Evidence For the Chinese Having Surveyed the World Before the Europeans
Recommended Reading for the impatient
Because of the long-standing acceptance of history crediting Europeans for ushering in the Age of Exploration, discovering the Americas, colonizing, and dominating the major parts of the world for almost five hundred years, any claim that defies this orthodoxy understandably faces strong opposition. The person advocating such a position will likely be regarded as a crackpot. Therefore, any such theory will need to be fortified by solid evidence and convincing arguments to entertain the slightest chance of carrying the day.
The conclusion asserted in this book, that history as it is currently written is wrong, is based on three major propositions. First, the Europeans were not in a position to have accomplished what is now generally accepted as history. Second, the Chinese, in contrast, possessed precisely what were needed to accomplish the feats now attributed to the European explorers. Third, extensive extant historical records clearly indicate that the Europeans inherited the maritime programs from the Chinese. A summary of this argument is presented herein.
The thesis begins with the Portuguese, who were credited with leading the way to the European Age of Exploration by being the first to round the African Continent in the fifteenth century. The motive given for this historical achievement was a drive to search for a new spice route to the Orient because the traditional land-based spice route had been cut off by the Ottoman Empire after its capture of Constantinople.
The “new spice route” assertion has now been largely abandoned, even by serious historians. Not only was the spice route not broken, it was operated between the Italians and the Turks, in affiliation with the Arabs and the Indians, to great profits. The Portuguese, living at the far western end of the European Continent, were not even in the spice business. Further more, the Portuguese could not have engendered a drive to sail down the western coast of Africa because the claim was unsupported by real geographical evidence.
 |
The map on the right, the Pirrus de Noha map, a Ptolemaic map dated to 1414, the time of the start of the Portuguese ventures, typical of the “world maps” of late fourteenth and fifteenth century, had yet to render a true shape of Africa, and the Indian Ocean was shown as a lake; that is, landlocked, inaccessible by sea. (Many more such maps are presented in The 1421 Heresy.) No European, not just the Portuguese, could have been inspired by such maps to go to sea. One cannot be inspired by what one does not know. One cannot be stirred to strive for what the facts indicate cannot be done. However, we know the Portuguese did go to sea. Therefore, they must have been inspired by something else.
The fact is, medieval Europeans actually had access to good quality geographical information. For example, the early fifteenth century world map attributed to Albertin de Virga as shown on the left below (and others like it presented in The 1421 Heresy) depicts Africa clearly before the Europeans had sailed around it and surveyed the landmass. The implication here is clear. The author of The 1421 Heresy is insinuating that the Europeans had obtained the information from the Chinese. The question is thus: Can it be proven? The Chinese certainly had the requisite geographical knowledge, as evidenced by the late fourteenth century Kangnido map on the right clearly showing Africa (look at the left side of the map), but that in itself does not prove the Chinese was the source of such new geographical information. Much more inferences are needed.
 |
 |
A general historical misconception is that Asia and Europe had developed separately and for the most part independent of each other. While most people may be aware that gunpowder and silk came from China, that is usually about the extent of their knowledge of cultural exchange and knowledge transfer. Therefore, even if geographical knowledge were passed on from China to Europe, it is generally uncredited. In addition, knowledge transfer is not something that is explicitly written up in history books. We know tea most likely originally came from China, but we are not 100% sure precisely where coffee came from, and the Italians are still actively seeking to prove that they invented spaghetti. How many of us know that the orange was spread from Asia to the rest of the world? However, history is not the only place where such evidence of the past is documented. In fact, at this point history itself is the very subject of our contention. Evidence of intellectual property transfer from China to European in medieval times actually exists, and of all places, it can be found in European archives.
Below left is a one-eyed creature from the more than two thousand (some claim four thousand) years old Chinese ancient text Shan Hai Jing. On its right is a similar creature from a European map by the cartographer Sebastian Munster dated to 1544. Below these two illustrations are two one-legged “people” from Shan Hai Jing and the medieval Beatus map (look to the right hand side of the map). Numerous such examples are illustrated in The 1421 Heresy, and we know the information was transmitted to Europe during the Middle Ages about the twelve, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries because the European authors identified these creatures as “The People of the Khan,” the Mongol Emperor of China.
 |
 |
 |
 |
At about this same time European mapmakers began producing, often in detail, maps of places that they had not been to. The map samples below represent two such “fantasy” or “imaginary” maps. The one on the left was by the cartographer Gastaldi. The map was produced in 1550, before the Europeans had visited the Antarctic. Yet the map clearly showed the great southern continent as if it had been surveyed (or there would have been no such map), therefore somebody had surveyed the places. They were just not Europeans.
 |
 |
 |
The map on the right was drawn by Francisco Rosselli in 1508, not even two decades after Columbus “discovered” the Caribbean. Yet the whole world was taking shape. The only source of geographical information at the time was the Chinese, and the European geographers were aware of this. The section from the 1375 Catalan shown on the left, one of many presented in The 1421 Heresy, shows European mapmakers drawing Chinese vessels in the world’s waters, in this case, the Persian Gulf. We know these were Chinese vessels because only Chinese had ships with more than three masts.
Below on the left is a map of North America made in 1597 by the mapmaker Corneille Wytfliet, which is now preserved at the Alaska State Library. In 1597 the Europeans had not yet surveyed Alaska, yet they were drawing maps about it. In this map Alaska was named Anian, which is how Marco Polo named today’s Vietnam, called Annan in the old days. The mapmaker had misidentified this region of North America as Southeast Asia. The sample map on the right shows a modern map of Indo-China turned 90% clockwise. The sample maps demonstrate how in medieval times Europeans had Chinese maps of the world and got them mixed up.
 |
 |
All these documents and many even more telling ones are identified, presented, and explained in The 1421 Heresy. There are over 300 such illustrations in all. These are real documents now preserved in Western institutions, including the United States Library of Congress, The British Library, The Vatican, the French National Library, major university libraries, and others. You can plan trips and go visit these places and examine the evidence yourself. You can even purchase replicas of these maps and documents. The evidence presented in The 1421 Heresy is real.
It must be said that it is no discredit to the historians today not knowing this true version of history. The prevailing version is simply what they have learned, although the evidence indicating otherwise, abundant as it may be, is all there. It is just that it is scattered about, and no coherent theory to explain it has been formulated until now.
On the other hand, the author of The 1421 Heresy harbors no political agenda in putting forth this exposition. The evidence presented is not used to support the claim that the Chinese first discovered America, because there was no competition designed to ascertain that status. The author makes no tract for the return of the American Continents to China, any more than the Dutch can force the reversion of New York to New Amsterdam. Mexicans still speak Spanish and Brazilians still speak Portuguese. Americans and Australians continue to speak English, and Canadians yet cannot settle on English or French. The sole purpose of the present research is to set the records of the Age of Exploration straight.