[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.

[happygrl]

You nailed it.

I've read that 90% of the so-called "genocide" in the Western Hemisphere was actually disease.

The reduction of the natives also included a large amount of interbreeding. Apparently there is little of the original Y chromosome in North America natives, and the Rio Grande south are largely Mestizo populations, with pockets of Europeans and Indians.