Joined: 2005-04-24
Points: 648 | An Ecoonomist article discusses a map of the world that may have been created from the voyages of Zheng He, years before Columbus arrived in the Americas.
China beat Columbus to it, perhaps: An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world
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 1405 and 1435.
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Points: 748
In his 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.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/01/13/1421/