iPhone found in a 1937 painting? Time travel conspiracy fuels up as old photo shows Native American man holding a strange object

A painting made nearly 90 years ago has suddenly found itself amid a very modern mystery. An Indigenous man in the artwork appears to be staring at a small, dark rectangular object in his hands, and to many people online, it looks surprisingly similar to a smartphone, particularly an iPhone. That has now led to the usual question from conspiracy theorists: could this be evidence of time travel? The artwork, Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield, was painted by Italian-American muralist Umberto Romano in 1937.

It shows William Pynchon, one of the founders of present-day Springfield, alongside English settlers and Indigenous people in what was then the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The iPhone, of course, would not arrive until 2007. So how could something that looks like one possibly appear in a 1937 painting?

Why people think it looks like an iPhone

The object is seen near the lower centre of the mural. The Indigenous man appears to be holding it up and looking closely at it. It is rectangular, dark in colour and seems to have a shiny or reflective edge.

That was enough to send social media users down the time-travel rabbit hole. “iPhone in painting from 1937 JUST DISCOVERED???” one X user posted. Another user reportedly wrote, “Now that one actually looks like a cell phone.”

Some users also joked about the possibility of a person travelling back in time and somehow ending up in the painting with a phone.

Historians have a much simpler explanation

The strange-looking object is not believed to be an iPhone. Historians and researchers have pointed towards a much more ordinary explanation, a hand mirror.

Mirrors were common trade items in 17th-century colonial America, making one a perfectly possible object for the Indigenous man to be examining. Brian Anderson, writing for Motherboard, also argued that the object was likely European in origin.

“There’s reason to believe, then, that what the man is examining is not an Indigenous object, but rather of European origin, like mirrors, which were presented often in such exchanges,” he wrote.

“The way the man holds it up, if indeed he's looking at his own face reflecting back at him, would certainly make sense.”

Historian David Crown, who was consulted during an earlier investigation by Vice, also suggested that the object could be a mirror. Another possibility he raised was a small religious text.

What the 1937 mural actually depicts

The painting is part of a larger series of murals created for what was once Springfield's main post office and is now a Massachusetts state office building. According to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, Romano created six murals with students through the Federal Art Project, a government programme that employed artists during the Great Depression.


Romano also consulted local historian Harry Andrew Wright and writer Esther Forbes while working on the mural. The work was intended to portray the development of the region over a much wider period rather than capture one exact historical moment.

That detail is important because the scene is packed with different people, events and symbols from Springfield's early history.

And while the object may look strangely familiar to people living in the smartphone era, there is no evidence that Romano intended to show modern technology in the 1937 artwork. The time-travel theory may make for an entertaining internet mystery, but the far less exciting explanation remains that the man is simply looking at a mirror.