China Not Sure It Discovered America

[Trauma-san]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/01/27/1421.china.react.ap/index.html


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BEIJING, China (AP) -- Forgive Gavin Menzies for feeling a little defensive.

His book, "1421: The Year China Discovered America," may be selling briskly in the United States, but his extraordinary theory that Chinese explorers reached the New World decades before Christopher Columbus is proving a tougher sell to academics -- even here in China.

"Nonsense," declares China's Zheng He Association, which celebrates the exploits of Zheng He, the very explorer Menzies says directed ships around the globe a century before Ferdinand Magellan.

But Menzies isn't fazed. "I don't see how any fair-minded person who reads the evidence can come to any other conclusion other than the Chinese did get to America before Europeans," he said in a telephone interview from New York, where he was promoting his book.

If only it were that simple.

China in the early 15th century was a great seafaring nation. No dispute there. Huge Chinese ships bearing silk, porcelain and other treasures made epic expeditions at the emperor's behest.

Commanded by the admiral Zheng He, the ships traveled from China down to Indonesia, west to India, and as far as East Africa.

Bestseller
But this is where Menzies departs from established history. He says he has found proof that the Chinese ships sailed on -- around the Cape of Good Hope and all the way to the Americas, with some ships even crossing the Pacific back to China.

Menzies, a former submarine commander in Britain's Royal Navy, insists not only that Chinese beat Columbus but that European explorers who reached the Americas did so with maps copied from the Chinese.

   
This map designed by famous Turkish admiral Piri Reis shows a mixture of several maps including the 1428 World Map and was drawn on a gazelle skin in 1513.  
 
 
 
"All of the great European explorers set sail with maps showing their destinations," Menzies said.

His book, published in the United States this month, entered The New York Times' nonfiction best-seller list two weeks later at No. 8.

Menzies says he has received support for his work but concedes that some experts have expressed strong reservations. His critics argue that China's huge wooden ships couldn't have survived the rough Atlantic voyage.

Some also say Chinese and European cartography at the time was so different that the maps couldn't have been reconciled.

Others call his book "rubbish from beginning to end," Menzies acknowledges. That includes some in China, even though the book hasn't been published here.

"It's crazy talk," said Wang Xiaofu, a history professor at Peking University. "We absolutely do not accept this theory."

Many Chinese authors have presented similar theories over the years. Some even argue that Chinese settled the Americas 3,000 years ago, Wang said. But most tales mix fact and legend.

"In ancient times, there were a lot of fairy stories," he said.

'Science fiction'
   
 
 
 
Still, legends of Chinese supremacy underpin the country's fierce nationalism.

Sinophiles like to point out that Chinese invented everything from fireworks to spaghetti and made significant contributions to modern mathematics, agriculture and astronomy.

"China discovered America first? I already knew that," said a Beijing store clerk who gave only her family name, Han. "China has been a country of advanced culture since ancient times."

Others aren't so sure. "I read about this theory in a newspaper, but I don't believe it," said Li Xuehui, a 30-year-old office worker. In ancient times, she said, "they didn't have the concept that the world was round."

At Peking University, archaeologist Lin Meicun says that in 20 years of studying ancient Chinese migration, he has found no convincing signs of China's early settlement of the Americas. Such talk, he said, "is not science. It's science fiction."

Menzies, who lives in London, had sailed the routes of Columbus, Magellan and other European explorers when he was a naval officer.

He writes that his knowledge of maps and using the stars for navigation led to his theory, and that his research took him to 120 countries and every major port of the late Middle Ages.

He is hardly the first to challenge the story of discovering America.

There is evidence of Viking settlements in North America 500 years before Columbus. And humans are believed to have walked from Asia across the Bering Strait when it was covered with ice to become American Indians.

Columbus' achievement was not so much to discover America as to open it to European conquest and competition to settle the New World.

And China, by the middle of the 15th century, had isolated itself. Its treasure-bearing ships were summoned back, and the emperor forbade overseas travel. China had halted all exploration, leaving the world to Europe.



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[Maestro Minded]

the ones who discovered "america" were the natives.. they travelled from asia to america thousands and thousands of years ago, when the bond between asia and america was still above the water...

[Trauma-san]

Thanks for the obvious.  

[Koncept]

lol

[Woodrow]

the ones who discovered "america" were the natives.. they travelled from asia to america thousands and thousands of years ago, when the bond between asia and america was still above the water...

