If the 1418 map is a forgery, then the 1419 map must be as well. 'In 1419 European voyages of exploration had not started. Menzies also points to a Portuguese map of the Americas dating from 1419 whose mistakes-like the drawing of California as an island-are thought to have been copied from cartographic errors made by the Chinese. There is nothing new on the 1418 map-it simply combines everything on one sheet of paper,' he said. His key reasoning, forwarded by email from a member of his staff, is that 'every continent, ocean, land, island, river shown on the 1418 map also appears on other Chinese maps of the same date or earlier. In the other camp, Menzies is supporting Liu and the 1418 map with fervor. 'The map is an 18th-century copy of a European map, as evidenced by the two hemispheres depicted, the continents shown and the non-maritime detailed depicted,' he wrote recently to a group of maritime scholars. Geoff Wade, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Singapore's Asia Research Institute, echoed her sentiment. Church, Fellow at the University of Cambridge, told LiveScience. 'Scholars who know this field have refuted this claim under no uncertain terms,' Sally K. 16.ĭespite arousing immediate international interest, the map was quickly dismissed by many historians as an outright forgery. Our knowledge of world exploration as it's been commonly accepted for centuries must now be reconceived due to this landmark work of historical investigation.Liu unveiled his map at a packed press conference in Beijing on Jan. Unveiling incontrovertible evidence of these astonishing voyages, '1421' rewrites our understanding of history. Also concealed was how the Chinese colonized America before the Europeans & transplanted in America & other countries the principal economic crops that have fed & clothed the world. Lost in China's long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America 70 years before Columbus & had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. Most records of their journeys were destroyed. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings. When it returned in 10/1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political & economic chaos. Its mission was 'to proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' & unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.

See images for the condition of this book.īlurb: On, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Condition: Good: Good condition for a used book! Some wear.

1421 by Gavin Menzies