Free Republic

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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, ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Zl12dXYcUTo

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other...

N.Korean Rocket Used Cutting-Edge Navigation The long-range rocket North Korea launched on Wednesday was apparently equipped with cutting-edge navigational technology. National Intelligence Service chief Won Sei-hoon told lawmakers on Thursday that analysis by NASA showed that the satellite mounted on top of the rocket left its trajectory faster than ordinary satellites. Won said the North appears to have acquired "remote-controlled guidance technology" that caused the satellite to shift its path after being separated from the rocket. This means North Korea also tested technology that could increase the accuracy of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The North also apparently used technology from the...

Space capabilities have become integral to all military operations, the commander of Air Force Space Command told reporters here during a Defense Writers Group breakfast yesterday. "It's hard to imagine what life was like before we had ... GPS providing very accurate targeting capability, military satellite communications providing all the reach-back that's needed, [and] missile warning providing cover for our deployed forces," Air Force Gen. William L. Shelton said. The Air Force launched and maintains the 24 satellites that make up the GPS navigation system. The all-weather, 24-hour system was intended for military use, but in 1983 President Ronald Reagan...

As much as Foley likes discovering shipwrecks -- he's found or helped find 26 in the past 14 years -- he doesn't much like spending time looking for them, at least not in the conventional ways. Rather than sending dive teams down to survey 1,000-foot transects one fin kick at a time, Foley prefers to use autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to survey huge tracts of seafloor. Where the robots don't work well, Foley sends down divers armed with closed-circuit rebreathers and thrusters, allowing them to cover more ground. He wants to go faster, he says, because he needs a lot...

Foley, a marine archaeologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and his colleagues at Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities in Athens have spent the day diving near the cliffs of the tiny island of Dia in the eastern Mediterranean. They have identified two clusters of pottery dating from the first century BC and fifth century AD. Together with other remains that the team has discovered on the island's submerged slopes, the pots reveal that for centuries Greek, Roman and Byzantine traders used Dia as a refuge during storms, when they couldn't safely reach Crete. It is a nice...

A DNA analysis of ancient storage jars suggests that Greek sailors traded a wide range of foods -- not just wine, as many historians have assumed. The study, in press at the Journal of Archaeological Science1, finds evidence in nine jars taken from Mediterranean shipwrecks of vegetables, herbs and nuts. The researchers say DNA testing of underwater artefacts from different time periods could help to reveal how such complex markets developed across the Mediterranean. Archaeologist Brendan Foley of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts and geneticist Maria Hansson of Lund University, Sweden, retrieved DNA from nine amphorae -- the...

Massive ancient stone anchors were found by divers participating in an archaeological expedition near the southern Bulgarian Black Sea town of Sozopol. The expedition, led by deputy director of Bulgaria's National Historical Museum Dr Ivan Hristov, found the precious artifacts west of the Sts. Cyricus and Julitta island. The 200-kg beautifully ornamented anchors have two holes in them -- one for the anchor rope and another one for a wooden stick. They were used for 150-200-ton ships that transported mainly wheat, but also dried and salted fish, skins, timber and metals from what now is Bulgaria's coast. The anchors' shape...