1421 – China discovers America?

My third entry on this site was about Gavin Menzies presenting his case to the Royal Geographical Society for China discovering the Americas before Columbus or other Europeans.

Last night I checked out a DVD from our library that chronicles Menzies’ theory. The documentary, 1421 – the year China discovered America? is split into two hours. The first develops Gavin’s version of the voyages of Zheng He, a eunuch admiral from the Ming Dynasty. Oddly enough – many of the emperor’s officials were eunuchs, and we had to look the word up because, you know – we thought it meant castrated bed chamber attendant. Well, it does in Greece. In China however, eunuchs were pretty much bureaucracy, but castrated.

Anyway, Zheng He sailed around most of the Indian Ocean with the massive Ming fleet. These voyages have been confirmed by stone carvings around the various location. Menzies argues that Zheng He, or one of his admirals, or even one of his deputies sailed past the Cape of Good Hope, up the western coast of Africa, and ultimately across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and on to Florida and maybe even as far as Rhode Island. It was all very interesting and exciting.

The second hour of the documentary was directed by some one else, and pretty much spends its time deconstructing all of Menzies’ arguments, asking experts in their respective fields about the evidence that Menzies has offered. It was somewhat disappointing because it really takes a lot of the wind out of theory. But it also points out the lack of concrete evidence for the theory.

All in all, Menzies has a great theory with some rather large holes. Its certainly a charming one, and the documentary is quite entertaining and informative. The thrust of his argument is that the great explorers that are credited with the discovery of the Americas already had maps of the new world and someone had to already have been there for these maps to exist. Menzies thinks it was the Chinese.