He says he has found proof that the Chinese ships sailed on _ around the Cape of Good Hope and all the way to the Americas, with some ships even crossing the Pacific back to China.
Commanded by the admiral Zheng He, the ships traveled from China down to Indonesia, west to India, and as far as East Africa.īut this is where Menzies departs from established history. Huge Chinese ships bearing silk, porcelain and other treasures made epic expeditions at the emperor's behest. "I don't see how any fair-minded person who reads the evidence can come to any other conclusion other than the Chinese did get to America before Europeans," he said in a telephone interview from New York, where he was promoting his book.Ĭhina in the early 15th century was a great seafaring nation no dispute there. "Nonsense," declares China's Zheng He Association, which celebrates the exploits of Zheng He, the very explorer Menzies says directed ships around the globe a century before Ferdinand Magellan.īut Menzies isn't fazed. His book, "1421: The Year China Discovered America," may be selling briskly in the United States, but his extraordinary theory that Chinese explorers reached the New World decades before Christopher Columbus is proving a tougher sell to academics _ even here in China. Forgive Gavin Menzies for feeling a little defensive.
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