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World spins on claim China discovered America
By Tim Castle
LONDON (Reuters) - Is it good-bye Columbus?
A British historian's claim that a Chinese admiral reached America decades before the Italian explorer has unleashed a frenzy of media interest in a theory that could force the rewriting of history.
Gavin Menzies, 64, a former Royal Navy submarine commander, provoked headlines around the globe last week after a newspaper published an outline of his thesis that China "discovered" the New World 70 years before the West.
Based on contemporary European maps and records, Chinese star charts and archaeological finds, Menzies' case is that Chinese sailors mapped the world in the early 1400s before abandoning global seafaring in the middle of the 15th century.
Historians contacted by Reuters say the amateur historian's thesis is speculative and leaps to conclusions that may be correct but have yet to be proved.
Menzies says Chinese maps passed to the West through the Portuguese, by way of an Italian traveller, Nicolo da Conti, who went on some of their voyages. Don Pedro, son of Portugal's King Joao I kept the resulting map of the world as a state secret.
But elements of this map, drawn in 1428 and now lost, leaked out and were copied into other charts, says Menzies.
These revealed parts of America and Australia before they were "rediscovered" by Europe's Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and James Cook.
"Every single one of them refers to maps he's either got with him or seen before he set sail," Menzies told Reuters.
"My argument is somebody must have drawn these maps before the Europeans got there. Who was it?"
EUNUCH ADMIRALS
For Menzies the answer is Admiral Zheng He, a Grand Eunuch who commanded seven voyages of exploration from 1403 to 1433.
In huge many-masted ships, the largest four times the size of Columbus's Santa Maria, the Chinese made increasingly ambitious tours of Indonesia and the southern Asian coastline.
Historians agree that the fleet reached east Africa and may have rounded the Cape of Good Hope.
Menzies says the 107-strong armada of the sixth voyage of 1421-3 went further, reaching Latin America, the Caribbean and Australia, circumnavigating the globe a century before Magellan.
Wherever they went, split into four flotillas, they left porcelain, votive offerings and wrecks, he says.
"There are 10,000 pieces of evidence," he said.
"It's so blindingly obvious now that it's not Columbus. How he's got away with it for so long mystifies me," he added.
He says the honour should go to two of Zheng He's fellow eunuch admirals, Heng-Bao and Zhou-Man, who continued the sixth voyage after Zheng He returned early to China.
A starting point for Menzies' thesis is a 1424 map of Europe and the Atlantic that he says shows Puerto Rico and Guadeloupe nearly 70 years before 1492.
His identification is backed by Carol Urness, Emeritus Curator of the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where the "Pizzigano" map is held.
"I think he has made a very good argument for those identifications for the 1424 map," she told Reuters.
"Now the question is whether the prototype for this map is a lost European map or is the Chinese map. That's going to be the harder leap."
Gillian Hutchinson, Curator of the History of Cartography at London's National Maritime Museum, said she was unconvinced.
"It shows that people knew that there were islands out into the Atlantic, but it doesn't necessarily mean they can be identified with any island we know of," she said.
Menzies, who plans to publish his findings in a book, will attempt to answer some of those questions before an invited audience on March 15 at London's Royal Geographical Society.
Whatever the truth of his claims, a worldwide audience is guaranteed: "I can show without any doubt whatsoever that the whole world was charted long before the Europeans set sail."
By Tim Castle
LONDON (Reuters) - Is it good-bye Columbus?
A British historian's claim that a Chinese admiral reached America decades before the Italian explorer has unleashed a frenzy of media interest in a theory that could force the rewriting of history.
Gavin Menzies, 64, a former Royal Navy submarine commander, provoked headlines around the globe last week after a newspaper published an outline of his thesis that China "discovered" the New World 70 years before the West.
Based on contemporary European maps and records, Chinese star charts and archaeological finds, Menzies' case is that Chinese sailors mapped the world in the early 1400s before abandoning global seafaring in the middle of the 15th century.
Historians contacted by Reuters say the amateur historian's thesis is speculative and leaps to conclusions that may be correct but have yet to be proved.
Menzies says Chinese maps passed to the West through the Portuguese, by way of an Italian traveller, Nicolo da Conti, who went on some of their voyages. Don Pedro, son of Portugal's King Joao I kept the resulting map of the world as a state secret.
But elements of this map, drawn in 1428 and now lost, leaked out and were copied into other charts, says Menzies.
These revealed parts of America and Australia before they were "rediscovered" by Europe's Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and James Cook.
"Every single one of them refers to maps he's either got with him or seen before he set sail," Menzies told Reuters.
"My argument is somebody must have drawn these maps before the Europeans got there. Who was it?"
EUNUCH ADMIRALS
For Menzies the answer is Admiral Zheng He, a Grand Eunuch who commanded seven voyages of exploration from 1403 to 1433.
In huge many-masted ships, the largest four times the size of Columbus's Santa Maria, the Chinese made increasingly ambitious tours of Indonesia and the southern Asian coastline.
Historians agree that the fleet reached east Africa and may have rounded the Cape of Good Hope.
Menzies says the 107-strong armada of the sixth voyage of 1421-3 went further, reaching Latin America, the Caribbean and Australia, circumnavigating the globe a century before Magellan.
Wherever they went, split into four flotillas, they left porcelain, votive offerings and wrecks, he says.
"There are 10,000 pieces of evidence," he said.
"It's so blindingly obvious now that it's not Columbus. How he's got away with it for so long mystifies me," he added.
He says the honour should go to two of Zheng He's fellow eunuch admirals, Heng-Bao and Zhou-Man, who continued the sixth voyage after Zheng He returned early to China.
A starting point for Menzies' thesis is a 1424 map of Europe and the Atlantic that he says shows Puerto Rico and Guadeloupe nearly 70 years before 1492.
His identification is backed by Carol Urness, Emeritus Curator of the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where the "Pizzigano" map is held.
"I think he has made a very good argument for those identifications for the 1424 map," she told Reuters.
"Now the question is whether the prototype for this map is a lost European map or is the Chinese map. That's going to be the harder leap."
Gillian Hutchinson, Curator of the History of Cartography at London's National Maritime Museum, said she was unconvinced.
"It shows that people knew that there were islands out into the Atlantic, but it doesn't necessarily mean they can be identified with any island we know of," she said.
Menzies, who plans to publish his findings in a book, will attempt to answer some of those questions before an invited audience on March 15 at London's Royal Geographical Society.
Whatever the truth of his claims, a worldwide audience is guaranteed: "I can show without any doubt whatsoever that the whole world was charted long before the Europeans set sail."
and scientists had good evidence to show.
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