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Chinese map collecter has found a copy of an ancient map he claims proves controversial theories that famed Chinese mariner Zheng He was the first person to discover America and circumnavigate the world. Liu Gang said the map supports the recent theories that Chinese discovered America before Christopher Columbus and charted parts of the world such as Antartica and northern Canada long before Western explorers. "The map shows us that Chinese discovered the world 70 years before Columbus," Liu said in a public unveiling of the chart. "The map tells us that Zheng He discovered the world." The map is...

China map lays claim to Americas The map clearly shows the Americas and Africa A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus. The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418. If true, it could imply Chinese mariners discovered and mapped America decades before Columbus' 1492 arrival. The map, which is being dated to check it was made in 1763, faces a lot of scepticism from experts. Chinese characters...

A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus. The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418. If true, it could imply Chinese mariners discovered and mapped America decades before Columbus' 1492 arrival. The map, which is being dated to check it was made in 1763, faces a lot of scepticism from experts. Chinese characters written beside the map say it was drawn by Mo Yi Tong and copied...

Were Chinese here first? Shannon Brennan / sbrennan@newsadvance.com May 15, 2005 Charlotte Rees is heiress to evidence that could turn world history upside down - if she can corroborate it. She and her six siblings inherited maps from their father, a third-generation missionary born in China, that she says may show the Chinese had discovered America - and the rest of the world - as early as 2200 B.C. “I’m ready for opposition,” said Rees, who lives in Forest. “Even when Columbus was saying the world was round, he had opposition.” Rees, 59, will propound her theory Monday at a...

Who came first, Chinese or Columbus? DANA SANCHEZ Herald Staff Writer SARASOTA - A local company could help rewrite history if it can prove, using DNA testing, that Chinese explorers landed in the New World about 70 years before Columbus. But it's going to take money - up to $2 million in research funding - to test a hypothesis that hasn't been popular. Sarasota-based DNAPrint genomics plans to make a presentation Monday at the U.S. Library of Congress Symposium in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 600th anniversary of Chinese Admiral Zheng He's first voyage. Zheng He was a Ming Dynasty explorer...

Adelanto developer's maps could rewrite history Sunday, May 15, 2005 Still-to-be-authenticated relics suggest Chinese explorers discovered America 4,200 years ago By LEROY STANDISH/Staff Writer ADELANTO -- For more than a decade, seven fragile map books sat under Hendon Harris' bed battling dust and darkness. Two years ago they were exhumed and could possibly prove the Chinese discovered the American land mass 4,200 years ago. "These maps were under my bed for 10-plus years, because we really didn't know what we had," said Hendon Harris, an Adelanto developer who owns several apartment buildings and is a prime sponsor of the Adelanto...

Riddle of a lost Chinese city on the Atlantic coast Feb 24, 2005 On May 16, a Canadian architect will tell the United Nations of a lost Chinese city on the Atlantic coast of North America, lending weight to the theory that the Chinese arrived in the New World some 70 years before Christopher Columbus. A Canadian architect has discovered what is believed to be the lost naval base of China‘s foremost explorer on the Atlantic coast of North America, lending weight to the theory the Chinese arrived in the New World some 70 years before Christopher Columbus. The revelation...

1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED AMERICA? 1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED AMERICA?, airing on PBS Wednesday, July 21, investigates a theory that could turn the conventional view of world history on its head: the startling possibility that a daring Chinese admiral, commanding the largest wooden armada ever built, reached America 71 years before Columbus. The documentary examines the mystery surrounding China's legendary Zheng He and the spectacular Ming fleet of treasure junks he commanded in the early 15th century. The special provides a history of the known journeys of Zheng He's fleet and an account of new information uncovered by...

Expedition hunts giant meteor 07.02.2004 By SIMON COLLINS, science reporter An international scientific expedition will fly to Stewart Island next week on a quest to track down a meteor that may have sparked a tsunami that possibly wiped out a legendary Chinese fleet 500 years ago.Expedition leader New York oceanographer Dallas Abbott has found survey evidence of a huge undersea crater caused by a meteor impact 20km wide and more than 153m deep just south of the Snares Islands, 120km southwest of Stewart Island. The expedition is going to remote Mason Bay on the west coast of Stewart Island to...

Is Gavin Menzies Right or Wrong? By Timothy Furnish Mr. Furnish, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor, World History, Georgia Perimeter College. Every college world history textbook discusses the early 15th c. CE Chinese naval expeditions, commissioned by the Ming Emperor Zhu Di and commanded by the legendary admiral Zheng He, that sailed as far as East Africa and the Red Sea. Indeed, one of the favorite themes of the history subgenre known as alternative history is: why didn't these Chinese flotillas beat the Portuguese and Spanish to the New World--and what if they had? Gavin Menzies, a former British Royal Navy...

from the January 29, 2003 edition The Pinta, Santa Maria, and a Chinese junk? A new book claims the Chinese discovered America in 1421, but historians refute thesis. By Amanda Paulson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor To the Norsemen, the Japanese, and the Carthaginians; to the Irish, the Africans, and a long list of others who, it is claimed, crossed the oceans to America long before 1492, add one more: the Chinese. They toured up and down both coasts of the Americas, established colonies, made maps, and left behind chickens. That, at least, is the theory posed...

