[vannrox]

Interesting.

[Anti-Bubba182]

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[Paleo Conservative]

Perhaps Chinese explorers did reach the Americas. So what! They didn't tell anyone. No one has ever had to rediscover the Americas since Columbus's voyage in 1492.

[spetznaz]

I have also seen reports that the Irish came here first. Other sources (more reputable ones) claim the Viking were here ages before Columbus (which is true by the way since Viking Longboats landed long before Columbus' grandfather was even a twinkle in his parents eye).

However what all these articles forget is that before Columbus, before the Vikings, before the Irish (i will play along and treat include that 'theory' here), before the Chinese (another questionable 'theory' that i will also include just to be fair) .....before all these groups arrived the Native Americans had been here for centuries!

They had crossed eons ago when there was a landbridge (before tectonic shifts and rising waters sealed it off). Hence it was not the Vikings nor the Chinese nor the Spaniards nor the Irish (????) who got here first but the Native Americans.

However if you think of it people have claimed to have been 'the first to see' a valley in the Himalayas (when there was a tribe of Sherpas farming in it), or discover a river in africa (oblivious to the natives fishing in the river), or a lost temple complex in India (apparently ignorant of the fact that for the 'lost' temple to exist someone must have built the darn thing). Mountain ranges (that have villages at their base) have had explorers claim to the the 'first to see' them, probably because somehow the people who had farmed the volcanic slopes for generations apparently had never had the sudden epiphany that they were living next to a mountain!

Hence if that is possible then i guess the Native Americans who had been in N. America for centuries did not factor.

[goody2shooz]

Blue and white porcelain shards, broken Chinese porcelain, have been dug out of Oregon coast beaches for centuries. Early explorers were surprised to find Indians in the Oregon territories wearing very old pieces of Chinese porcelain shards as beads and personal adornment.

Even today blue and white porcelain shards are occasionally exposed on the beaches. This leads me to believe the Chinese, or the Japanese, were coming around the Pacific too, perhaps at the same time.

What I find interesting is the historical comparison this story presents us. The Chinese could have settled the western hemisphere but instead withdrew unto themselves. We, the United States, are on the brink of moving into the frontier of near-earth space but seem tied down with earth-bound tribulations.

So, who will eventually venture out and reap the metal riches to be found in near-earth asteroids? And they are indeed very rich, with platinum group metals, known as PGMs.

One medium-sized PGM asteroid is equal to the earth's gross economic product for one year!

If the Chinese had been bolder the United States would never have existed, and as for the future...?

[Cicero]

It's likely that the Chinese and many other people discovered America before Columbus. But then they lost it again. Columbus's discovery was followed up on.

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

[weikel]

Well is California even part of America any more?

[Mike Darancette]

The Chinese will have to fight the Mexicans for California.

[Focault's Pendulum]

Yongle Emperor, Zhui Di, under the command of his eunuch admiral Zheng Hi.

I truly do love these history posts...but I have a question.

How could the Chinese claim to be civilized, when they allowed an obvious First Tenor with Falsetto tendencies, leave the theatre for a life aboard ship.

[wingnuts'nbolts]

Not exactly a new theory. But it may have been much earlier not a mere 71 years.

[Mr. K]

If china did not have such a repressive regime I am betting we would see a lot more interesting history come from that area. Look at the ancient temples in Cambodia- absolutely stunning.

[razorback-bert]

.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[BureaucratusMaximus]

Book claims Chinese discovered America

Great...next thing you know they'll try to re-unite us with the mainland.

[Slyfox]

Chinese Discovered America

Yeah, when they sailed into the Panama Canal and claimed it.

[RightWhale]

Zheng Hi was also known by the name of Sin Bao, hence the legend that arose in Europe of the fabulous voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.

Nice article!

[Publius6961]

LOL!

I always wondered why the Indians and the Mayans were so fond of Chow mein!

LOL! The Chinese and the sand-maggots are the new "Russians" in that regard.