Posted on 03/04/2002 3:24:49 PM PST by blam
Zheng He's ship (400ft) compared to Columbus's (85ft).
Might be something to it.
Zheng He (1371-1435), or Cheng Ho, is arguably China's most famous navigator. Starting from the beginning of the 15th Century, he traveled to the West seven times.
For 28 years, he traveled more than 50,000km and visited over 30 countries, including Singapore. Zheng He died in the tenth year of the reign of the Ming emperor Xuande (1435) and was buried in the southern outskirts of Bull's Head Hill (Niushou) in Nanjing.
In 1985, during the 580th anniversary of Zheng He's voyage, his tomb was restored. The new tomb was built on the site of the original tomb and reconstructed according to the customs of Islamic teachings, as Zheng He was a Muslim.
At the entrance to the tomb is a Ming-style structure, which houses the memorial hall. Inside are paintings of the man himself and his navigation maps. To get to the tomb, there are newly laid stone platforms and steps. The stairway consists of 28 stone steps divided into four sections with each section having seven steps. This represents Zheng He's seven journeys to the West. The Arabic words "Allah (God) is great" are inscribed on top of the tomb.
(OOPS!)
Might be something to it.
George Carter agrees with your friend.
Chinese who could sail around the world could also have sailed up the Mississippi!
But, I digress and leap ahead of my story. The Sioux Indian sign language uses the human body to configure ideographs virtually identical to the Shang Dynasty characters. As late as 1541 people speaking several Sioux dialects lived in the vicinity of Cahokia. Witnesses at Pacaha's Town (Terre Haute, or "quaking earth") report that no one lived in the Great Plains at the time because there were too many buffalo.
OK, now back on track. The Chinese presence at Cahokia is apparant. There is a variety of brown (or river) birch that lives in Southern Indiana. It grows straight with little prompting and does not break up into clumps. People from Korea have reported to me that they have an identical, and very useful, type of brown birch growing in Korea, but all the others break up into clumps, just like here. I have often wondered who brought the seeds for those birch trees to the Ohio Valley.
The Zuni Enigma
Did a group of thirteenth-century Japanese journey to the American Southwest, there to merge with the people, language, and religion of the Zuni tribe?
For many years, anthropologists have understood the Zuni in the American Southwest to occupy a special place in Native American culture and ethnography. Their language, religion, and blood type are startlingly different from all other tribes. Most puzzling, the Zuni appear to have much in common with the people of Japan.
In a book with groundbreaking implications, Dr. Nancy Yaw Davis examines the evidence underscoring the Zuni enigma, and suggests the circumstances that may have led Japanese on a religious quest-searching for the legendary "middle world" of Buddhism-across the Pacific and to the American Southwest more than seven hundred years ago.
Nancy Yaw Davis holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Washington. Author of numerous articles, she has long researched the history and cultures of the native peoples of North America. Her company, Cultural Dynamics, is located in Anchorage, Alaska, where she lives.
At L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, are the remains of a 500 year old Viking colony.
Which is also nothing to the point.
Neither venture had any but the most transient effect on history.
---max
What about the Irish, Ogam, petroglyphs found in a cave in West Virginia's, Wyoming County in 1983. These Irish/Runic writings are dated about AD 500 to AD 800. The story of these findings were printed in the State of West (by God) Virginias magazine, "Wonderful West Virginia".
Ancient Irish legends have always told of "St. Brendans Fair Isle", far off to the West.
If you ask me, and I know you aren't, the ChiComs are a bit late in their boast.
Don't ya' know.
Should have said 1,000 year old Viking colony.
The Adena People
The Adena folk were unusually tall and powerfully built; women over six feet tall and men approaching heights of seven feet have been discovered.
It would seem that a band of strikingly different people of great presence and majesty had forced their way into the Ohio Valley from somewhere about 1000 B.C. - Robert Silverberg
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