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A team of marine archaeologists has uncovered a 3,600-year-old shipwreck in the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Antalya, Turkey. The ship, believed to have been a merchant vessel sailing from Cyprus, may be the oldest ever discovered, according to Haaretz... Based on its position and the large cargo of copper ingots found inside and around the wreck, it is likely to have been a trading ship, ferrying goods from Cyprus to the Aegean region. Although the ship is in very poor condition, and the hull has been almost completely destroyed, the bulk of the ship, together with its precious...

The discovery of one of the world's oldest shipwrecks shows that European trade was thriving even in the Bronze Age, according to experts. The vessel, carrying copper and tin ingots used to make weapons and jewellery, sank off the coast near Salcombe in Devon and is thought to date from 900BC. But it was only last year that the South West Maritime Archaeological Group, a team of amateur archaeologists, brought its cargo to the surface. The discovery was not announced until this month's International Shipwreck Conference, in Plymouth, Devon. It is thought that the goods - 259 copper ingots and...

Researchers think Plutarch’s De Facie tells the tale of Greek sailors making the treacherous transatlantic crossing. They dug into the science to show how it could have happened. The story of the European settlement of North America usually features a few main characters: red-headed Norsemen who sailed across an icy sea to set up temporary outposts, Spanish conquistadors, white-collared English separatists, French trappers, and Dutch colonists. Now a team of Greek scholars proposes another—and much earlier—wave of European migration: the Hellenistic Greeks, in triremes powered by sail and oar in the first century CE, nearly a millennium before the Vikings.These...

The Shipping of Michigan Copper across the Atlantic in the Bronze Age (Isle Royale and Keweenaw Peninsula, c. 2400BC-1200 BC) Summary Recent scientific literature has come to the conclusion that the major source of the copper that swept through the European Bronze Age after 2500 BC is unknown. However, these studies claim that the 10 tons of copper oxhide ingots recovered from the late Bronze Age (1300 BC) Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of Turkey was “extraordinarily pure” (more than 99.5% pure), and that it was not the product of smelting from ore. The oxhides are all brittle “blister copper”,...

That’s the day when the United Nations will begin trying to convince the world that Christopher Columbus did not discover North America, a Chinese-Muslim explorer discovered us a half century before C.C. No, this is not science fiction. It is today’s cover story in Canada Free Press. That the Canadian government has been selling off our natural resources, including the Alberta tar sands to the Chinese government ought to be worry enough for any with the sovereignty of our nation in mind. Now we have a yet to be identified "respected Canadian architect" headed to the United Nations to tell...

Egyptian Writer Muhammad Ibrahim Mabrouk: Columbus Was Trying to Recruit the Chinese Emperor to the Liberation of Jerusalem When He Stumbled Upon America Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian writer Muhammad Ibrahim Mabrouk, which aired on Al-Majd TV on April 27, 2009.To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2167.htm. "Columbus Wanted to Liberate Jerusalem From the Muslims"Interviewer: "American society was not born and did not grow in the United States. It is a mixed society - a society of immigrants, of different nationalities. How can it be claimed that this society in its entirety was melted down...

Of course the Chinese didn't discover America. But then nor did Columbus A map supporting claims that the admiral Zheng He reached the New World in the early 15th century is plainly a hoax Simon Jenkins Friday January 20, 2006 The Guardian (UK) We all know that a lie goes halfway round the world while truth is putting on its boots. But what if the lie goes the whole way? What if it claims to circumnavigate the globe? Last week came purported evidence that the Chinese admiral Zheng He sailed his great fleet of junks round the world a century...

Special Report 2/23/04 Island Hopping To A New World The first Americans may have arrived not on foot but by boat from Asia, even Europe By Alex Markels Digging in a dank limestone cave in Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands last summer, 21-year-old Christina Heaton hardly noticed the triangular piece of chipped stone she'd unearthed in a pile of muddy debris. But as her scientist father, Timothy, sifted through the muck, he realized she'd struck pay dirt. "Oh my God!" he yelled to her and the team of other researchers scouring the remote site off the coast of British Columbia. "It's...

Rat DNA clues to sea migration This carving shows Pacific rats on the face of a Polynesian ancestor Scientists have used DNA from rats to trace migration patterns of the ancestors of today's Polynesians. People are thought to have arrived in Polynesia, comprising the Pacific islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, by boat some 3,000 years ago. Rat data suggests the journey was more complex than the popular "Express Train" theory, which proposes a rapid dispersal of people from South Asia. Details appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith and Judith Robins from the University of...

