1434

by Gavin Menzies

  When she reached the thing she saw that its outer side was all covered in copper. Ropes were tied to these spruce trees, and it was full of iron. Then a bear came out of it. He stood on the thing that lay there. “He looked just like a bear,” said the old woman, reporting her find to onlookers, “but his face was that of a human being”1

  A man climbed up from the beach and went down into the ship. When he looked about in the interior he saw it was full of boxes. He found brass buttons in strings [coins with holes in the middle]—half a fathom long. The Clatsop people gathered the iron, the copper and the brass.”

  This story is corroborated by the oral history of the Seneca Indians, who say Chinese landed on what is now the Washington-Oregon coast before the Europeans got there. Apparently a small craft landed during summer months and met the local Indian people. A fleet returned during the winter months expecting a similar welcome, but they were wiped out by the Crow people, who had come down from the plains to escape a harsh winter.2

  Queen Charlotte and Vancouver Islands appear in the Waldseemüeller (1507) and Zatta maps (1776)3 drawn before western Europeans reached British Columbia, that is, before Vancouver or Cook. Zatta calls Vancouver Island “Colonia dei Chinesi” and gives as authority the Russian explorers who found Chinese there when they arrived in 1728 (Bering) and 1741 (Chirikov). Russian hydrographers in Vladivostok have found Chirikov’s drawings of these Chinese people.

  Hugo Grotius (1624) reporting Galvão: “The people of China…sailed ordinarily the coast, which seems to reach unto 70 degrees towards the north,” that is, as far north as the Bering Strait.

  When Major Powers of the U.S. Army arrived to take over administration from the Franciscans in the Klamath Valley, Oregon, he found a Chinese colony (40° N). All along the coast from 40° to 50° N there is extensive evidence of wrecked Chinese ships of Zhu Di (1403–1424) and the Xuan De emperor (1426–1435). Both emperors had built massive fleets. Professor Long Fei and Dr. Sally Church of Cambridge University, who examined the Shi-lu, Official Shipbuilding Records for 1403–1419, report: 2,726 Junks were built in these sixteen years of which a minimum of 343 and a maximum of 2,020 would have been available to Zheng He. 4

  Evidence of the Tsunami Along the North American West Coast

  At Susanville, California, a beautiful Xuan De (1426–1435) brass plate was found buried in woodland.

  The University of Oregon Anthropological Paper Number 23 (1981) reports the discovery by Herbert K. Beals and Harvey Steele of Chinese porcelain from the Netarts Sand Spit (45°29' N), 150 miles north of the Cotner Junk: “Between 1956 and 1958 the archaeological site designated 35-TI-I was excavated under the direction of L. S. Crossman of the University of Oregon. In 1958 excavations in House 13 of their site, under the supervision of Thomas M. Newman led to the recovery of 127 fragments of Chinese porcelain.”

  The report then breaks down the finds into two groups: possible Cheng Hua; Yung Lo (Zhu Di) and Hsuan Te (Xuan De.) The authors conclude: “It is of course possible that early Ming porcelain could have been brought over on Chinese junks or trading journeys in post-Columbian times. This however does appear logically to be doubtful. We can’t imagine porcelain for seafaring voyages to be antique especially as antiquity was so highly valued.”

  The curator of the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum, inland from the Netarts Sand Spit, where the ceramics were found, informed me of a large pulley made of calophyllum, an Asian wood found in the sea and given to the Horner Museum at Corvallis.5 It has been dated 1410.

  Ozette, a few days’ sailing north of the Cotner Junk, is a Makah village buried by a mudslide in the 1770s. The Department of Anthropology of Washington State University has published three volumes of Ozette Archaeological Project Research Reports6 comparing hundreds of reports of people who have contributed since initial excavations were begun in 1966. According to one report, “a section of the hillside above Ozette village gave way…and the liquefied clay roared downhill, displacing or crushing everything in its path. This part of the village was densely packed with longhouses.”

  Excavations of these longhouses and their middens has been carried out methodically and carefully, separating out the different eras. Of relevance to this report is the use of iron tools and the evidence of trade with Japan between 1400 and 1450 (Makah people did not smelt iron).

  In an article in Contributions to Human History,7 Royal British Columbia Museum’s curator Grant Keddie examines claims that native Indian cultures of the north Pacific coast of North America were influenced by prehistoric contact (i.e., pre-European) with advanced cultures of China. He concludes:

  The native use of large numbers of Chinese coins on the northwest coast as a result of the fur trade is well documented in the journals of early explorers and traders. The manufacturing dates of Chinese coins traded to North American Indians and introduced later by Chinese immigrants were most often a pre-contact (before European) date…. It is clear that the temporal and spatial context of late prehistoric trade between Old and New worlds is in need of further study.

