Book claims Chinese discovered America

UPI ^ | Published 1/7/2003 11:49 AM | By FREDERICK M. WINSHIP

[nwrep]

What everyone seems to forget is that a discovery is not a discovery until you live to tell about it. These one way trips of Chinese sailors to America may well be true, but it sounds like they were unable to chart their course back home, and simply withered away once they reached "America". At the very least they were unable to recreate these journeys even if a solitary expedition lead by the soprano did manage to retrace their way back to China.

[No Truce With Kings]

"I know the true story of this but the details escape me. The Dynasty tha ruled China did send out huge junks to many parts of the world to gather information and bring back samples and impress the barbarians. Once those huge junks returned the Emperor decided that the Chinese had nothing to learn from the outside world and burned the fleet, banned contact with outsiders and closed itself from the outside world."

Kinda, sorta, what happened.

The Ming emperors (yep, them of Ming vase fame) were the outward-looking emperors. They were the ones that commissioned the voyages. Then a bunch of horse barbarians from the north, the Manchu, started moving into China. The Ming defunded the great voyages of exploration -- at least in part because they needed to repell the Manchus. In the end, the Manchu won, kicked the Ming off the mainland, and took over as the ruling dynasty -- the last emporers, as it turned out.

The heart of the Ming regions included the maritime provinces, and the rump of the Ming military fought on from the islands, including Taiwan. However, they were cut off from the mainland, and withered away, finally degenerating in the Chinese pirates so prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Manchu, having started as plains horsemen, were uncomfortable around seagoing vessels, anyway. They helped the "withering" process by banning seagoing boats, and closing off contact with the outside world. It was the easiest way to weaken what was left of the Ming supporters.

Unfortunately for China, which historically *had* been a powereful maritime nation, this atypical "hermit" policy went into place in the middle 1600s, to be enforced through most of the 18th and 19th century. Since this coincided with the European Age of Exploration, it resulted in the Chinese getting caught in a historical back-current, just when they could least afford to have done so.

Thus western opinion of China has been taken from a limited and atypical period. Win some, lose some.

Frankly, I think the author's contention that the Chinese circumnavigated the globe 60 years before Magellan to be dingo's kidneys, because this would have placed it in the period when China had been retreating from exploration. If he had claimed 100 or 120 years earlier, it would seem more plausible. Oh well, I will have to get the book.

[blam]

Explorer From China Who 'Beat Columbus To America'

[blam]

[razorback-bert]

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[muawiyah]

Blam, well aware of the Zuni situation as well as that of the Melungeons. Regarding the Melungeons, recent DNA studies revealed they have some "black" ancestry, but from a group in India which is descended from Africans brought there by Indian and Arab merchants in Medieval times.

My personal theory is that it is very, very easy to get to America - it's difficult to leave! (using pre-modern technology).

Concerning reporting the existence of the New World to the Europeans, I wouldn't have considered it myself until the mid-1400s when Europe was less barbaric. The Chinese knew about it, visited it, and turned their backs on the opportunities. The Byzantines may well have made a few voyages of discovery. Third century Romans from Mauritania probably made it to near Cahokia, and so on.

[Richard Kimball]

Thanks for the post. Very good read. Personally, I've always thought there was much more global travel than is normally recognized. I've also always thought the South American Indians, specifically the Mayans, Aztecs and Incans, showed indications of influence from other cultures.

[blam]

Was America A Phoenician Colony?

[blam]

"My personal theory is that it is very, very easy to get to America - it's difficult to leave! (using pre-modern technology)."

I believe that Peru will eventually be proven to be the location of King Solomons mines. (Accessed up the Amazon River)

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

It's also likely that Europeans discovered China much earlier than history usually credits, as earlier posts have suggested.

Europeans were always aware of the existence of China in historical times. The Romans defeated the Persians in the first century BC. But rather than make them into a colony they prefered to allow them independence so that they could act as buffer between their empire and China.

[GladesGuru]

Before spending nearly thirty dollars, consider finding a copy of COULUBUS WAS LAST by Patrick Huyghe. In it is a reference to a stele of a Mayan noble in Copan, Honduras. On this eighth-century object are images of elephants. Elephants died out in the Americas during the Quaternary Extinctions some 11,000 years ago; arguably, the stele was influenced by oriental contacts in the eighth-century timeframe.

A Buddist monk was also mentioned in AD 499 literature in China as having visited a place which some believe to be North America.

Enjoy revising premises, Freepers!!

[Quix]

Thanks for the update.

