Posted on 05/16/2005 3:35:42 AM PDT by SteveH
Were Chinese here first?
Shannon Brennan / sbrennan@newsadvance.com
May 15, 2005
Charlotte Rees is heiress to evidence that could turn world history upside down - if she can corroborate it.
She and her six siblings inherited maps from their father, a third-generation missionary born in China, that she says may show the Chinese had discovered America - and the rest of the world - as early as 2200 B.C.
“I’m ready for opposition,” said Rees, who lives in Forest. “Even when Columbus was saying the world was round, he had opposition.”
Rees, 59, will propound her theory Monday at a symposium at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., on Zheng He, an early Chinese explorer.
In addition to the maps, which depict lands that she argues could be North and South America, Rees says there is other evidence of a Chinese presence more than 3,700 years before Columbus set foot here.
Rees’ maps are actually Korean and date to the 16th century, but she believes they are replicas of Chinese maps dating to 2200 B.C.
John Hebert, chief of the Library of Congress’ Geography and Map Division, said the library has similar maps in its possession.
“She’s still trying to find out more completely what she has,” Hebert said. “… Her interpretations beyond that are her business.”
Hebert said there’s no doubt other seafaring explorers beat Columbus to this continent. There’s documented proof that the Vikings were in Labrador and Newfoundland about 1000 A.D. Hebert said once there is unquestionable proof that history needs rewriting, he’s all for it.
“That’s the stimulating thing about history,” he said.
Rees is hardly the first to propose that the Chinese predated Columbus on American soil. In 2002, retired British Royal Navy Capt. Gavin Menzies published a controversial book titled, “1421: The Year China Discovered America.”
Menzies has many detractors, including Hebert, who said the book represents “fairly shoddy research.”
Nonetheless, Menzies is one of the participants in the Library of Congress symposium. Rees met Menzies last year after contacting him about her maps and research. She said she told him, “You’re putting too much history in too short of a time.”
In 1421, for example, the Chinese already had five-story sailing vessels. Rees argues they must have started with much smaller vessels long before.
Rees said Menzies has been both receptive to her work and helpful with her efforts to get a publisher, and acknowledges he might not have the complete story.
“Menzies told me he didn’t think there’s a chance in a million my father is wrong,” she said.
Contacted by e-mail, Menzies said he does believe the maps show that the Chinese knew of the whole world by 2200 B.C.
“Mrs. Rees contacted me in early 2003 shortly after my book was published,” Menzies wrote. “At the time I was under heavy attack by critics and her father’s maps were an unwelcome distraction.”
Since then, however, Menzies said, he has been overwhelmed with e-mails to his Web site, which made him realize he had oversimplified how America was populated by East Asians who came by sea.
“The Harris collection of maps will, in the long run, cause an even more fundamental and agonizing (sic) reappraisal of American history than my book has,” he wrote.
Rees said her purpose is to further the work of her father, who bought the books of maps in 1972 at an antique store in Seoul, South Korea.
Hendon Harris, a third-generation missionary, was born in China in 1916. He later became a Baptist missionary himself. Rees spent several of her formative years in Taiwan.
Harris, who could read and speak Chinese, realized the maps in his collection matched descriptions in the Shan Hai Jing, the Classic of Mountains and Seas that describes early Chinese explorations by the first real Chinese emperor, Yu, in about 2200 B.C.
“He sent teams out to the ends of the Earth,” Rees said of Yu.
In 1975, Harris’ book, “The Asiatic Fathers of America,” was published in Taiwan. He claimed the Chinese discovered America between 2650 and 2200 B.C.
Harris died unexpectedly of a stroke in 1981 at age 64, and his book hadn’t gotten much attention. In fact, one of Rees’ sisters didn’t know what to do with 1,600 leftover copies, and she finally sold them for $1 apiece. Rees wishes they had them back. She recently found a copy on the Internet for $150. Word about Harris’ book and maps is getting out.
After Harris’ death, the maps ended up with Rees’ brother, Hendon, who kept them under his bed in California until 2003, when Rees decided it was time the family did something with them.
