Posted on 07/30/2006 8:17:06 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Cape Breton-born architect Paul Chiasson says... there's a road, a three-kilometre-long wall that snakes down a hill and stone platforms, all of which look similar to Chinese structures. In his book, The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered North America, Chiasson concludes that explorers from China built the settlement. The claim was so provocative, David Christianson, curator of archeology with the Nova Scotia Museum, and four other archeologists headed out to the site to investigate for themselves. They concluded there was no settlement at all... The archeologists say Chiasson's wall is really a fire break from the mid-20th century... [T]he road is not Chinese either, as other researchers in Cape Breton provided exact dates of when it was built... As for the stone, the archeologists say the clean surfaces suggest it was not cut at all, as would be the case if settlers shaped their environment... In the end, the five archeologists all agreed there was no human settlement in the area, Chinese or otherwise.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
The Island of Seven Cities:
Where the Chinese Settled
When They Discovered America
by Paul ChiassonThe Island of Seven Cities:
Where the Chinese Settled
When They Discovered America
by Paul ChiassonWhen China Ruled the Seas:
The Treasure Fleet of the
Dragon Throne, 1405-1433
by Louise Levathes1421:
The Year China
Discovered America
by Gavin Menzies
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If the Zheng He trade expedition reached North America, where are the North American artifacts in China? No corn, no potatoes, nothing. Where are the chinese trade items in North America?
The Norse were in the north, and left junk all over the place. Supposedly, the chinese were in both the north and south, and left absolutely nothing? I'm not buying it.
Uhh.
If the Chinese reached North America, their relics would be a lot more likely to be found in British Columbia than in Novia Scotia.
:') Not that I buy it either, but the Norse contact has been known for over a century, but it wasn't until 1966 that remains of a Norse settlement in N America were found (that were widely accepted that is).
While it is true that the remains of the settlement were only found fairly recently, there were other Norse artifacts found in N.A. long before that. Buttons in New England, pre-Columbian iron artifacts in N.E. America, butternuts way south of where they should be, etc. That was what led archaeologists to search for Norse settlements.
People just can't move around without leaving trash wherever they go. We can't go someplace new without picking something up. If we come across somebody who has something that we don't, and we have something that they don't, some sort of trade inevitably occurs. It always has.
The Norse hardly traded with the locals at all (and were only driving longboats), and yet stuff that they made has shown up hundreds of miles away from their settlements. The Chinese supposedly launched a trade expedition with 450' ships, with the specific purpose of establishing new trade routes. They left nothing in North or South America, and they brought nothing back with them.
All that way, with thousands of men, and they never even used the little boys room? ;-)
The alleged map from Zheng He's expedition includes the Gulf of Mexico, and the eastern seaboard. Supposedly, they explored the Americas on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides. From the part of the expedition that actually was documented, it would have been closer for them to hit the eastern side of N & S America than the western side. They went all the way to SE Africa.
Around the horn and across the Atlantic would be a more logical route than clear back across the Pacific. That expedition was very well documented. There is no mention of them ever going around the horn, let alone crossing either ocean.
There are even some serious questions as to whether a 450' wooden ship could even survive anything other than coastal waters. With a wooden ship, bigger=better only works up to a certain point. 450' is beyond that point. Big water would have beaten them to pieces.
The North Atlantic especially.
The whole Ming fleet story is absolutely fascinating. Points out perhaps better than anything else the differences between Chinese and European cultures, and why Western civ came to dominate the world.
Of course, we may be in the early stages of the process of surrendering everything we've built back to the barbarians.
This is another reason that I seriously doubt that the Chinese ventured to the Americas. Zheng He was Muslim, as were many of his men. They spread Islam everywhere they traded. There is no indication of Islam having been introduced (or even mentioned) anywhere in the Americas in pre-Columbian times.
Could you imagine if Islam had been incorporated into the Aztec or Mayan religions of the time? Shuuudddeeerrrr...
So what you're saying is, we need to look for the remains of Chinese outhouses... ;')
I don't think too highly of Menzies' ideas (or this topic's derivative book). There's a recent topic about an upcoming dive on a 600 year old Chinese wreck near an island off Africa. The Chinese made it to western Africa, and were not the first to do so, so at least that has a shot of being worthwhile.
In ancient times, the Chinese sent a ship to Mesopotamia, an embassy to the Roman Empire, and just missed (Trajan died right after completing the drive to the Persian Gulf, and his successor Hadrian withdrew). The Han court records show a Roman representative (arrived by sea) during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Probably most of the contact between east and west in antiquity was through middlemen, but there's been some evidence (like the Han court record) of direct contact.
Plans to dig up Chinese ship on
Daily Nation | 7/28/2006 | Abdulsamad Ali
Posted on 07/28/2006 1:06:41 PM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1673848/posts
It was a tongue in cheek comment, but reasonable in a bit of a twisted sort of sense. Zheng He's fleet had 30,000 men. It was a trading expedition. They didn't pick up any trade, and they didn't leave any trade behind. At the very least, they had to go to the bathroom after such a long voyage. 30,000 guys taking a dump? Anybody could find it. ;-)
whoops.
"The Chinese made it to western Africa"
s/b
"The Chinese made it to eastern Africa"
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