Book claims Chinese discovered America By FREDERICK M. WINSHIP From the Life & Mind Desk Published 1/7/2003 11:49 AM NEW YORK, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- Scattered evidence that Chinese explorers "discovered" America 71 years before Christopher Columbus and circumnavigated the earth 60 years before Ferdinand Magellan was born has been brought into convincing focus by a book published Tuesday that is expected to rewrite history. British author Gavin Menzies first aired his theory of pre-Columbian visits by the Chinese to both North and South America in a lecture before the Royal Geographic Society in London last March, resulting in a...

Critics say new book is all junk A British author claims the Chinese, not Columbus, found America first.By Ted Bell -- Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 a.m. PST Tuesday, January 7, 2003 British author Gavin Menzies' controversial book "1421 -- The Year China Discovered America", which goes on sale in the United States this week, claims that America was discovered by Chinese explorers 70 years before Columbus arrived. Part of the alleged proof behind Menzies' theory -- which is being heatedly contested by more traditional historians -- purportedly rests beneath about 40 feet of Glenn County mud in the form...

Historian - Chinese Mapped World Centuries Before Columbus By Tim Castle 10-31-2 LONDON (Reuters) - Debunking Christopher Columbus has become a full-time occupation for retired British submarine commander Gavin Menzies. Next week the urbane 65-year-old begins a global publicity campaign to promote his extraordinary claim that Chinese sailors discovered America 70 years before Columbus and mapped the whole world centuries before European explorers. Despite criticism from academics that his theory is no more than "a tower of hypotheses," publisher Transworld paid 500,000 pounds ($780,000) for the rights to "1421 -- The Year China Discovered the World," a huge sum for...

Explorer from China who 'beat Columbus to America' By Elizabeth Grice (Filed: 04/03/2002) HISTORY books in 23 countries may need to be rewritten in the light of new evidence that Chinese explorers had discovered most parts of the world by the mid-15th century. Next week, an amateur historian will expound his theory - backed up by charts, ancient artefacts and anthropological research - that when Columbus discovered America in 1492, he was 72 years too late. And so were other explorers, such as Cook, Magellan and Da Gama, whose heroic voyages took them to Australia, South America and India. Instead, ...

Author Gavin Menzies Is Determined to Prove That Minoans Discovered the New World 4,000 Years Ago It takes a brave soul to rewrite history by sailing against current thought. More than 500 years after Christopher Columbus "discovered" America, another seaman is doing just that, entering previously uncharted academic waters with claims that other "Europeans" -- the Minoans -- got there first, thousands of years earlier. Gavin Menzies, 72 years old, is drawing on his experience as a former British Royal Navy submarine commander to prove in a book he is writing that the Minoans were such supreme seafarers that they...

Did Chinese sailors really discover America before Columbus? A new exhibition sets the scene, presenting new evidence that lends support to the assumptions made in "1421: The Year China Discovered America" by Gavin Menzies. "1421: The Year China Sailed the World," in Singapore in a special tent near the Esplanade (until Sept. 11), is primarily a celebration of Admiral Zheng He's seven maritime expeditions between 1405 and 1423. With a fleet of 317 ships and 28,000 men, Zheng He is generally acknowledged as one of the great naval explorers, but how far he actually went remains a matter of dispute....

Ancient map of Africa poses questions The unveiling in South Africa's parliament on Monday of a replica of an ancient Chinese map of the then known world which includes a recognisable outline of Africa is raising intriguing questions of which foreigners first explored the continent. "The idea is to take us beyond what we have been ... brainwashed into believing" declared Speaker Frene Ginwala at the opening of the exhibition, which includes other maps and rock art. The "Da Ming Hun Yi Tu", the Amalgamated Map of the Great Ming Empire, dates back to 1389, decades before the first European...

It is not much to look at - a small pitted brass coin with a square hole in the centre-but this relatively innocuous piece of metal is revolutionising our understanding of early East African history, and recasting China's more contemporary role in the region. A joint team of Kenyan and Chinese archaeologists found the 15th Century Chinese coin in Mambrui-a tiny, nondescript village just north of Malindi on Kenya's north coast. In barely distinguishable relief, the team leader Professor Qin Dashu from Peking University's archaeology department, read out the inscription: "Yongle Tongbao" - the name of the reign that minted...

The National Museums of Kenya has defended archaeological work to locate the ancient settlement of Malindi Kingdom. A press release by the joint Sino-Kenya archaeological team said digging at the ancient sites in Mambrui Village in Magarini District was legal and all procedures had been followed. The head of the Chinese team, Prof Qin Dashu and his Kenyan counterpart, Dr Herman Kiriama of the NMK, said the sites were selected on the recommendations of Kenyan scholars. "The sites are not in the burial sections and the team tried to strictly adhere to Islamic laws where graves are not supposed to...