Complete and Utter Zebu

ARCHAEOLOGISTS CLAIM TO FIND SWISS WATCH IN TOMB UNTOUCHED FOR 400 YEARS

Picture the scene. A Ming Dynasty tomb in Guangxi in southern China, undisturbed since between 1368 and 1644. A pair of archaeologists are working in utterly virgin territory, alone other than for a pair of documentary-makers.

The People’s Daily reported what happened next. According to Jiang Yanyu, the ex-head of the Guangxi Museum: “When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, suddenly a piece of rock dropped off and hit the ground with a metallic sound. 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.”

The watch was engraved “Swiss” on the reverse and was stopped at 10:06. The archaeologists were so perplexed that they have asked Beijing experts for help. What sort of help? Archaeological or psychiatric?

The story was picked up by a surprising number of papers and not just The Daily Mail looking for another in its beloved vein of “Hitler found the Lost Ark of the Covenant”. That paper kindly explained to its more historically-challenged readers that, “watches were not around not around at the time of the Ming Dynasty and Switzerland did not even exist as a country”, attributing such insightful detail to “an expert”.

The Chinese were, of course, scientific wizards who invented many wonderful things while those in the West were still painting themselves blue and erecting giant stone dominoes with roofs on. So it seems perfectly reasonable that they should invent replica watches before the sluggards in Europe had got round to making the first timepiece. Or could it simply be that the tomb was not quite as sacrosanct as the archaeologists thought?

It would be handy to see the video footage. For some mysterious reason it has yet to emerge. [Thanks to Beowyn for the tipoff]

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