Who discovered the New World?
Dias? Da Gama? Magellan? Columbus?
In high school history textbooks we may have learned about the great discovery of geography— the opening of new shipping lanes.
In 1487, the Portuguese Dias led a fleet south along the west coast of Africa and found the Cape of Good Hope on the way back. The voyage was also the first voyage to have a clearly documented discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. In 1497-1498, the Portuguese da Gama, on the basis of the voyage of Dias, set out in 1497 to bypass Africa and eventually reach India, thus finding a route to the East. This voyage provided an important foundation for the journey to the mysterious East. Laid the foundation for Columbus' voyage.
In 1492, the Spanish warrior Columbus, with royal patronage, led a fleet across the Atlantic Ocean to Cuba, Haiti and other places as we know it today. Breaking the state of the Indian nation and the world, the Land of america officially established contact with the world. From 1519 to 1522, Magellan led a fleet of ships across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans on the basis of Columbus, and finally returned to Europe, which was also the first time that humans completed the circumnavigation of the globe.
Since then, trade around the world has become more and more frequent in the original closed state, Europe and Asia, the Americas, and Africa. The world began to be connected as a whole, and European capitalism began to develop from budding to prosperity, and also from commercial development, colonialism. The discovery of the American continent is also deeply rooted in the hearts of the people from these events, making people subtly believe that Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492. The same is true of our high school textbooks. So this glory also fell on Columbus's head.
It was not Columbus who discovered the American continent, it is possible that Chinese Zheng He?
Gavin Menzies, who is it? Former commander of the British Royal Navy submarine formation, after his personal archaeological research, he believes that Zheng He arrived in North America before Columbus, Zheng He may be the first person to discover the Americas, and after returning to China, he wrote the book "1421: China Discovers the World" to explain his theory. The reasons he argues in the book are as follows:
Between 1421 and 1423, four Chinese convoys sailed around the world, and these sailors settled in the Americas, Malaysia, New Zealand, and other places, so that later European explorers arrived in the Americas and encountered Chinese settlers.
Second, the DNA of some peoples in the Americas bears striking resemblance to the DNA of a generation in Guangzhou, China.
There are still some Chinese-speaking villages in Peru and other places. There are 95 geographic names in northern Peru that are Chinese names.
Where Zheng He's fleet passed, Chinese jade artifacts were found before Columbus's arrival.
Using his knowledge of navigation, Gavin Menzies made a preliminary inference that in December 1421, nine ships in his fleet sank on the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.
However, some ancient remnants found on the caribbean seabed, such as ancient shipwrecks and stones scattered on the seabed, are extremely similar to the wrecks of ancient Chinese ships, so a preliminary judgment is made.
In addition, he deduced from the maps, artifacts, relics, and ruins seen in the many museums he visited that the fleet had reached the Americas at that time and achieved circumnavigation of the world.
In response to his view, most scholars in the Chinese academic circles disagreed, believing that there was still insufficient data to indicate that the voyage fleet had traveled to the Americas.
Moreover, although his fleet is huge, in terms of navigation technology, it may not have the ability to cross the Pacific Ocean, but only offshore and distant oceans. The debate continues and is inconclusive. However, Gavin Menzies's attempt inspired and energized the academic community, inspiring more research on Zheng He's voyage to the West.
In addition, the even more shocking conclusion was that Menzies announced it at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society in London in March 2002, and the quiet meeting site became disturbed and controversial because of Professor Gavin Menzies' speech. More than 200 scholars and professors endured Menzies's three-hour outpouring of speeches, and these professors had long discussions with some of the related issues in the article. The outcome of that discussion turned Menzies into a media celebrity, a "madman" in the eyes of historians trying to rewrite history.
On January 13, 2006, there was such an article in the British "Economist" magazine, which mainly expressed this view, and found a Ming Dynasty world map in China, which can prove that Chinese predate Columbus's discovery of the Americas and was the first to complete the sea voyage around the earth 500 years ago.
This view is equivalent to the United States in Guam during World War II, and the war behavior in Nagasaki has aroused widespread concern and heated discussion, and has also broken people's inherent understanding of Columbus's discovery of the American continent. Contrary to the Discovery of the American Continent, which we study in textbooks. After we learned about Columbus's discovery of the New World in textbooks, navigators such as Da Gama and Magellan used their footprints to broaden people's horizons. Today it is known as the Great Discovery of Geography. This article completely subverts history and gives us a whole new understanding of the discovery of the American continent.
