World spins on claim China discovered America

[mindseye]

Treasure Ship (about 400 ft) compared with Columbus' Santa Maria (85 ft).

[mindseye]

Model of a Ming Dynasty anti-ship cruise missile. The four rockets (probably angled downward) propelled the missile as it skimmed the surface towards its target. When it neared the enemy ship, a time-delayed fuse ignited a volley of rocket-propelled arrows which burst forth from the mouth.

[mindseye]

Twelfth-century sidewheeler, propelled by man-powered treadmills. Used for river and lake battles. They were equipped with archers, rams, and sometimes even catapults for hurling gunpowder bombs.

[Chris 62]

Found a news links about this story:

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/primenews/story/0,1870,106236,00.html

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200203/06/eng20020306_91553.shtml

And a little about Zheng He:

http://www.china2thou.com/9805p7.htm

I will be quite interested to see what the scholars think of the evidence to be presented.

[Fayadi]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Zheng He's voyages are of great interest, but the most dubious claim here is that he managed to round Cape Horn, perhaps the most dangerous passage on the planet. Chinese sailing vessels were certainly advanced for their time, but I don't think they can compare with the maneuverability of Euro ships a full century of intense exploration and improvement later.

European were practically inferior to the Chinese until about 1800's AD.European ships were too inferior until the coming of the spanish armada which i think has the equal quality if not the Chinese's bigger
Hell I am so damn proud to be a Chinese we have become a superpower for many millenia (except during the 19 th and 20 th which we have countless of internal wars and political chaos)

AOA or Chris 62 hell you are here too troublemaker ,CFC will forever be "dirty" as long as u r there.Yeah i still remember u r the mod who cause flame war in my thread and closed it for your own selfish purpose

[KrazyHorse]

European were practically inferior to the Chinese until about 1800's AD.European ships were too inferior until the coming of the spanish armada which i think has the equal quality if not the Chinese's bigger
Hell I am so damn proud to be a Chinese we have become a superpower for many millenia (except during the 19 th and 20 th which we have countless of internal wars and political chaos)

AOA or Chris 62 hell you are here too troublemaker ,CFC will forever be "dirty" as long as u r there.Yeah i still remember u r the mod who cause flame war in my thread and closed it for your own selfish purpose

[mactbone]

I'll still go with Brendan, just because.

Oh, and I don't think we can say that the Amerindians discovered America, that's like asking who discovered Mesopatamia or Europe.

Really, I got out of high school fairly recently and in my American History class we were divided into teams to find out who discovered America. The different possibilities were the Amerindians, the Vikings, Columbus, Brendan, and probably one or two other nobodies. So, it's not like we're blindly accepting Columbus, we just consider him the most important discoverer of America, because he got the ball rolling on expansion to the Americas.