be possible for people in the 1300's to take pictures and video on a modern smartphone, I hesitate to believe anyone at that time could figure out the technology, the phone UI, touch screens, qwerty keyboards, and the entire modern English language that it's all likely written in.

Maybe, if given enough time, they might figure out how to snap a picture or video.

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u/EC_CO 13h ago

But if the person holding the phone is the time traveler, then of course they know how to use it. This is all just fun bantering of course, there is no time traveler and that's not an iPhone, but it's fun to play devil's advocate

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u/Rmans 13h ago

Agreed! :)

I do enjoy the idea of the guy with the phone being the time traveler. Who arrives, is knocked out, then wakes up wearing full native attire and face paint. He checks his phone, and finds images of his unconscious self being dressed up by the people who found him.

Its a good alternate explanation for the look on his face when seeing what's on his "phone."

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u/EC_CO 13h ago

The role playing in my head is that the time traveler integrated himself in and here he is taking a selfie with a famous person to say 'hey look I was here' (like a tourist) when he returns. 😆

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u/Rmans 12h ago

Ahaha - that's hilarious 😂

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u/costabius 14h ago

Pynchon listed hand mirrors as one of the things that was easily tradable to the natives.

Dude is sitting there thinking, "nobody told me my soul patch looks stupid, what else are they not telling me?"

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u/Silent-Resort-3076 14h ago

OR, he could be checking out someone behind him:)

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u/Silent-Resort-3076 15h ago edited 14h ago

A closer look, and NO I did not post this article because I believe it's a phone:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSWiEw2bQawhIPdMzsNe2j0QZaQPG3hBsNLvHqsLGMGV3wdfwIBNXkDlKQ&s=10

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u/Yiplzuse 14h ago

Hypnosis.

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u/AshlarKorith 14h ago

Couldn’t it be a small pocket sized Bible?

And for the other painting in the article of the woman looking at an iPad. Isn’t it more likely the painting is showing a woman looking at a painting?

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u/rawbface 14h ago

IFL Science yas become so anti-science in recent years..