An image of an apparently ancient sculpture is viral with the claim that it was made in India 1,400 years ago during the time of a Pallava King. The sculpture is of a person seated in front of a computer attached to an electrical wire. Users marvelled at India’s advancement in technology at a time when modern electricity hadn’t even been invented.
The viral claims date back to August 2022.
The image is also viral on Facebook.
Alt News has received multiple requests on its WhatsApp helpline (76000 11160) and its app to verify the authenticity of the claim.
Fact Check
Upon a reverse image search of the image, we were led to Mexican artist Raúl Cruz’s ArtStation profile wherein this image has been listed as one of his original artworks. The artwork, titled Memory of the Future, was posted four years ago.
Artist Raúl Cruz is described as a freelance illustrator/fine artist on his About page on ArtStation. According to the page, Cruz’s work falls under the genre of Fantastic Art. Futurist aesthetics and science fiction combined with Mesoamerican art directly influenced his work, mixing the past and the present with unpredictable futures. This trait is clear in the artwork that is viral.
We also found this artwork on his Instagram page, posted in September 2018. The image is captioned “Memoria del futuro, acrylic on fiberglass, 2015″.
Furthermore, we found that this artwork had been used as cover art in a book named ‘Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain’. Cruz has been credited for the cover design, according to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
Hence, an image of a seemingly ancient engraving of a man seated in front of a computer is viral with the claim that the sculpture was made 1400 years ago in India during the time of a Pallava King. In reality, the artwork was created by artist Raúl Cruz. He uploaded the image on Instagram in 2018.
This article first appeared on Alt News. Read the original here.