Chinese to America before Columbus?

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August 4, 2002

Posted Mar 04.02

Evidence Chinese First To Circumnavigate World

[Original headline: Chinese to America before Columbus?]

LONDON -- History books may need to be rewritten in the light of new evidence that Chinese explorers had discovered most parts of the world by the mid-15th century.

 

This week, an amateur historian will expound his theory, backed up by charts, ancient artifacts and anthropological research, that when Columbus discovered America in 1492, he was 72 years too late.

 

And so were other explorers, such as Cook, Magellan and Da Gama, whose heroic voyages took them to Australia, South America and India. Instead, according to Gavin Menzies, a former submarine commander who has spent 14 years charting the movements of a Chinese expeditionary fleet between 1421 and 1423, the eunuch admiral, Zheng He, was there first.

 

According to Menzies, it was Zheng He, in his colossal multi-masted ships stuffed with treasure, silks and porcelain, who made the first circumnavigation of the world, beating the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan by a century.

 

Menzies will present his findings at the Royal Geographical Society on March 15 before an invited audience of more than 200 diplomats, academics, naval officers and publishers. Their initial reaction, based on an outline of his thesis, ranges from excitement to skepticism. But if the number of acceptances -- 85 per cent -- is anything to go by, he will not be ignored.

 

He originally intended to write a book about the significance of the year 1421 around the world. While researching it in Venice, he was shown a planisphere, dated 1459, which included southern Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. Yet the Cape was not "discovered" as a sea route by Vasco da Gama until 1497. On the planisphere was a note in medieval Phoenician about a voyage around the Cape to the Cape Verde Islands in 1420 and a picture of a Chinese junk. Menzies felt he was on to something.

 

Using Chinese star charts and maps that pre-date the expeditions of Cook, Magellan, de Gama and Columbus, he has reconstructed what he believes is the epic voyage of Zheng He. He says his knowledge of astro-navigation helped him to work out that the Chinese, using the brilliant star Canopus to chart their course, had sailed close to the South Pole.

 

He determined their latitude and went on to find literary and archaeological evidence to show that the Chinese had effectively circumnavigated the world.

 

Menzies, 64, admits that his greatest fear was being ridiculed. "When I started, I was terrified people would think I was a crank. But although my claim is complicated and stands history on its head, I am confident of my ground. What nobody has explained is why the European explorers had maps. Who drew the maps? There are millions of square miles of ocean. It required huge fleets to chart them. If you say it wasn't the Chinese, with the biggest fleets and ships in the world, then who was it?"

 

Admiral Sir John Woodward, who served on submarines with Menzies in the 1960s and will be at his lecture, describes him as a brilliant maverick. "I was his teacher on a commanding officers' qualifying course and he was the cleverest, sharpest and best I had seen," he said. "He is not some mad eccentric but a rational man, good at analysis -- and he certainly knows all about charts."

 

Chinese ocean-going supremacy in the first half of the 15th century is not in question. The expeditionary junks were three times the size of Nelson's Victory and dwarfed the 16th century ocean-going European caravels. Under his patron, the Yong-le Emperor Zhui Di, Zheng He made seven great voyages to bring foreigners into China's tribute system.

 

When he returned in October, 1423, China was in political and economic chaos. The treasure fleet, now considered frivolous, was mothballed, admirals pensioned off and shipyards closed.

 

Although most of the records of Zheng He's voyage were expunged, a few maps and star charts survived. Menzies believes they were taken to Venice by a merchant traveller, Nicolo da Conti, who had joined one of the Chinese junks in India. In his travel book published in 1434, da Conti claims to have sailed to China via Australia -- 350 years before Captain Cook.

 

Menzies argues that, on his way through Venice in 1428, the King of Portugal's eldest son obtained the salvaged maps and incorporated them into a map of the world. The most controversial part of his theory is that copies of parts of this mappa mundi were used by da Gama, Magellan and Cook. Some of these still survive in museums: Patagonia (1513), North America (1507), Africa (1502) and Asia and Australia (1542).

 

The letters and logs of the European explorers -- including Columbus -- certainly acknowledge that they had maps, says Menzies. "They knew where they were going before they set out."

 

Using his knowledge of winds and tides, Menzies has located what he believes are nine Chinese leviathans wrecked in the Caribbean in December 1421. Pictures of the hull ballast on the seabed show stones identical in shape and size to those found in a Chinese treasure ship recently excavated in the Philippines. Menzies declines to name the uninhabited island because he believes some of the ships may still contain treasure and he wants to investigate them.

 

Gillian Hutchinson, curator of the history of cartography at the National Maritime Museum, is not persuaded that there is a provable link between the Chinese maps and those the Europeans used. "It is possible," she says, "that Chinese geographical knowledge had reached Europe before the Age of Discovery. But Mr. Menzies is absolutely certain of it, and that makes it difficult to separate evidence from wishful thinking."

 

Diplomats of the countries whose early history may be affected by his thesis are reacting with a surprising degree of warmth. Gregory Baughen, first secretary at the New Zealand High Commission, says: "It sounds exciting. We're all ears. Chinese artefacts have been found around the coast for some time."

 

Luis de Sousa, press councillor at the Portuguese Embassy, says: "Magellan is in all the books and his descendants carry his name with pride. But if the Chinese circumnavigated the world first, which is quite possible, then let's give them their 15 minutes of limelight."

 

• Story originally published by:

Vancouver Sun / BC | Elizabeth Grice - Mar 04/02