Hello, I am wondering if anyone out there has read "1421" yet. I read it over the holidays and found it about 80% believable. In reading some of the other reviews on Amazon, it seemed that some skeptical readers blew it off due to a small set of fanciful conjectures that appeared relatively early in the book. Any other reviews?

<p>NEW YORK (CNN) -- In his new book, "1421: The Year China Discovered America" (William Morrow), Gavin Menzies claims that a massive Chinese fleet of huge junks and support ships made a two-year circumnavigation of the globe, with extensive exploration of the Americas, nearly a century before Magellan and Columbus.</p>

Possible discovered of America by Marco Polo before Colomb: account in VSD 'America - its West coast - would have been discovered by Marco Polo some 200 years before Christophe Colomb, according to a chart of the Library of the Congress in Washington examined since 1943 by the FBI and whose history is told in published review VSD Wednesday. This document, brought to the Library in 1933 by Marcian Rossi, an American naturalized citizen originating in Italy, “represents a boat beside a chart showing part of India, China, Japan, the Eastern Indies and North America”, indicates the report/ratio of...

Chinese explorers 'discovered America' By Alfred Lee STRAITS TIMES EUROPE BUREAU LONDON - When explorer Christopher Columbus landed in America in 1492, he was 72 years behind a Chinese expeditionary force, which had already made its way to the area. And although Captain James Cook was credited with discovering Australia for the British Empire in 1770, the Chinese had mapped the island continent 337 years earlier. Sailing in 1,000-foot-long ships with nine massive junk-style sails, the Chinese also circumnavigated the world a century before explorer Ferdinand Magellan's epic journey, and reached South America. These disclosures are at the centre of ...

A joint expedition of scientists led by Chapurukha M. Kusimba of The Field Museum and Sloan R. Williams of the University of Illinois at Chicago has unearthed a 600-year-old Chinese coin on the Kenyan island of Manda that shows trade existed between China and east Africa decades before European explorers set sail and changed the map of the world. The coin, a small disk of copper and silver with a square hole in the center so it could be worn on a belt, is called "Yongle Tongbao" and was issued by Emperor Yongle who reigned from 1403-1425AD during the Ming...

Legends and bits of evidence tell a story of Asians arriving here long, long ago. Part one of two. "Even pale ink is better than memory." -- Chinese proverbAs the tide creeps over the sand flats of Pachena Bay south of Bamfield, it brings ashore the flotsam of the Pacific that -- on occasion -- hints at extraordinary travels and a mystery of historic proportions. Amid the kelp, in decades past, hundreds of green-glass fishing floats would arrive intact on the Vancouver Island coast, having ridden the powerful Japanese Current in year-long transits from Asia. But on rare occasions, entire...

Researcher whose father found old maps posits 2000 BC voyage to west coast History books tell us that the first Chinese settlers to Canada arrived in Victoria about 150 years ago, but a U.S. researcher says she has solid evidence that they came earlier. Some 4,000 years earlier. That would be 3,500 years before 1492, when European explorer Christopher "Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Or 10,000 years after nomadic hunters from Eastern Siberia crossed the frozen Bering Strait during the Ice Age, a migration taken by modern scholars to account for North America's native population. Charlotte Harris Rees, a retired...

IJING – China and Kenya plan to search for ancient Chinese ships wrecked almost 600 years ago off Africa's east coast. > Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng He — whose name is also spelled Cheng Ho — led armadas with scores of junks and thousands of sailors on voyages to promote trade and recognition of the new dynasty, which had taken power in 1368. >

A team of 11 Chinese archaeologists will arrive in Kenya tomorrow to begin the search for an ancient shipwreck and other evidence of commerce with China dating back to the early 15th century. The three-year, £2m joint project will centre around the tourist towns of Lamu and Malindi and should shed light on a largely unknown part of both countries' histories. The sunken ship is believed to have been part of a mighty armada commanded by Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He, who reached Malindi in 1418. According to Kenyan lore, reportedly backed by recent DNA testing, a handful of survivors...

600-year-old ancient warship found in Shandong www.chinaview.cn 2005-08-12 10:50:02 @BEIJING, Aug. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Archaeologists have recently founda well-preserved ancient warship dated back to some 600 years ago, at a relics site in the ancient Dengzhou Harbor in Penglai, east China's Shandong Province. This is the first discovery of a large ancient ship in China in over two decades. The wooden ancient vessel, more than 20 meters long, is believed to be a warship from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), said You Shaoping, director of the Shandong Cultural Heritage Bureau, on Thursday. The value of the ancient warship is yet to...

An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true. It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between...