[Centurion2000]

Book claims Chinese discovered America

Talk about pissing away the greatest opportunity in the world.

[PatrickHenry]

Talk about pissing away the greatest opportunity in the world.

Actually, there were other lost opportunities, lots of them, some just as big as China's. The native population was literally here, occupying the place, giving them an enormous headstart on us, but they failed to hold onto what their ancestors had given them. Spain had an empire bigger than that of Ghengis Kahn, and they held it for 300 years, ultimately losing it all and winding up the poorest and most backward country in western Europe. History is full of lost opportunities.

[Destro]

Peri Reis' maps were based on older Greek ones.

[Destro]

Yup, that's the story. The problem is people take some historical truth and build fantasies around them which in turn spooks the scholarly community from this sort of specualtion.

[Destro]

ANCIENT HELLENES (GREEKS) IN AMERICA ?

There are many indications for the presence of Hellenes in American continent in ancient times . Ancient classical subjects like the Medusa's head , Hercules with the lion skin and the club etc. which are often findings from archeological sights of Peru and of other regions , have put many researchers in thoughts . That had the result of sending an expeditionary team from National Polytechnics of Athens to Peru , in order to study the similarity of the findings with the corresponding Hellenic.

THE RIDDLE OF ANASAZI

The word 'ANASAZI' means "THOSE ANCIENT ONES" in the language of Hopi. Nowadays Hopi are the inhabitants of the 'Anasazi' areas who differ nationally and culturally a lot from their indian neighbours. The Anasazi built acropoles and fortresses very much alike to those of Mycinae, constructed roads, amphitheaters and irrigational works. They conducted solar observations and constructed clay pots and pottery similar to those of the Greek geometric period.

The symbols and the designs of Anasazi which are carved on stones, their ceramic designs and especially their myths which were salvaged by Hopi, offer light to things which for the 'specialists' remain 'unsolved mysteries'. The French writer Pierre Honorre notes that 'the Maya writing is entirely identical with the Minoan Linear A'. A jar originating from Crete that was discovered in Bimini creates an unexpected so called 'riddle'. Copper made double sided axes from Crete were found in Washighton and Ohio of the U.S.A. (What can all these mean? ). Returning to the Anasazi, we meet the familiar Greek symbols (spiral wavy circle, ophidian meander, medusa etc), which are located everywhere in Åóðåñßá (Esperia=the land that is situated where the sun sets).

Concluding we should add that we meet many similarities in the myths of Hopi with the ancient Greek ones.

Anasazi's vases decorated with Hellenic (Greek) symbols - patterns ( meandrous etc)

THE MEDUSA'S HEAD Pictures from America and Mediterranean 1) Athens 2) Colombia 3) Cecilia (Magna Grecia - Great Greece) 4) Peru pictures taken from"A JOURNEY TO THE MYTHOLOGICAL INFERNO" by ENRICO MATTIEVICH

[MrsEmmaPeel]

Let me throw in my 2 cents. I don't know that much about China of 1420 - BUT I do know that that date comes AFTER Macro Polo's travels in China (1275-1292) and BEFORE the last great calendar correction of c. 1650.

Marco Polo came to China in 1275. The Chinese did have the compass, but they did not know longitude. I do not believe that the Chinese of 1275 thought the world was round.

Calendar Correction of c.1650 The Chinese Calendar was the domain of the Emperor. To the Chinese he was God. He dispensed life, he knew the workings of the heavens. If the Emperor said on such a such a day it will be a New Moon, it better be a New Moon ... or ... the Emperor's reputation was toast. By the 1600s the Emperor's reputation was toast. The mathematics in use at the time for prediction of stellar positions (comes into play in navigation, as well as crop growing) was so chaotic that the emperor did the unthinkable- he sought outside help in the form of Westerners- Jesuits.

Ok the Jesuits were smart, but they made some errors, too. They contacted the greatest astronomical mind at the time for advice - Johannes Kepler - wrote him a letter. It took four years for the letter to reach Kepler.

The point being that the modern Chinese calendar (from 1650 on) could not have happened without western help. It is not possible for the Chinese to have been the great explorers of 1650 with such a poor understanding of the universe that they had then.

Exploration was not in their makup when they were met by Marco Polo. So, basically, we are to believe that between 1292 the Chinese absorbed all the knowledge of calendars and stellar navigation, discovered the Americas, then promptly forgot this knowledge by 1650.

I don't think so.

[Destro]

Don't fool yoursel, the Europeans of Marco Polo's age (especialy North Western Europeans) with the exception of the Byzantines were unbathing moronons.