As an important coordinate in the history of world navigation, Zheng He's life is full of legends, but it also leaves countless mysteries, the biggest of which is: Did Zheng He sail around the world?
In the spring of 2001, a lawyer named Liu Gang in Beijing, because of his love of collecting, was wandering around the Antique Market on Dongtai Road in Shanghai, when he accidentally found an ancient map of the "early Ming Dynasty" in 1418, which was highly similar to the modern world map, so "Zheng He did not sail around the world" and made waves!
Zheng He, a native of Kunyang, Yunnan, whose original surname was Ma, was a Ming Dynasty eunuch, navigator, and diplomat, who gave the surname Zheng to Zhu Di, the ancestor of Ming Cheng, and was known as the "Three Bao Eunuchs", and the most dazzling deeds in his life were seven trips to the West.
In the third year of Yongle (1405), Zheng He made his first voyage to the West, and his last voyage ended in the eighth year of Xuande (1433), a total of seven times, each time from Nanjing, assembled at Liujiagang in Taicang, Jiangsu Province, and stationed at Changle Taiping Port in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. Zheng He's seven voyages to the West covered most of South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, visited more than 30 countries and regions, and is currently known to reach East Africa and the Red Sea as far as possible.
But did Zheng He sail farther?
Since the ming history was completed and the official archives of the Ming Dynasty were destroyed, it is difficult to find first-hand information today. However, the "Tianfei Lingzhi Stele" unearthed in Fujian is currently recognized as the main historical material for the study of Zheng He's voyage to the West, which has a high degree of credibility, and the inscription records that Zheng He's fleet arrived at "the west of the western region, the north of the north of the north", and the extreme west and extreme north here refer to the North American continent?
The map discovered by Liu Gang (see above) depicts all the continents and seas on the earth, not only North America, South America, Africa, Australia, and even the North pole and Antarctica, which is highly similar to the map of the modern world, and the key continents are almost no different, which is very shocking!
If this map is true and reliable, then Zheng He or other Chinese may well have traveled the world, and Magellan's history as the first person to sail around the globe would be overturned. So, is this ancient map from the early Years of the Ming Dynasty?
The lower right corner of this ancient map reads "General Map of the Whole Public Opinion of the World", the lower right corner indicates "Qianlong Yan Wei Nian Mid-Autumn Moon Imitation Ming Yongle Sixteenth Year (1418) Heavenly Fan Zhi Gong Map", and on the left side there is a drop "Subject, Mo Yi Tong Painting".
According to the written records on the map, this is a replica of the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. In 2006, Liu Gang sent the paper sample to Vikato University in New Zealand for testing, and came to the conclusion that the map was made by Qianlong Face-to-face, not a modern forgery. More importantly, this ancient map was presented to the Qianlong Emperor for review, it was a tribute map, and there were "subjects" in the money, so the map would not be faked, otherwise in the Qianlong period when the text prison was raging, it would definitely encounter a disaster, and Mo Yitong would not joke about his own life.
Therefore, all kinds of indications show that this "general map of the whole world" discovered by Liu Gang is a reproduction of the map drawn in 1418, which is hundreds of years earlier than Magellan's circumnavigation of the world.
However, after the expert study, five questions were raised.
1, this map has blue waveform lines, which is a typical feature of Chinese map production. But the outlines of the continents and the two northern and southern hemispheres are entirely the way Europeans depicted the earth.
2, the map is located at the junction of Asia and Europe, there is a red circle note "The people here worship God, the religious name is Jingye", but the connection between God and Jingjiao (Christianity) was first created by Matteo Ricci at the end of the 16th century.
3, the simplified character "Yu" appears repeatedly on the map, much like the "evidence" left by modern people forging.
4, the ancient map with a red circle marked "Hubei", "Hunan" two provinces of the place name, but the current use of China's province division began in the Qing Dynasty.
5, the Korean Peninsula on ancient maps is annotated as "Goryeo", but in 1392 Zhu Yuanzhang had already renamed the Goryeo Dynasty to Korea.
For these doubts, Liu Gang believes that the Chinese theory of "God" and the simplified character "Yu" have long existed, and as for the division of the biggest hard wounds," such as "Hunan and Hubei", the main reason is to avoid secrecy and present it to Qianlong to see, especially during the prevalence of the literary prison, it is certainly not possible to use the Ming Dynasty's annotations. In addition, when Mo Yitong reproduced the map of the Ming Dynasty, he should replace the Ming Dynasty annotations with the words that the Qing Dynasty people knew, but the map pattern should not change, otherwise it would be the crime of deception.
Although this ancient map still has many doubts and is difficult to use as evidence of Zheng He's circumnavigation of the world, it is not necessarily impossible for Zheng He to travel around the world with reference to Chinese historical records. Wang Dayuan, a native of Nanchang in the Yuan Dynasty, twice sailed from Quanzhou on a merchant ship, leaving his experience in "Island YiZhiluo", and it can now be confirmed that he and the fleet have traveled to Somalia, Mozambique, Australia and other places. And Zheng He's fleet is far larger than Wang Dayuan's, since Wang Dayuan can sail as far as Africa and Australia, why can't Zheng He sail around the world and leave this map?
The historian Gavin Menzies, author of 1421: China Discovers the World, cites the map as evidence of who discovered the Americas. He believes that the places marked on the map are all places that the Chinese explorer Zheng He visited in the 15th century. See, foreigners are more confident than Chinese about whether Zheng He sails around the world.