The Animals of the ice age were here before them. And the dinosaurs before that. I find it horrible that the people coming over from the land bridge displaced and killed these animals with no remorse.

[CWalker187]

Christoper Columbus discovered America.

[Maestro Minded]

the ones who discovered "america" were the natives.. they travelled from asia to america thousands and thousands of years ago, when the bond between asia and america was still above the water...

The Animals of the ice age were here before them. And the dinosaurs before that. I find it horrible that the people coming over from the land bridge displaced and killed these animals with no remorse.

when we're talking about "who discovered a place" . we're often talking about humans... therefore its the natives who discovered it... columbus was the first WESTERN man that discovered america,,

[Don Seer]

Vikings visited America around 997




from http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/teachers/reproducibles/html/0,6810,54745,00.html



Lords of the Seas
News Scoop, Grades 2-3
Click below to view a printable teacher's guide.
Teacher's Guide - Volume 5 No. 26 - May 5, 2000

Background
This week, visitors to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington will be able to explore new findings about the Vikings and their Norse descendants. The exhibit, “Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga,” timed to commemorate the thousand-year anniversary of Leif Eriksson’s arrival in North America, contains more than 200 artifacts.

Recent research has dispelled many misconceptions about the Vikings. The term Viking refers properly only to men who went on raids. All Vikings were Norse, but not all Norse were Vikings. Interesting Viking and Norse facts:


Most Norse were primarily farmers and herdsmen, not warriors.

Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets (a fiction probably created for 19th-century opera).

The Norse crafted expert ships.

Vikings arrived in North America some 500 years before Columbus.

Sailing around the world
Searching for new luxury goods (including silk, glass, sword-quality steel and silver), the Norse traveled to Britain, Russia, Rome, Baghdad and the Caspian Sea, and probably to Africa.

At first they traded for the goods. But in the late 8th century, the Vikings realized they could obtain these goods by raiding monasteries. A raid on a monastery in England in 793 began the reign of Viking terror.

The Vikings didn’t pillage and run; sometimes they came to stay. Dublin became a Viking town. So did Lincoln and York, along with much of the land in northern and eastern England and in northern Scotland.

During the 9th century, the Vikings started to strike out across the Atlantic Ocean. These early explorers reached Iceland in about 870. Later, in 982, Erik the Red, a Norse settler, was exiled from Iceland. He sailed west and decided that Greenland would be a perfect place to live. In 985, he returned to Iceland and persuaded a group of followers to help him establish Norse outposts in Greenland.

In 1960, evidence was discovered proving that Erik’s son, Leif Eriksson, visited North America between 997 and 1003. Archaeologists found an ancient Norse settlement in Newfoundland and unearthed many artifacts that were not native to North America.

But the Norse did not stay in North America. Within a decade after Leif’s landing, they were gone. Some archaeologists feel the Norse returned to their homeland because they missed their families. Others say the Vikings couldn’t defend themselves against the natives.

[Entreri117]

the ones who discovered "america" were the natives.. they travelled from asia to america thousands and thousands of years ago, when the bond between asia and america was still above the water...

The Animals of the ice age were here before them. And the dinosaurs before that. I find it horrible that the people coming over from the land bridge displaced and killed these animals with no remorse.

when we're talking about "who discovered a place" . we're often talking about humans... therefore its the natives who discovered it... columbus was the first WESTERN man that discovered america,,

If I remember correctly, Columbus didn't land in America...he landed in present day Cuba and Puerto Rico...

[Maestro Minded]

the ones who discovered "america" were the natives.. they travelled from asia to america thousands and thousands of years ago, when the bond between asia and america was still above the water...

The Animals of the ice age were here before them. And the dinosaurs before that. I find it horrible that the people coming over from the land bridge displaced and killed these animals with no remorse.

when we're talking about "who discovered a place" . we're often talking about humans... therefore its the natives who discovered it... columbus was the first WESTERN man that discovered america,,

If I remember correctly, Columbus didn't land in America...he landed in present day Cuba and Puerto Rico...

yup


and traums's post is correct also... the first western man to discover america wasnt columbus

[M Dogg™]

If I remember correctly, Columbus didn't land in America...he landed in present day Cuba and Puerto Rico...

Not America the country, 'cause it's the United States of America, not America. America is the actual continent, so when they say who discovered America, they mean the actual continent.

[Trauma-san]

^ Yup Yup.