  Since 1990 when the above report was published a mass of new evidence of pre-Columbus Chinese voyages to the Americas has been found: wrecks at Long Beach, Vancouver Island, said to be carrying rice; a Chinese vase dredged by the trawler Beaufort Sea off Ucluelet and another off Tofino (west Vancouver Island); a wreck said to be of a Chinese junk north of Sequim in the Juan de Fuca Strait; a Chinese talisman and lamp (pre-Columbus), bronze figurines of the god Garuda, and ancient Chinese bronzes on Vancouver Island; old Chinese coins at Chinlac; Chinese bronzes hauled up from the Strait of Juan de Fuca; inexplicable stone structures and stone cairns.

  Number of Wrecked Junks

  Taking all of the above findings into account, it seems that at least thirty junks were wrecked along the coast between 41 and 49° N. If that is so, there should be evidence that a substantial number of survivors got ashore—as was the case following a similar catastrophe in New Zealand (Cedric Bell report).

  Chinese Settlements on the Columbia River

  Some of the evidence of wrecked junks is near the five-mile-wide entrance to the Columbia River. One hundred fifty miles upriver where the river hooks to the east, just north of Portland, lies Lake Vancouver. There in the narrow valley of Lake River hundreds of ceramic artefacts have been found, fired by “the Washington Potters,” a group who appeared from nowhere “around 1400” and disappeared equally suddenly three hundred years later.8 The U.S. Institute of Archaeological Studies concluded their pottery was Asian in form. A further 120 miles up the Columbia River in an area west of The Dalles is Hog Canyon, where pigs with short legs—said to be Chinese—ran wild until recently.

  In lakes beside the Columbia River local people grew a potato-like vegetable called the wapato, which is native to China. The Nez Percé Indians, reached from the Columbia River, are well known for their very distinctive spotted horses called Appaloosa, shown in paintings of the Chinese Yuan dynasty.

  Evidence along the Columbia River and across British Columbia suggests an old Chinese colony. Squamish Indians have accounts of Chinese traders before Europeans arrived, as do the Haida of Queen Charlotte Island, who describe people sailing from the west toward the sunrise. Nootka folklore has “visitors from afar” who came before the Europeans. The indigenous people of Whidbey Island in Puget Sound believe the Chinese logged off large tracts of forest hundreds of years ago. Totem poles on Vancouver Island and on the Washington coast are identical to those of China’s Wuhan Province. Potlach ceremonies in both places are the same. More than thirty words spoken by the Haida people have the same meaning in Chinese—tsil (hot); chin (wood); etsu (grandmother). Olympic State Park has its Ho River and Vancouver Island its China Beach and China Hill. Local people there offer up white dogs as sacrifice “to bring heaven’s blessings” as they do in China.

  DNA Evidence

  Mariana Fernandez-Cobo and colleagues9 examined the ubiquitous DNA virus polyomavirus JC of Salish people who once
lived on the Pacific coast. They describe in layperson’s language how they analyzed the urine of these peoples and found that the benign kidney disorder of “Japan” (i.e., Mongolia and Japan) strains MY[ZA] and Tokyo-1 are identical to Salish MT-1 [ZA] and MT-3 [ZA]. In short, the Salish who now live in Montana and the Mongolian/Japanese people tested have the same ancestors.

  The Cotner Junk is a vital piece of evidence in many ways. First, it appears to corroborate the extensive evidence of the tsunami that Cedric Bell has found in the wrecked junks in New Zealand. Secondly, it should provide evidence about Zheng He’s junks—knowledge that can be passed to builders of a replica for the Beijing Olympic Games. Third, it serves as a focal point in gathering evidence of the voyages of Zheng He to America. Publication of the details of the Cotner Junk will undoubtedly result in a tidal wave of new evidence.

  Evidence of Wrecked Chinese Fleets in South America

  We have received a great many e-mails relating to pre-Columbian presence of Chinese people and of wrecked junks in South America, especially in Peru. Details may be seen on our website by searching for Peru and Chile. Because I believe that at least one fleet was wrecked by the Mahuika tsunami, we have spent some time narrowing the search. Zheng He’s fleets would have traded with the civilizations then existing in South America.

  Where those civilizations had their principal ports was determined by the unique geography of South America. The Andes Mountains straddle the equator; as they march south they widen and the coastal plain that starts a hundred miles wide in Ecuador gets narrower and narrower until in Chile it is only twenty miles wide. Where the massif broadens in the south, a grassland plateau some 11,500 feet high emerges between the peaks. Running westward from the high Altiplano down to the sea are innumerable small rivers like legs of a centipede. To the east of the Andes stretches a wide, hot, low plain, which soaks up moist winds from the Atlantic. As the wet winds spread westward they deluge the Brazilian forest with rain before dumping the remainder on the Andes, which, due to their height, falls as snow. In spring between September and April, the winds freshen. For a brief period, snow even reaches the high slopes of the western Andes. When the snow melts in summer, water cascades down the “centipede” rivers into the Pacific. Thus starting at the equator and traveling eastward one encounters an astonishing diversity of climates. First comes the bone-dry strip of coast; then the western slopes of the Andes punctuated every thirty miles or so by rivers full of water some three months of the year; then the high, cold grassy plateau, the Altiplano with plenty of rain for a quarter of the year; and finally the hot, low, wet Amazon jungle.

