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3 March , 2003
The New World History
Is it possible that the world history we've all been taught is incorrect?
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Our schoolbooks have told us that Columbus found America - the New World - in 1492; that Magellan was the first to sail through the Strait of Magellan at the bottom of South America in 1520, connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans and opening the world to trade; and that Cook criss-crossed the Pacific, discovering New Zealand and exploring Antarctica in the 1770s. Although it's true that these Europeans accomplished these great and brave journeys, the author, Gavin Menzies, is convinced that they were all retracing the steps of even greater, but now forgotten, sailors who had gone before them.
Menzies, a retired British Naval officer, writes that decades and even centuries before these men and others made their famous discoveries, enormous fleets of over a hundred ships carrying 28,000 men had sailed from China at the direction of emperor Zhu Di during the Ming Dynasty, establishing trade, leaving behind colonies and charting essentially the entire Earth with great accuracy. The maps made by these Chinese explorers made their way into the hands of Portuguese mariners and were used by the later mariners, who took the credit for "discoveries" which they knew to be false.
The proof, which Menzies reveals with the relish of a great storyteller trapping a reader in a breathless detective novel, is everywhere, it turns out. The truth has always been obvious but no one has bothered to pay any attention to it.
| The Chinese had been sailing extensively for centuries and established thriving trade routes all along South Asia and through the Indian Ocean to Arabia and south African countries. |
First of all, there are a number of well-known historical maps that Menzies was first fascinated by, which were drawn prior to the voyages of the various European explorers but yet show with accuracy various aspects of lands that had not yet been visited. Someone had to have seen these places - Caribbean islands, the coast of South America (including the waterway that would later be known as the Strait of Magellan), Australia, New Zealand, both the east and west coats of the African Continent, even Greenland - earlier to have mapped them so accurately. One early European map of Patagonia is even illustrated with accurate renderings of animals that are only indigenous to that region, even though no Europeans had gone there at the time. Yet, descriptions of the same animals show up in an ancient Chinese book of curious animals around the world.
Second, even the accounts of the European sailors acknowledge previous travelers to these lands, with references to landmarks that they had been told to watch for, and statements about the passage ahead that had already been written down. Magellan calms his frightened sailors at the mouth of the strait that there's nothing to fear because he has been told about the passageway to the Pacific. Remember, at the time of the first European ocean explorations, the Earth was thought to be flat and that all manner of monsters lay in wait for hapless ships before they fell off the edge of the world. They didn't develop the ability to determine latitude and longitude for hundreds of years after the Chinese. The Chinese, on the other hand, had been sailing extensively for centuries and established thriving trade routes all along South Asia and through the Indian Ocean to Arabia and south African countries.
Third, there are vestiges of Chinese trade and travel throughout the world in what would be considered unlikely places - Asian strains of animals and plant life including distinctive Asian chickens and rice throughout the Americas. This cross-fertilization went both ways, with flora and fauna from the "new world" being spread throughout the world. Hence, when Europeans came to Hawaii they found a host of crops already established that actually were not indigenous to the islands, including sweet potatoes, sugar cane, bamboo, coconut palm, arrowroot, yam, bananas and ginger. And, crops such as maize that were originally from South America found their way to Asia, with records of Magellan two centuries later reporting that he loaded maize onto his ships in the Philippines.
 The Jean Rotz map of 1542 shows Australia two centuries before James Cook sailed to the continent. |
Fourth, there are anecdotal records of these
Chinese voyages, with natives peoples from New Zealand to California and
even New England passing down stories of different-colored people in ships
as big as houses arriving wearing colorful silk robes that reached to
their ankles. Plus, DNA testing of certain native tribes have discovered
centuries of Chinese ancestry mixed in, presumably from people who were
either shipwrecked or left behind to establish colonies. In Mexico, there
is a long-established tradition of intricate, complicated lacquer ware
that uses techniques and design motifs and colors that are historically
Chinese - so much so that it's difficult to tell which is Chinese and
which is Mexican if pieces are placed side by side.
Fifth, Menzies has discovered a fascinating trail of artifacts that memorialize these early explorers, from mysterious stone monuments inscribed in languages including Tamil, to jade jewelry, carved statues and fine porcelain. There are also many wrecks scattered around the world of the distinctive type of ships that the Chinese sailed in the 15th century; one shipwreck in California even revealed stores of rice still in its hold.
Why, you might ask, if the Chinese did all these things in 1421, doesn't the world know about it, or the Chinese trumpet it? Because, as Menzies found out in his research, these "treasure ships" sent out by the emperor were so taxing to the country's resources that the next rulers forbid any further world exploration and eventually ended outside trade altogether, isolating China for centuries. Worse, most of the records of the treasure ships' voyages were destroyed, so the Chinese would have no history of them.
All of these facts make for fascinating reading, but also bring up some profound questions that make for fascinating thinking. Our concept of the world is so Euro-centric that it's hard to imagine, but what if the Chinese explorations continued and its colonies had lasted? Would New England be called New China? Would America be a Sino-centric country, with Asians, not Caucasians, in the majority?
Menzies isn't a kook, and he isn't alone in his suppositions. He embarked on his research as a hobby, and discovered a network of scientists and historians already had pointed out many of the same facts he puts into one huge book. So at the very least, future history books will have to be re-written and acknowledge the contributions of these amazing Chinese sailors to our knowledge of the world.
The book also made me think about the decision by Japan in the 1500s - a century after China - to isolate itself from the rest of the world. This year is the 150th anniversary of the reopening of Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry, when he sailed his "black ships" into Tokyo Bay. What if Japan had kept up with the world, and reached out beyond its island boundaries?
What would Japanese Americans be like today if Japanese sailors and merchants had arrived in American a hundred, or two hundred years, before the first immigrants landed in the 1880s?
More information about "1421" including updated news about the increasing evidence of the Chinese discoveries, is available on Gavin Menzies' Web site. The book is available everywhere, including Amazon.com.