[SteveH]

1421 (Chinese Discovery of America)

[EggsAckley]

*ping*

[afnamvet]

"a theory that could"

Four words that usually precede the rewriting of history.

[REAGANBELONGS TO THE AGES]

The problem with Chinese explorers is that after you explore you want to explore again soon after.

[Clorinox]

I was under the impression that the Western hemisphere had been discovered almost 20,000 years earlier by nomads.

Otherwise no one would have been living here when the chinese/spanish arrived :)

[Semper Paratus]

So why aren't there pogodas throughout California.

[CzarNicky]

Chinese discover America. Decide it is not worth mentioning.

[OPS4]

So thats why we have so many chinese eateries on the wast coast. LOL

Ops4 God BLess America!

[gedeon3]

The muslins are also saying they came to America first; others say the vikings came long before columbus.

I think chirac discovered America when he was a young man 700 years ago.

[DannyTN]

So what. We know Vikings discovered North America before Columbus. But it was of little consequence.

Same thing with China. So what if they discovered it. If they did, they thought it was a worthless discovery.

It's like finding out Plato discovered relativity and then didn't tell anybody.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks SteveH.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.

[SunkenCiv]

I've never been a huge fan of this one, although I do have the book. The Americas have been discovered many times. Because of the era of Columbus, communication was never lost again (well, at least, not so far).

Columbus also made a big impression precisely because he claimed to have discovered a way to China by sailing west. Prior to his discovery of China (smirk) the circumference of the Earth had been known for more than a thousand years to be larger than the figure Columbus used. Columbus began to doubt that he'd reached China after all, figuring he'd found islands that lay just off the shore of China, and clinging to his eccentric view that the Earth's circumference was much smaller.

Vespucci, on seeing the Orinoco during one of Columbus' voyagers, realized there was too much water coming from inland for the landmass to be some smallish island, and realized it was a continent. Others came to that conclusion, and Vespucci got the whole thing named after him. Not bad.

Columbus had visited Iceland prior to his 1492 voyage, doing research, having heard about the lands west of the Atlantic. Those lands were known to the Scandinavians, and probably most other medieval maritime peoples of western Europe who pursued cod for European markets. There is sufficient evidence that navigation of the Atlantic took place before the Middle Ages, but again, not much in the way of documentary evidence in Europe.

The Phoenician tin mines were probably in Cornwall. The "Periplus of Hanno" indicates a voyage of exploration at least as far south in Africa as Mount Cameroon, the only volcano visible from the Atlantic and active in ancient times.

Herodotus records a Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa, openly doubting the one detail that makes it bona fide -- that the Sun was on the right (the Phoenicians were sailing far south of the equator). These Phoenicians sailed under the auspices of the Egyptian pharaoh, making a counterclockwise run, and returning via the Pillars of Hercules. Another reference in Herodotus, to "shoals" in the waters far to the south, which make them unnavigable, suggests ancient knowledge of Antarctic icebergs.

Carthaginian and other Phoenician ruins, coins, tools, pottery, and other remains are found wherever they've been suspected in western Africa. On Mogador (Berber "Amegdul") a piece of pottery bearing the name of Mago, general of Carthage, was found along with Corinthian pottery of circa 7th c BC, perhaps predating this voyage of Hanno. It's clear that more digging needs to be done. The very currents that snagged Thor Heyerdahl's reed boat and carried it to the Americas flow out of the area west of Africa known to have been frequented by the Phoenicians.

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1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies

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[JimSEA]

I have read the book but wouldn't put finished to the theory yet one way or the other. What I do find interesting is what the Chinese Imperial Bureaucracy did with all the discoveries. In short, they decided that all that knowledge was a threat to their power and thus unnecessary. They burned the fleet, the maps and many of the sailors.

The Muslim who headed the expedition (for all his genius) was less a Muslim that a eunuch servant of the Imperial government.

[O.C. - Old Cracker]

I am opposed to the Chinese discovering America.

[CholeraJoe]

Pshaw. Everyone knows the Vikings discovered America in the 11th century.