Posted on 05/16/2005 3:35:42 AM PDT by SteveH
If Ms Rees thinks that the big deal about Columbus was that he thought the world was round, then she's clearly no scholar.
Everybody knew that in Columbus's time. He thought the radius of the earth was smaller than it is, and so was emboldened to go looking for China (and found Cuba, if I remember correctly)
Oh! No!..The ChiCOMs will claim North/South America as theirs, like they claim Taiwan. /s off.
Muslims discovered America !!!
Because Zheng He was a Muslim Enuch.
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."
What balderdash! The difference between the Chinese and Viking "discoveries" of America and the Spanish was that the first two didn't stick around. The Spanish (and later English) did.
Probablity is that the Egyptians beat all of them to the "discovery" part of the equation.
Of course the Chinese discovered America. You need look no further than the San Francisco area to see remnants of the once great empire in America. Even the name of the colony, China Town, still bears witness to their early conquest of this continent.
I am convinced that there was a great deal more travel, exploration, and trade between early civilizations than we give them credit for. We all tend to think in terms of a Dark Ages European peasant family living in a hut, but it wasn't like that at all-- civilizations rose and fell with regularity. Periods like the peasants in the hut did occur, but there were other periods of a high degree of civilization, and we tend to foreget that.
“There are periods of time when people lose knowledge,” Rees said, citing the Dark Ages as an example in Western history.
Standard nonsense history from Rees concerning the history of the west.
However, its probably true the Chinese did come across the ocean, just as it is also likely that others like the Phoenicians did (how hard could it be if the Vikings made it in their primitive crafts?). There are too many good old maps pre-1500 showing the Americas, Antarctica, and Australia, as Charles Hapgood pointed out.
I bet they found people living here when they came ashore.
imho, one need not look back that far...
I agree. I even suspect that "some" of those civilizations were sufficiently old to have been around during the last Ice Age, and their sites are now well-submerged. I find the notion that there was at least one such in the East Indies/Malaysia area that is theorized to have been the source from which civilization spread from into Egypt and Mesopotamia, was well as lesser known examples further east--the diaspora having been initiated by the flooding of the home of the "core civilization" at the end of the last Ice Age. I think there are one or two articles here at FR that allude to this.
They are making that claim! But the vikings were here first.
Viking Activity in Missouri, Kansas City lies at the edge of the area that was once explored by Vikings who came down from the north, through Hudson Bay. At that time, the northern Midwest was much lower in elevation, probably close to sea level. The Vikings left evidence of their explorations when and where ever they tied up their long boats. Numerous Viking mooring stones have been discovered in Minnesota, Western Iowa, and as far south as Joplin Missouri. These are identical to Viking mooring stones that can be found along the Scandinavian and European coasts and inland rivers where the Vikings traveled and left their mark. Some of the Vikings left inscriptions chiseled in stone using runic writing, and even dated their visits to the second millennium of the "Year of our LORD." Since the ice sheets have receded and melted, the land of the upper Midwest has bounced back up, i.e., it has risen in elevation, so that it is no longer at sea level.
Beat me to it.
What's more the opposition to Columbus's underestimate of the earth's circumference, was based on classical estimates (done by one of the librarians of the Museum (a.k.a. the Library of Alexandria) ) which were only superceded in accuracy in the 20th century.
Why would those sites be submerged? The opposite is true. they would be on high and dry land now, because as evidenced by the viking mooring rocks, the massive glacial ice sheet pressed the continent down. Much of our coastlines as we now know them were under water way back then. As the ice recedes, the continent rizes up. Tetonic plates 'float'.
Since the Chinese discovered America first, they now have a historical claim. America is no a renegade province that must accept rule from Beijin. To impose it's will, China will make long terms plans to hold American capital and displace local American manufacturing in otrder to make America dependent on the Chinese for imports America no longer produces. Wait, that's already happened.
Where did the Chinese come from? Weren't the Mongols there first? maybe the Chinese are actualy decendants of the Japanese, or a blend of Mongols and Japanese.
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