She and her husband, David, had retired in 2002, and she felt she finally had time to devote to her father’s work. Rees said any of her siblings would have been as well or better qualified to pursue her father’s work. But she was the one with the time.
“I didn’t realize the amount of time it would be either,” she said, adding she has spent countless hours in the Forest Library, where she said she can order almost any book she needs from around the country.
The Harris maps went straight from California to the Library of Congress, where they will remain for the foreseeable future. Rees said they are too valuable for her to keep at home. The maps are not on public display, but PBS is planning to do a special on the symposium, Rees said.
Rees knows she will have a difficult job convincing the world that the Chinese were here by 2200 B.C. The Chinese themselves have long believed that Shan Hai Jing was largely mythical, Rees said, but they also acknowledge that myth and fact were often merged.
“If it didn’t contain mythology, it would be suspect,” she said.
Rees has found support for her theory in the academic world - from Beijing to Wake Forest.
Cyclone Covey, professor emeritus of history at Wake Forest University, said if the maps are authenticated, they could prove what many, including himself, believe.
“(The Chinese) were familiar with America and down to Central America at least,” Covey said in a telephone interview. “… Charlotte realizes the Chinese were here before 1421.”
Covey said the Shan Hai Jing provided incredible detail about geographic formations and distances.
“Her father’s map … seems to be a copy of the original that came with the Shan Hai Jing,” Covey said.
There are some differences between the Shan Hai Jing and the Harris maps, which include writing in Korean and Japanese, he said, but those inscriptions were likely added to the maps later.
Those differences, however, are what Hebert said need to be thoroughly researched.
The Harris maps were written in classical Chinese, Rees said. A professor in Beijing has dated the maps to the Ming Dynasty, around the late 1500s. About 72 percent of the place names are the same as those in the Shan Hai Jing, she said.
Some of the descriptions don’t seem mythical.
“The maps show what Father believed was the Grand Canyon and Mt. McKinley,” Rees said.
The maps indicate the Bright Chasm Mountains roughly where Arizona is now and the Measuring Skies Mountain in Alaska, she said.
Her maps and the Shan Hai Jing aren’t the only evidence of a Chinese presence in America, Rees said.
Chinese writing by Tong Fan Tso, in the third century B.C., describes a continent about 10,000 li or 3,300 miles wide, bounded by vast oceans, with huge trees. The Chinese called it Fu Sang, “The Land of the East.”
If these discoveries occurred, how did the Chinese lose track of them? Rees said China shut down not long after the voyages of Zheng He, the admiral who is the subject of the Library of Congress symposium.
The Chinese burned maps and made it a capital offense to go to sea, she said.
“There are periods of time when people lose knowledge,” Rees said, citing the Dark Ages as an example in Western history.
Zheng He was a Chinese explorer and major figure in the history of navigation, who undertook a series of expeditions between 1405 and 1433. With a fleet of 200 ships and a crew of 28,000 men, his voyages are considered the largest maritime expeditions in world history.
Hebert said there is no evidence that Zheng He made it to America, only to the Indian Ocean and the East African coast.
Whether Zheng He sailed to America, Rees points to evidence that one-quarter million Chinese went to sea about 1100 B.C. at the end of the Shang Dynasty, and most never came back. If you look at Olmec writing, some of the characters seem virtually identical to Chinese. She said she believes the Olmec - the ancient people of Mexico - were Chinese.
Rees has also found ancient descriptions of animals that sound like the opossum, coyote, peccary, armadillo and bald eagle - animals found only in America.
“How could they have known all this if they weren’t here?” Rees asked.
Actually, there have been other clues to Chinese visitation of the Americas in the Ancient World:
1. Ancient Central american jade carvings found in various places in Mexico and the Southwest that seem to depict oriental looking people.
2. A mess of round, hollowed out stones found off the coats of Washington or Oregon, which some have theorized might have been used as ballast stones or anchors.
3. Renditions of dragons in Central american art.
Granted, that's pretty weak evidence on it's face, but it does not preclude the possibility that he Chinese did come here. However, it was common Chinese practice to rewrite official history on an Emperor's whim, destroy records that were considered politically dangerous, and to forbid travel beyond the borders of Imperial China, so, the truth may never be known.
