Art time-travel mystery as 1937 painting ‘shows Native American using iPhone’
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  • Some are convinced time travel must be real as an 86-year-old mural appears to show a Native American bloke playing on an iPhone.

    Mr Pynchon And The Settling Of Springfield was painted by Umberto Romano in 1937 and has not been altered since.

    In the bottom right corner of the artwork a man can be seen clearly holding what looks to be a smartphone to his face.

    READ MORE: Art-lovers baffled as 150-year-old painting 'seems to show woman using an iPhone'

    He's even holding the object exactly how we do when scrolling through Twitter or swiping on Tinder – fingers behind with thumb curled around to prod the screen.

    The image depicts English colonist William Pynchon trading with the natives in Springfield, Massachusetts in the 17th century.

    The mural, one of a series, currently hangs in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts State Office Building in Springfield.

    Sadly, Italian artist Romano died in 1982, long before anyone had ever heard of the iPhone, meaning we can't just ask him what the bloke is meant to be holding.

    According to VICE, the first mention of the man holding the supposed smartphone was made by writer and historian Daniel Crown in an essay about William Pynchon.

    Crown told VICE that, despite how much it looks like a bloke holding an iPhone, he reckons it's something else.

    He said: "To put it in the kindliest possible terms, Romano's so-called 'abstract' aesthetic was wilfully ambiguous.

    "When Romano painted the mural, Americans were obsessed with the 'noble savage' trope.

    "Given the scene's focus on the founding of Springfield, Romano, in reductive fashion, was probably trying to capture the introduction of modernity into a curious but technologically stunted community, which was instantly bewitched by Pynchon's treasure trove of shiny objects."

    Crown's best guess is that the object is likely a small mirror rather than something taken back through the years by time travellers.

    Other experts have speculated that it is actually a crudely-depicted blade or knife.

    And of course there is no guarantee it is an iPhone – he may actually be more of an Android man.

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