Zheng He's Seven Voyages to the West – Have You Discovered the American Continent?
In history, to prove the real existence of a thing, there must be documentary materials, word-of-mouth materials, or excavated cultural relics. Whether Gavin Menzies' views can be confirmed remains in doubt.
Zheng He, formerly known as Ma Wenhe, small character Sanbao, Yunnan, after the Ming Dynasty army captured Yunnan, their family became prisoners, and then entered the palace as eunuchs, and was soon assigned to the Yan king's mansion in Beiping, after the Yan king Zhu Di raised an army, for meritorious service was given the surname Zheng, Zhu Di won the throne and ordered him to lead more than 27,000 people to the West in 1405, the Ming Dynasty seventeen years of the Western Ocean refers to the southeast Asian and Indian coasts west of Brunei.
There are more than 240 ships in the voyage fleet, and the largest vessel displacement is 1500 tons. Zheng He made seven voyages to the West, departing for the first time from Liujiagang in Suzhou and reaching Guri via Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, and Cochin on the west coast of India. This was the main place for the first voyage to the West. The second voyage to the West coincided with the first arrival. The third time there was a change from the first two places, the main route was centered on the eastern Indian Ocean, then via Java, Sumatra to Ceylon, then north to the east coast of India, to the Bay of Bengal, and then back to the Strait of Malacca, after carrying out related activities in Malacca for the return journey. The main route of the fourth voyage to the Western Ocean was to turn across the Coast of the East Indies to the Persian Gulf, and finally reached Hormuz, completing the fourth voyage.
But some believe that the voyage may have reached the coast of East Africa. The fifth voyage, in line with the fourth, also reached Hormuz and eventually reached the Persian Gulf. However, Zheng He also sent a fleet of ships from the southern coast of Arabia to Mogadishu, Burava, Malindi and other places along the East African coast. On the sixth voyage, in addition to sailing into the Persian Gulf, a small detachment was sent to the east to circumvent non-coastal ports for navigation. The last voyage, the seventh, crossed the west coast of India into the Persian Gulf, and this voyage reached Mecca in Arabia.
Zheng He's seven voyages to the West lasted 29 years. It has traveled to more than 30 countries and regions in Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean coast and the east coast of Africa, reaching as far as East Africa and the Red Sea. It is also the largest in the Western Ocean under the Ming Dynasty, with the largest number of ships and the most voyages for seafarers. At that time, the mixed fleet was second to none in the world at that time, a century before Western navigators. Advanced shipbuilding technology, superb navigation technology at that time can be described as the top level.
Although the fleet split off a fleet to explore other places at that time, it is not known which places it went to, and it became an important doubt whether Zheng He discovered the American continent before Columbus. This is also where people generally fail to recognize and agree. There is no historical material, the history of cultural relics is not accepted by people. Then the discovery of a map made Professor Gavin Menzies more certain that Zheng He was the first to discover the American continent. What is this map?
A map that makes Gavin Menzies more certain
Mentioning this map, I have to mention Liu Gang, who graduated from the law department of Peking University in 1983 and is also well known in Beijing legal circles after decades of struggle in Beijing. Since 1996, he has been collecting cultural plays and has also studied the collection of cultural relics. In 2001, he traveled to Shanghai on business and came to the "Shanghai Panjiayuan" - Dongtai Road Antique Market. Wandering around the market, a map catches your eye. So I bargained with the owner to buy the map for 4,000 yuan.
After returning home from the antique market, take a closer look and study. There are relevant inscriptions in the map as "Qianlong 癸未仲秋月, imitating the Ming Yongle SixteenTh Year of the World's Various Tribute Maps, Chen Mo Yi Tong Painted." The meaning of this sentence is that in the Qianlong Dynasty, the Yongle years of the Ming Dynasty were imitated, that is, 1763, and the sixteenth year of Ming Yongle was 1418, which is very common, but on this map not only Asia, but also the Americas and Antarctica were drawn. This is where it is possible to prove that Zheng He discovered the American continent before Columbus, but in the geographical knowledge and historical knowledge we know, Columbus discovered the American continent in 1492 and the Antarctic continent was discovered in 1820.
