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Did the Chinese discover America?
CNN ^ | January 13, 2003 | Adam Dunn

Posted on 01/13/2003 2:50:54 PM PST by NP-INCOMPLETE

Edited on 04/29/2004 2:01:55 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

NEW YORK (CNN) -- In his new book, "1421: The Year China Discovered America" (William Morrow), Gavin Menzies claims that a massive Chinese fleet of huge junks and support ships made a two-year circumnavigation of the globe, with extensive exploration of the Americas, nearly a century before Magellan and Columbus.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: china; discovery; gavinmenzies; godsgravesglyphs; history; navigation; navy
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To: NP-INCOMPLETE
"Yes. The White Man is Evil. where did that opinion come from?"

Liberal Decoder Ring.

21 posted on 01/13/2003 3:43:46 PM PST by VaBthang4
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To: NP-INCOMPLETE
What are you, stupid? Yes, Leif did "discover" America circa 1000AD; yes, Columbus did benefit from his discoveries - in terms of money, honors, and priviledges granted him by the Spanish crown.

More importantly, the Spanish crown gained control over massive amounts of new territory, greater than the greatest extent of any empire hitherto known to history. If that isn't a bit more substantial than a haphazard and fruitless trip to a new shore (which is what the Chinese trips were), I don't know what is.

The Chinese "treasure fleets" are hardly something new to history; historians have known about them for a long time. The claim that the Chinese circumnavigated the globe, however, is highly dubious. The Chinese admiral, Chen Ho (if memory serves; I may have his name wrong) left detailed records of where he traveled. He made no claims like what this author is claiming. I rather trust the word of the actual explorers over a johnny-come-lately who is gathering together a large hodge podge of disparate info, some dubious, some not.

The Chinese treasure fleets were massive Imperial Chinese boondoggles: impressive, but expensive, and they did not open up new trade routes, or do anything productive, unlike the early Portuguese explorations which were going on at the same time. The proof that these were a boondoggle was how easily the entire program was ended, and the treasure ships scrapped, once the Mandarins opposed to it were able to get in control and end the program. This was nothing like Europe, where exploration was done either privately or was financed as a private venture by the crown, with the numerous nations of Western Europe competing against each other for better trade routes and other advantages over each other.

Proof of which exploration program was important, and which was not: imagine if these Chinese expeditions had never taken place. Would the world be any different today? No; we would hardly notice the difference. The Chinese treasure fleets changed nothing; they are a footnote in history; impressive, but still just a footnote. Now, imagine if the European explorations had never happened. The entire history of the world, for all nations, would be radically altered. That is the difference.

22 posted on 01/13/2003 3:47:06 PM PST by Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
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To: VaBthang4
Its all about you, huh...
23 posted on 01/13/2003 3:47:53 PM PST by Blackyce
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To: ChiComConservative
I have the highest respect for the Chinese accomplishments. It's no accident that the language group that includes Chinese is spoken all the way from Hungary to Japan and (most recently discovered) a dialect from the Shang Dynasty in Mexico.

In fact, it is my opinion that some mixing of the Xiongnu and Caucasians produced the Picts of Scotland.

24 posted on 01/13/2003 3:48:01 PM PST by blam
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To: NP-INCOMPLETE
Did the Chinese discover America? I always heard it was Bob Hope..
25 posted on 01/13/2003 3:49:45 PM PST by exmoor
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To: UCANSEE2
You have a strange grasp of geological history. North and South America have existed in more or less their present forms, and have been joined together, for millions of years, longer than man himself has existed.
26 posted on 01/13/2003 3:49:48 PM PST by Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
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To: panaxanax
Species of redwood trees exist in both China and America for the same reason that a lot of other animal and plant species exist in both places. Also, both places still have climates conducive to the long term survival of redwood trees. Please don't tell me you meant to imply that the Chinese brought the redwoods to America. Redwoods have existed in both places for longer than man has existed, and in fact, redwoods themselves go way, way back to the early dinosaur periods. One by-product of redwoods evolving to a very large size, is that it made it harder for long necked dinosaurs to graze on their leaves.
27 posted on 01/13/2003 3:53:48 PM PST by Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
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To: ChiComConservative

Luzia is the oldest dated skeleton ever found in the Americas, Brazil, at 11,500 years old.

