China was the world’s greatest maritime power in the early 15th century. Trade between Eastern parts of Asia and America is believed to have taken place much before Christopher Columbus set sail. Could it be then possible that what we have been taught for centuries – that Columbus discovered America – was a lie or misinformation?
“The traditional story of Columbus discovering the New World is absolute fantasy, it’s fairy tales,” Gavin Menzies, a former sailor with Britain’s Royal Navy and author of Who Discovered America, told The Daily Mail. Menzies has claimed that a 600-year-old map, that depicts North American rivers and coasts as well as the continent of South America in 1418, proves that the New World was discovered by China’s Admiral Zheng He who sailed to Europe and Africa and roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435 with a massive fleet of 317 ships and 28,000 men.
These are some of his claims:
- The first inhabitants of the Western hemisphere were Chinese sailors who first crossed the Pacific Ocean 40,000 years ago; so Columbus was not the first explorer – he was 40,000 years late.
- Asians also made it to North and South America by sea long before even Zheng He.
- DNA markers prove American Indians and other natives are the descendants of several waves of Asian settlers.
- There is evidence, both archaeological and genetic, that Zheng He left his mark in California, Florida, Virginia and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
- The outlines of Africa, Europe and the Americas are instantly recognisable in the map. The map makes good estimates of the latitude and longitude of much of the world, and recognises that the Earth is round.
- A team of historians has concluded that the map was originally written in the Ming Dynasty – a Chinese period that lasted from 1368 to 1644.
“Columbus had a map of America, de Gama had a map showing India and Captain Cook had a map showing Australia, and it’s not my saying; it’s the explorers saying it. None of the great European explorers actually discovered anything new. The whole world was charted before they set sail. So somebody before them had done it, and that was the basis of the book,” a retired British Royal Navy submarine commanding officer said in an interview.
Did Chinese actually beat out Columbus? Here’s more evidence to the freaky discovery:
A buckle and a whistle, amongst a series of bronze artefacts found at the ‘Rising Whale’ site in Cape Espenberg, discovered by archaeologists in a 1,000-year-old house in Alaska recently, suggest trade was occurring between East Asia and the New World centuries before Columbus arrived in the Caribbean Sea in 1492. Bronze-working had not been developed at around 600AD in Alaska, so archaeologists think the artifacts would have been manufactured in China, Korea or the region of Yakutia, Russia, and made their way to Alaska through trade routes. Long before the arrival of Spaniards, the Native Americans were in contact with other great cultures. These exchanges would have taken place 2,600 years ago before Columbus’ arrival.
There is also evidence that plate armour, using ivory and bones, began appearing in Alaska around 1,000 years ago. Its overlapping style is similar to plate armour developed in East Asia, thousands of years ago.
What Columbus ‘discovered’ was the Bahamas archipelago and then the island later named Hispaniola, now split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On his subsequent voyages he went farther south, to Central and South America. He never got close to what is now called the United States.
The ‘facts’ that Columbus found the New World in 1492, Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519, need to be ‘refurbished’ in the wake of recent discoveries.
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This is nothing new… Most everyone already knows that Asians came to America long before Columbus… Also the Vikings came here long before he did too..
Most or all, Justme? 😉
Oh yea? Theres evidence? How come the article doesn’t show any?
Read over. It does.
The difference between earlier discoveries and Columbus was that this did not lead to a massive change in geo-politics. Columbus discovery after all resulted in the complete colonization of the American continent.
Okay I won’t say that you are wrong Vandita. I will only tell you what my professor at University told me on this matter.
First. Yes Zheng He was a great explorer and unlike us in the west he came to explorer and not to conquer when he entered Africa for an instance. China invented the compass and paper over 1000 years before Europe did. So let me start saying I acknowledge the fact that China was the superior nation on earth for thousands of years until Europe discovered what China’s own invention gunpowder could be used for.
However we recently at the Asian Studies programme had this subject up. What we have been told since day one at university is to STAY AWAY FROM GAVIN MENZIES WORKS!!! And by time I have come to see why. The guy has made a book claiming that Atlantis exists and I am ofcourse not the one to judge if this could be true or not. However it does sound a bit too awesome. But when it becomes clear to us that this is guy you should not listen to, is when he claims that a gigantic Chinese fleet sailed to Italy and started the renaissance and apparently Gavin Menzies is the only one knowing about this, since it has bypassed every historical records in Europe.
But let us move away from Gavin Menzies character on this matter and into concrete argumentation for why this argument of his is fake. Let us look at the map he is referring to. (Which you can see here on a much larger scale: http://mesosyn.com/his4-4.jpg ). There are 4 reasons why you can clearly deem this map fake.
1. The map has some simplified Chinese characters to it. This is extremely odd since they first started making simplified Chinese characters in 1956.
2. There are places mentioned on that map which first came pass after the presumed date of the map.
3. Clear signs of editing. I don’t know if you have any experience with photoshop but I do a little. And when I look at some of the text on this map then it is clear to me that it was put above the original image.
4. Have you ever googled “Old Parchment paper” and seen how real parchment paper looks like when it has been scanned into a computer? Here is one: http://thebainreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/5-wrinkled-parchment-paper1.jpg
Yet again it comes clear to me that Cartoon Network could have done this map better.
As for statement 1 and 2 I can’t remember which characters and places my professor said was off but I can look that up for you if that is important to you.
Regards
Thomas
Okay I won’t say that you are wrong Vandita. I will only tell you what my professor at University told me on this matter.
First. Yes Zheng He was a great explorer and unlike us in the west he came to explorer and not to conquer when he entered Africa for an instance. China invented the compass and paper over 1000 years before Europe did. So let me start saying I acknowledge the fact that China was the superior nation on earth for thousands of years until Europe discovered what China’s own invention gunpowder could be used for.
However we recently at the Asian Studies programme had this subject up. What we have been told since day one at university is to STAY AWAY FROM GAVIN MENZIES WORKS!!! And by time I have come to see why. The guy has made a book claiming that Atlantis exists and I am ofcourse not the one to judge if this could be true or not. However it does sound a bit too awesome. But when it becomes clear to us that this is guy you should not listen to, is when he claims that a gigantic Chinese fleet sailed to Italy and started the renaissance and apparently Gavin Menzies is the only one knowing about this, since it has bypassed every historical records in Europe.
But let us move away from Gavin Menzies character on this matter and into concrete argumentation for why this argument of his is fake. Let us look at the map he is referring to. (Which you can see here on a much larger scale: http://mesosyn.com/his4-4.jpg ). There are 4 reasons why you can clearly deem this map fake.
1. The map has some simplified Chinese characters to it. This is extremely odd since they first started making simplified Chinese characters in 1956.
2. There are places mentioned on that map which first came pass after the presumed date of the map.
3. Clear signs of editing. I don’t know if you have any experience with photoshop but I do a little. And when I look at some of the text on this map then it is clear to me that it was put above the original image.
4. Have you ever googled “Old Parchment paper” and seen how real parchment paper looks like when it has been scanned into a computer? Here is one: http://thebainreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/5-wrinkled-parchment-paper1.jpg
Yet again it comes clear to me that Cartoon Network could have done this map better.
As for statement 1 and 2 I can’t remember which characters and places my professor said was off but I can look that up for you if that is important to you.
Regards
Thomas
There is a subtle difference between “exploring” and “conquering”. Guess which one is more pervasive.
Brendan was there before the lot of them. And in a smaller boat. Smaller boat, harder man.