In the upper left corner of the map there is a note that reads: "Anyone who does not have a red circle is one that is not named in the original map." That is to say, some of them were directly added by later imitators, and some annotations were copied directly from the original drawings. In order to make a difference, the imitator is circled with red ink, which is more obvious. Looking closely at the map, he couldn't help but be very confused, which not only showed the South Pole, the Arctic and Greenland, but also circled the American and Australian continents with red ink, that is, he presented all the continents and seas on the earth. Could it be that in 1418 AD, Chinese had discovered Australia and the American continent? The first thing that comes to mind is that this map is a fake.
He has been collecting since he was 30 years old, has studied collecting, and also has a wealth of experience in appreciation. Through careful discernment, he felt that the date of the map should be in the 18th century, and for this reason, he directly approached Mr. Xiang and expressed his desire to buy the map. To his surprise, the map gained the gaze of all kinds of eyes from all over the world. His speculation could not calm him down, and he thought: Could it be that Columbus discovered that the American continent was really after Zheng He? Was China really the first country to discover the American continent? As an amateur, are you qualified to challenge yourself with authority? So he plucked up the courage to contact Gavin Menzies.
Gavin Menzies was very excited when he saw the map, and after deliberating, decided to hold a press conference to publicize the news, and reported it in the media such as The Economist, The Mirror, and China Daily. Later, the results of the Carbon-14 test were also published, which proved that both paper and ink were produced in the 18th century, and the time was confirmed to be correct, as he expected, and the publication of the map caused great controversy in the academic community.
Many experts and scholars at home and abroad have publicly expressed their opinions, believing that the authenticity of this map still needs to be considered, and more historical materials are needed to be examined. For example, some foreign scholars pointed out that this map uses the early European map making process in the 17th century, so relevant scholars believe that this map may be a direct copy of the map made by Europeans in the early 17th century. Some Chinese scholars have also found opinions, and these scholars have also denied the authenticity of the map.
However, compared with the arrogance of Europeans, the attitude of Chinese scholars to this map is more academic and rational. Of course, there are also some points in this map that are contrary to historical common sense. But as a discoverer, Liu Gang has his own insistence, he believes that behind the map needs to understand the history of China. How can we let the public see the historical truth hidden under the dust? After three years of continuous investigation and research, Liu Gang himself published a book on the study of ancient maps, and at the end of the book, he wrote: "After completing the manuscript, I came to Changle, Fujian Province, to imagine the time of history in front of the "Tianfei Lingying Monument", to comfort the ancient Chinese explorers, scientists and cartographers in heaven, and also hoped that the truth of history could be discovered by more people.
Although the Seven Voyages to the West are the exploits of Zheng He's voyages to the West, it is also a monument to our ancient Chinese philosophers. Without the navigation techniques and world maps developed and studied by the ancients, there would never have been Zheng He's seven voyages to the West. "Whether it is mr. Gavin Menzies, a deceased Englishman, or Mr. Liu Gang, who insists on his own views, he insists on the authenticity of this map and the authenticity of this history. Although mainstream academics generally believe that "Zheng He discovered the Americas" lacks scientific basis, their retrospective of this history has won the respect of many people.
The truth about history - needs constant exploration, scientific research
Perhaps in the long course of history, there are many controversies like this, and we need to respect people like Liu Gang and Gavin Menzies, such as Copernicus's heliocentric theory, which negates the authority of the pope. Galileo rejected the theological cosmology and proposed systematic experimental tests, the Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment, and Newtonian gravity, all of which challenged authority. In real life, we must dare to question and dare to break the authority, but we must use a scientific attitude, a scientific method, no superstition, no rumors, only in this way, our current world will be more efficient and beautiful.
There are many unsolved mysteries in ancient Chinese history, such as the mystery of Lao Tzu's exit, the mystery of Xi Shi's life and death, the mystery of Xu Fudongdu, etc., these unsolved mysteries are innumerable, because the lack of historical materials or cultural relics can not be well identified, many benevolent people who are committed to the study of ancient culture are also working hard, whether it is scientific workers or ancient culture lovers, are doing their best, hoping that the mystery of ancient culture can be completely solved, so that each of us can now understand ancient history and appreciate ancient culture. Let Chinese culture go global.
Salute to all the lovely people who dare to break the authority and break through themselves