[Ken522]

If the Chinese were so advanced 600 years ago, why did they slow down and let the West beat them??

[xcamel]

Where exactly do they hatch these crackpots?

Everyone knows it all came from Atlantis...

[FlingWingFlyer]

It sounds like someone has a thing for the Chinese.

[YCTHouston]

I’m sure the Chinese empire was just rushing to give technology to the West.

[Greysard]

Now he says a Chinese fleet brought encyclopedias of technology undiscovered by the West to Italy in 1434

What is the chance that nobody in Italy paid any attention to a visit of a *Chinese* fleet ? It's not like Italians were illiterate, or had no paper, or didn't care about shipbuilding. Any such visit would be documented by hundreds of historians and statesmen.

Considering that nothing could happen in Italy back then without the local prince knowing it and approving it (and lives of these princes are well documented) we'd definitely hear about a Chinese ambassador. The Chinese embassy wouldn't disappear overnight, and Chinese goods would be on Italian market, and so on.

The linked article is actually right on target - the guy writes sensationalist stuff and sells his books to millions of idiots. Given that there are plenty of idiots, he is on the right track to wealth and prosperity. I personally prefer science fiction - at least I know what I'm paying for.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

The Chinese have a well recoded history, why does it not mention such a voyage.

[A Balrog of Morgoth]

Gavin Menzies sparked headlines across the globe in 2002 with the claim that Chinese sailors reached America 70 years before Christopher Columbus.

I can debunk this claim with one word: disease

If the Chinese visited America with one of their massive fleets, why no subsequent epidemics of Eurasian diseases? Why was the native population decimated by disease everywhere they had contact with Europeans, yet emerged unscathed from an earlier Chinese visit.

Menzie is full of crap.

[grey_whiskers]

Anti-Chinese-suckup-revisionism Sarcasm Torpedo ARMED.

Or according to one online translator, 諷刺 魚雷. FIRE!!

It must have been Falun Gong.

Long before Mao, too.

Cheers!

[SunkenCiv]

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[KayEyeDoubleDee]

I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there wasn't a lot more intermingling of the cultures than we've been led to believe.

For instance, there's some growing evidence that Christianity made its way to China a long, long time ago:

Research: Christianity popular among China's Tang Dynasty citizens
2008-02-27
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/27/content_7675507.htm

Archaeologists Work to Save Chinese Site With Christian Traces
Wednesday, February 07, 2001
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln270/ChicagoTribune-article.htm

Christianity in China, Pre-modern History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China#Pre-modern_History

And there's some bizarre new evidence that the Scots [of all people] somehow committed miscegenation with the peoples of northern Siberia:

New statistical method throws up ancestry surprises
2008-05-26
GOOGLE CACHE

[BenLurkin]

I got about two hundred pages into this book...

I'm pretty certain Menzies is a crackpot.

[Travis McGee]

Chinese scientists also invented electricity and light bulbs, but the dastardly lamp oil industrial complex stole the patents and buried them to keep their monopoly.

[camle]

a chinese fleet going to ITaly would certainly have to take thte long way around. there was no direct sea route to china back then - they’d have to go around the horn, at the very least. than find the relatively narrow gap at gibraltar and enter the mediterranean and finally come up against italy - whilst missing every other landfall.

sure.