Theories about pre-Columbian contacts between the Old World and the New abound, and now a British amateur historian says he has gathered evidence showing that, in a double challenge to accepted history, the Chinese beat Columbus to America by 72 years and also circumnavigated the globe a century before the Magellan voyage.

Do you think he is onto something?

See how he arrived at his conclusions at:
http://nytimes.com/2002/03/17/science/social/17SHIP.html

I have a hard time imagining this gentleman being taken seriously in the future. I noticed that he delivered his proposals in front of the Royal Geographic Society, and not in front of a group of well-read Chinese historians, who would probably not have given him a fair hearing. It seems to me that a lot of his 'evidence' is rather specious...the 'secret' map, the Caribbean shipwrecks, the artifacts discovered in distant lands. Why is he the first to bring all of this evidence to light? Surely some of these discoveries would have been documented in different academic works and would have received substantial media exposure!

Anyhow, there are several very solid reasons to doubt Mr. Menzies proposals. First, the Zheng He voyages were all very carefully documented by several capable scribes who attended the voyages. There is no written evidence whatsoever that the voyages ever extended beyond the eastern coast of Africa. Second, traces of Chinese goods, particularly porcelain, can be found in abundance in eastern Africa, but only down to a certain geographic point. It seems that we would have substantial archaelogical evidence of Ming porcelain in South America, the Caribbean and elsewhere given the substantial amount of trade that took place on the Zheng He voyages, if Mr. Menzies' claims are true. Third, these voyages were undertaken with thousands of men (usually 20-40 thousand). Massive amounts of supplies would have been required to undertake a round-the-world voyage, so if they were planning to undertake such an adventure, they would have needed to plan ahead. Just imagine the great amount of time it would have taken to circle Africa, head all the way up to the Caribbean, and then back down around the Cape of Good Hope! It would have taken a lot more time than has been documented for the 6th voyage, which in my sources lasted from 1421-22 (incidentally, this contradicts the claim in the article which states that the 6th voyage lasted until October of 1423). Fourth, according to documents, the 6th voyage took Zheng He only as far as Sumatra, with a portion of his fleet revisiting eastern Africa for trade purposes. This negates the possibility that Zheng He himself led a circumnavigation at that time. Finally, the purpose of the Zheng He missions, on an official basis, was political and tributary (i.e. trade). The Ming emperor Yong Le and his predecessors were looking to solidify trade relations and political hegemony in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Navigation and mapmaking were secondary features of these voyages. There would have been no purpose for a circumnavigation.

The author of the article makes several other errors, aside from the dates of the 6th voyage. The Yong Le emperor did not lose his throne via political upheavel, he died in 1424, leaving the throne to his son (and soon after to his grandson). 'Conservative Confucian mandarins' would never have been allowed to gain political control of the imperial court. The general turn inward during the mid-Ming period was as a result of difficulties with nomads on the northern steppes, who were pressuring China despite the existense of a revamped Great Wall, and piracy in the south seas, which at times negated the gains made from the massive Cheng He voyages. Emperors after Yong Le simply had to focus the royal coffers in other areas. Additionally, one last Zheng He mission occurred, from 1431-33, a fact that the reporter seems to conveniently ignore. This mission also was well-documented and surely could not have resulted in a circumnavigation.

So what shall we make of Menzies' claims? I consider them to be the fanciful meanderings of a typical aging romanticist. His claims seem titillating enough to grab the attention necessary to allow him claim to his allotted 15 minutes of fame, yet in the end this case will prove to be an example of sensationalism. No doubt some publisher will want to take Menzies under their wing so that he may publish his findings. It's doubtful that the historical or anthropological community will take any of it too seriously, but his findings will be justly refuted by at least one or two bemused experts.

Incidentally, what about the Vikings? They reached North American nearly 500 years prior to Columbus! They should be receiving some credit here. Much further back, probably 10-20 thousand years ago, the first actual migrants to the new world crossed the Bering land bridge created by the last ice age, and populated the Americas for the first time with human beings. If we do feel the need to claim that the Asians beat the Europeans to the new world, here it is!