28 posted on 01/13/2003 3:56:33 PM PST by blam
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To: blam

Spirit Cave Man, the oldest mummy ever found in the Americas, 9,400 years old, found in Nevada.

29 posted on 01/13/2003 4:00:00 PM PST by blam
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To: NP-INCOMPLETE
Since they didn't do anything with the knowledge, does it really matter when or if they stumbled across the Americas?
30 posted on 01/13/2003 4:04:02 PM PST by Redcloak (Tag, you're it!)
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To: blam
Chinese is not related to either Hungarian or Japanese. Hungarian, or Magyar, is part of the Finno-Ugric language family, related to Finnish and a few other languages. There is some dispute as to how Finno-Ugric languages relate to the Altaic languages, which include Mongolian and Turkic language groups.

Chinese is not related to any of the above languages; it is part of the Sino-Tibetan language group.

Japanese is not related to Chinese; it may be related to Korean; possibly it may be distantly related to the Altaic languages.

Where you get the idea that any of the above are related to the Picts is beyond me. But just mention the word "Pict", and every kind of weird and harebrained theory is trotted forth. In fact, enough of Pictish has now been deciphered from inscriptions, to place Pictish in the Brythonic Celtic group.

But these pet theories never seem to die; everyone wants a piece of the action, no matter how improbable.

31 posted on 01/13/2003 4:06:50 PM PST by Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
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To: ChiComConservative

A link between Chinese and American cultures? The Olmec and the Shang.

32 posted on 01/13/2003 4:10:13 PM PST by blam
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To: NP-INCOMPLETE
I've read elsewhere, the "first White men " to view the Pacific coast found evidence of extensive Chinese trade contact, including fairly sophisticated docking facilities.
33 posted on 01/13/2003 4:10:16 PM PST by genefromjersey
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Comment #34 Removed by Moderator

To: NP-INCOMPLETE
I have no idea whether this hypothesis is true, but there's certainly no reason to dismiss it out of hand. The Chinese of that time certainly had good enough ships to make such trips--at least as good anything the Europeans had. Indeed, it was only the nutty bureaucracy of Chinese society that prevented them becoming one of the great colonizing powers of the Middle Ages, rivaling Spain, Portugal and England.
35 posted on 01/13/2003 4:22:20 PM PST by ArcLight
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To: Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
I just read yesterday, while doing research on the Xiongnu, that Japanese, Chinese and Magyar all belonged to the same language group. I looked but, unfortunately, I could not relocate it.
The Picts, that's another whole story, that I don't want to get into presently. (My theory is weak and I'm still working on it)
36 posted on 01/13/2003 4:25:21 PM PST by blam
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To: Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
Japanese is not related to Chinese; it may be related to Korean; possibly it may be distantly related to the Altaic languages.

It is almost certainly related to Korean (the most plausible explanation I've heard is that the Japanese came from one of the Three Kindoms while Korean comes from a different dialect but this is a very politically touchy topic -- more touchy than the question of who came to America first).

The Altaic languages are also probably related to the Uralic languages. From what I've seen looking at language families is that there is a Northern migration band that runs from Finland to Japan that involves Ural-Altaic languages and a Southern migration band that runs from Ireland to India and Western China that involves the Indo-European languages.

37 posted on 01/13/2003 4:50:05 PM PST by Question_Assumptions
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To: ChiComConservative
As a Chinese-American, and a conservative Republican, I definitely feel proud of these discoveries

Dunno about this author, but I could have told you about the Chinese voyages to America years ago, before this guy published. We have stone anchors left by Chinese vessels.

But the Chinese didn't discover America.

Before the Chinese, were the Vikings. Before the Vikings were the Phonecians, Egyptians and Celts.

38 posted on 01/13/2003 4:52:26 PM PST by DAnconia55
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To: blam
OK. As someone interested in Bronze Age history (including the Shang), I'll bite. What evidence is there of Shang Chinese in the Americas? Of course the Shang and later Aztecs would have been puh-fect together. Both loved a good human sacrifice or two -- or a hundred.
39 posted on 01/13/2003 4:53:26 PM PST by Question_Assumptions
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To: Question_Assumptions
"What evidence is there of Shang Chinese in the Americas? "

Click on the link in post #32.

40 posted on 01/13/2003 5:06:49 PM PST by blam
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