Zheng He, by the way, was apparently a busy guy. The few survivng, reliable records have him travelling all over Southeast Asia by sea. His voyages revolved around demonstrating Chinese benevolence by delivering gifts all over the continent. If he's the guy that did "bump into" America, it must have been a hell of a storm or navigation error that did it --- the Chinese were not much on exploration. Their voyages centered more on reiforcing China's image as the center of the universe --- if you're going to do that, you go to known places, you don't go off in search of the unknown.
A good source of information on this kind of stuff is a book entitled "The Discoverers" by Daniel Boorstein. Zheng He's voyages are given quite a lot of ink in there.
That would put a Clovis spear through the hypothesis' of Jared Diamond in "Guns, Germs and Steel." Opposition is probably the least of what Ms. Rees will encounter.
You are aware that the Chicoms have used less evidence than this to "reunite" a "breakaway province" before. :)
"Whether Zheng He sailed to America, Rees points to evidence that one-quarter million Chinese went to sea about 1100 B.C. at the end of the Shang Dynasty, and most never came back. If you look at Olmec writing, some of the characters seem virtually identical to Chinese. She said she believes the Olmec - the ancient people of Mexico - were Chinese."
Do the ethnic olmec still exist, or their descendants? If so, DNA testing of them or the ethnic people living in their historical area might provide some clues about this.
A lot more seafaring happend. The miration to Australia 560,000 years ago makes that clear.
The earth isn't that old.
Wrong. The rise in sea level far exceeded the "flotation" of tectonic plates. Evidence is the MANY sites they are finding along the extended river deltas in India, the far east, and around the world that were submerged by the rise of sea level.
The southern continents and plate edges may have been raised up because of the northern parts of the plates being pushed down. That would possibly explain that. Same for migration to Australia being much more recent due to all of Indonesia being much higher. As the glaciers melted and the northern contenets springing back up, the southern plates went back down. Think of the earth as a liquid filled ball. Push in one area, another has to rise.
The Portuguese discovered the Azores in the early 1420's. The Azores are west of Portugal some 800 miles out in the Atlantic. It's thought Spanish & Portuguese fishermen were fishing the Grand Banks off Newfoundland even earlier than 1420. In any case Columbus knew he wasn't in any jeopardy of sailing off the edge of the world when he set sail westward from Cadiz in 1492.
I was thinking of anything on northern continents when I made that first post, So thinking about it, and to prove your observation of ancient ruins being under water, this makes more sense. The sea water isn't raising, it's plate movement as the earth maintains it's globe shape.
Lief Ericson beat them both to North America!!!!!
This makes sense the American Indians obviously learned scalping from the Chinese and it's also the reason they used chopsticks up until 1492, when the fork was imported.
I think so too, at least as far as North America is concerned.
Vikings were fishing off the coast of Newfie land long before the Portuguese and Spanish. There are old viking burial sites all along the Nelson river, so they were well into the Hudsons bay exploring, not just off the coast, fishing. They were bored of fishing by that time, and set off exploring :o)
"A lot more seafaring happend. The miration to Australia 560,000 years ago makes that clear."
I must have been on drugs when I wrote that.
"A lot more seafaring happend. The migration to Australia 50,000 years ago makes that clear."
Interesting correlation to an account in the Book of Mormon of a group that migrated to the Americas around 2200 B.C. LDS scholar Dr. Hugh Nibley examined historical, anthropological, and archaeological similarities in his book:
Lehi in the Desert/The World of the Jaredites/There Were Jaredites, Vol 5; Deseret Books; ISBN 0875791328 (Hardcover, 1988)
GW
I've never heard that one before, North American Indians using chop sticks? Honestly, I have lived around northern Indian reserves all my life and have never heard that one before.
Well it started to stop in 1492 so you wouldn't see it today.
Still too old. I'd say around 1000 b.c. or even later
Ah so!!
I hear alot of folklore, and haven't heard such a thing. Maybe
you are talking about a different kind of Indian, maybe the inca (?) from way south?
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