Did China discover America?

**Kazimiera** · 10-31-2016, 10:55 PM

Did China discover America?

Source: https://www.1843magazine.com/content...e%2Fbl%2Fed%2F

This map claims that a Chinese Muslim beat Columbus to it. But is it real?

In 1405 a Chinese Muslim eunuch, Zheng He, launched the first of seven voyages west from China across the Indian Ocean. Over the next 30 years, in command of the world’s largest fleet and funded by the Ming emperor, he sailed to the east coast of Africa and deep into the Persian Gulf. That much, we know, is true.

But some people believe he went much farther—and this map is one reason. Entitled “General chart of the integrated world”, it is apparently an 18th-century copy of a 1418 map which claims to show the world that Zheng He discovered. If it is real, it rewrites history, for it shows that he circumnavigated the globe and—most provocatively—that he discovered America more than 70 years before Columbus.

The map came to light in 2001 when a Shanghai lawyer, Liu Gang, says he bought it from a local dealer for around $500. He believes it proves that Zheng navigated the waters around both poles, the Americas, the Mediterranean and Australia too. In 2003 Gavin Menzies used it as evidence for his book “1421: the year China discovered the world”.

The outlines of the continents on the map are instantly recognisable. Some aspects are characteristically Chinese: the blue, fan-like waves are part of China’s cartographic tradition, as are the annotations with textual descriptions of places. The map is impressively detailed. It shows the two hemispheres of the world, a convention for depicting the round Earth on flat paper. The contours of North and South America are clear, as are the rivers running from far inland. We can see the Arctic. And the Himalayas, among whose foothills Zheng He was born, are marked as the highest mountain range in the world.

It is these detailed elements, however, that give the game away. Only Europeans represented the globe this way. European explorers completed travels like this over the course of hundreds of years, rather than Zheng He’s 30, which makes it almost impossible that his maritime voyage would have had such a specific grasp of river courses. The Arctic appears first on a Ming Chinese map only in 1593. And the world’s greatest mountain range was labelled as such only in the 19th century.

“This map is a complete nonsense,” says Professor Timothy Brook of the University of British Columbia. He believes that what you see here is a copy of a European map from the early 17th century. But it is still interesting, because of the stories attached to it and the recent hype surrounding Zheng He. He was certainly a great mariner, but had been largely forgotten until the late 1990s when the history of his quest was resurrected and he was embraced as a national hero. As Brook puts it: “The West had a Columbus and the Chinese needed one.”

The debate over the veracity of this map is emblematic of the current arguments over China’s role on the world stage. President Xi Jinping hails Zheng He as one of China’s great innovators and an example of its early, peaceful exchanges overseas. Though he does not claim that Zheng He found America, he holds up his voyages as an inspiration for a new maritime silk road that is now being promoted to expand Chinese trade and influence abroad.

Though Columbus and Zheng He both sailed the seas, their purposes were quite different. Columbus’s mission was commercial, Zheng He’s diplomatic: he was sent to bring back envoys from other countries to pay homage to the new Yongle emperor, who had usurped power from his nephew and needed to find a way to assert his legitimacy.

With the end of Zheng He’s life, China’s explorations on the high seas finished too. By this time there was a new emperor with less need to finance pricey expeditions. For the next few hundred years China largely turned in on itself. What would have happened if the Chinese fleet had been allowed to continue is one of the great counterfactuals of history. Instead, while Columbus forged his way to the New World, Zheng He died a quiet death—at sea or at home, it is not known—and few beyond China now know his name.

**zhaoyun** · 10-31-2016, 11:00 PM

No he didn't. He sailed to Africa but not to the Americas. The British author who is claiming this is a sensationalist who creates fantasies out of baseless facts and extrapolates wildly. He's a scam artist and a bullshit salesman, is what he is.

**Svipdag** · 11-01-2016, 01:04 AM

There was a book published 50 or 60 years ago (I saw it only in paperback and whether there was a hard-cover version, I don't know) titled "They ALL Discovered America." I'm beginning to agree with that title.

**wvwvw** · 11-01-2016, 01:08 AM

Even the Minoans, Romans and Vikings have sailed to America so why not the Chinese too.

**Poise n Pen** · 11-01-2016, 01:10 AM

I think lots of people WENT to america. That is not quite the same.

However there is evidence that in copper age times there was huge amounts of copper mined in the USA and then sent back to egypt and europe. There's also been corn and tobacco found in egypt and a few other places.

**~~Cristiano viejo~~** · 11-01-2016, 01:13 AM

Originally Posted by Raine

Even the Minoans, Romans and Vikings have sailed to America so why not the Chinese too.

**wvwvw** · 11-01-2016, 01:15 AM

Originally Posted by Poise n Pen

I think lots of people WENT to america. That is not quite the same.

However there is evidence that in copper age times there was huge amounts of copper mined in the USA and then sent back to egypt and europe. There's also been corn and tobacco found in egypt and a few other places.

The Minoan ships were not surpassed until the 16th century according to Gavin Menzies

Gavin Menzies, in his book, initially follows the Minoan traces in Asia Minor, in Egypt, in Yemen, in India and Ceylon- where the Sangam epics of the Tamil still speak about “the magnificent ships of the Greeks bringing gold and leave laden with pepper…”. Surprised by the museum findings which vindicated Strabo and Ptolemy, the author not only considered the navigation secrets held by the Minoans, but also where they found all those quantities of metals that they traded. The copper mines of Cyprus as it is historically known could not even meet the requirements of the Pharaohs. Yet the Minoans gave them bronze saws doped with tin to cut the stone blocks of the …pyramids. As was written in the records of the Acadian king Skarga, the Minoan ships brought since 2350 BC tin from Spain and Britain. And then this unlikely finding of 1450 BC at the Akrotirion in Santorini where did it come from? Lasioderma serricorne, meaning larva of the tobacco leaf! Yes the smoke that we all knew that first arrived in Europe in 16th century AD from the American continent. So, Menzies, now turned west searching to find whether-and how-those intrepid sailors had not only crossed the portals of Hercules, but had also arrived in the New World.

**Kriptc06** · 11-01-2016, 01:15 AM

Originally Posted by Raine

Even the Minoans, Romans and Vikings have sailed to America so why not the Chinese too.

Romans?

**wvwvw** · 11-01-2016, 01:26 AM

Cats were domesticated in Cyprus 5000 years before they were in Egypt. Cypriot civilization preceded Egyptian civilization. Egyptians paid Cypriot merchants for copper from Cyprus and Egyptian Pharaohs regarded Cypriot kings as equals whereas the regarded the Phoenicians as their inferiors.

From Egyptian inscriptions we know the Minoans of pre-2000 BC called themselves Kittim, Kyftu, Kyferu or Keferim ie. Kypraioi. These people were Cypriots.

And they spoke Greek. Linear B was being used to write Greek since 1600 BC and before that Linear A was being used in Greece and Cyprus since 1900 BC. The Cypriot variant of Linear A was used to write Greek until around 400 BC which proves the Cypriots were speaking Greek already from 1900 BC.

Native American languages contain many Greek words like Potamos and Igloo (from Greek Oikos)