The Mystery of The Chinese Seals

[ralph124c]

Years ago, I read of an interesting mystery. It seems that the seals used by the Chinese to stamp their names on documents (these are piecesof carved soapstone), had been found scattered allover Ireland. They had been found in villages where nobody had any connection to China or the China trade. Has this mystery ever been solved? Or did some mad 18th century merchant just drop a ton of these things all around ireland?

[yabob]

Maybe they’re escaping oppression of pinnipeds by a brutal Chinese regime … Oh, wait, not THAT kind of seal …

“It was in the spring of 1883 that Mr. Sherlock Holmes and I were visted in our Baker Street lodgings by a Mister Smythe-Warble, whose extraordinary tale would lead us upon that amazing series of adventures which events now permit me to chronicle as ‘The Mystery of the Chinese Seals’”

Now that I’m done making wisecracks, I dunno, but here’s some background:

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Any document with Charles Fort AND Robert Anton Wilson in the references has to be about a strange topic.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

*Originally posted by ralph124c *
**Years ago, I read of an interesting mystery. It seems that the seals used by the Chinese to stamp their names on documents (these are piecesof carved soapstone), had been found scattered allover Ireland. They had been found in villages where nobody had any connection to China or the China trade. Has this mystery ever been solved? Or did some mad 18th century merchant just drop a ton of these things all around ireland? **

Cite? :dubious: :dubious: :dubious:

[Mangetout]

The diversity of environments in which they were supposedly unearthed (a peat bed, a cave, a gravel deposit, garden topsoil, a ploughed field), to my mind, makes some kind of hoax or prank quite a likely scenario.

[MC_Master_of_Ceremonies]

*Originally posted by Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor *
**Cite? :dubious: :dubious: :dubious: **

Here’s a quotew from Scientifc American 1852:

“A paper was read before the Belfast Literary Society in Ireland, on Chinese porcelain seals. About fifty of these have been found there, some in deep bogs, one in a cave, others scattered about. How they came there nobody can tell. They are of great antiquity. They have inscriptions on them in the ancient Chinese seal language, and Mr. [Rev. Dr. Karl] Gutzlaff had translated a number of them. Each seal is a perfect cube, with the figure of a Chinese monkey by way of a handle. It is supposed they may have been brought there by ancient Phoenicians, but it is our opinion that they were brought there by some of the ancient Irish tribes, who no doubt journeyed through China.”

50, 100 and 150 Years Ago

here’s a site dedicated to the mystery:

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Still, I share you’re incredulity. I think this is a job for Cecil.

[ftg]

Sorry, but I gotta:

[RST Video customer]
Oooh, Chinese Seals!
[/RST Video customer]

But seriously:

Ancient people traded extensively. An old bronze Greek bowl was found in a site in the far north of Canada. No ancient Greek was within 5 thousand miles of the place. It got there by trade.

However, there are a lot of fraudulently planted objects around. Reports from an 1852 Scientific American can pretty much be ignored. Almost no one was checking back then to see if the objects were suitably embedded in the strata they came from.