  The bone-dry desert coast exists because of the cold Humboldt Current flowing northward from the Antarctic and a high-pressure system far out in the Pacific, a combination that prevents rainfall. Consequently there is no word for “rain” in either the Quechua or Aymara languages. Instead, in winter the coast is covered by a fine mist, which is burnt off as the sun heats up the land. The Chinese name for this mist is Peru.

  As the Humboldt Current rises to the surface, it brings millions of tons of plankton from its depths. Small fish feed on the plankton, attracting larger fish, which in turn attract sea lions. The water yields 1,680 kilograms of fish per hectare, almost a thousand times the world average. The most vivid way of seeing this extraordinary richness is by ship (or submarine) from out in the Pacific; the Humboldt Current is delineated by acrobatic displays of huge flocks of seabirds diving into the water to gorge themselves. Millions of these birds nest ashore, producing an endless supply of guano fertilizer.

  So the people living along the Pacific coast of southern Ecuador, Peru, and northern Chile had an endless bounty of fish, shellfish, birds, and sea lions for food. Their river valleys were full of water for a quarter of the year, and they had plenty of fertilizer. So it is not surprising that this stretch of coast has produced rich human civilizations since the dawn of time. The land had as much to offer as the Nile, the rivers of Mesopotamia, the Ganges, or the rivers of China. South American civilizations are hence as old as any on the planet: Peru’s Caral Supe are about 5,000 years old; Chinese civilization is 3,900 years old; India, 4,600; Egypt, 5,300; and Mesopotamia, 5,700.

  The greatest civilizations of the Pacific coast of South America, starting with the sites of Caral and Chavín, were based between the Lambayeque River in northern Peru and the Ica River in southern Peru. South of the Ica the coast narrows considerably, and north of the Lambayeque the Humboldt Current and its fish supplies peter out. Since Peru was home to the richest civilization of them all, this area would have attracted Zheng He.

  This part of Peru is awash with evidence of Chinese visitors over the past two thousand years. There are still one hundred villages in the Ancash region of Peru that retain their Chinese names to this day. Inca people have East Asian admixture in their blood to such an extent that their DNA profile could almost be called Chinese. (Professor Gabriel Novick and colleagues—see www.1421.tv, then ‘Evidence’, then ‘Part VII—The Genetic legacy of Zheng He’s fleets’)10

  The clearest possible evidence can be seen in Lima’s Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera, which has 45,000 exhibits from graves of the Cupisnique period (1000 B.C.) through the Moches (A.D. 400–800) and more recent Nasca, Chimu, and Chanca periods. I asked the most helpful curator, Mr. Claudio Huarache, if there were portraits of Chinese merchants found on pottery from the graves. He immediately showed me beautiful paintings of Chinese from Moche, Chanca, and Nasca graves—spanning the past two thousand years and covering the whole coast of Peru north to south. A picture of a Chinese merchant is shown on our website.

  Peru appears on Chinese world maps long before the 1418 map (Hendon Harris map collection) and before Zheng He’s nautical chart (which also shows Peru—see Liu Gang’s ‘Map speaks without words’ on www.1421.tv). Diego Ribero’s master chart of the world of 152911 shows the coast of Peru in great detail, with an inscription that describes Peru as “province and cities of Chinese silk.” Ribero’s map was published before Pizarro (the first European) got to Peru. The Waldseemüller map, also published before Pizarro reached Peru, shows the Andes along the whole length of the South American coast.

  So it seems safe to assume that Zheng He knew of Peru before he set sail. He would have visited ports where his fleets could trade. We know from the records of the first Spanish chronicles that in the 1420s the principal trading areas would have been Chan Chan in the north of Peru, then, coming south, Chancay (north of Lima), then Pachacamac in the southern suburbs of modern Lima, then Paracas some 150 miles south of Lima. Chancay suddenly started to mass-produce pottery in the 1420s, some of which they called “china.” My first thought was that Chancay was the port Zheng He visited (in medieval Castilian the name means “City of Chinese silk”), but unfortunately the place has been so badly looted it is impossible to be sure. So we need other clues.

  The 1418 map has this description alongside Peru: “The local people practise Paracas religion.” It also shows a river on the Peruvian coast. When Liu Gang published the map I researched Jesuit and Franciscan records to find when this religion was first mentioned in European annals. To my surprise there were no mentions at all. To find out more we drove south to the Paracas Peninsula, which today is a national reserve protected by the Peruvian government. Here is the Julio Tello site museum, which provided the answer to the riddle. The Paracas people buried their dead in very rich funerary bundles made of a fabric the local cotton and vicuña wool dyed with beautiful natural colors. The fabric was first seen on the Lima market in the late nineteenth century and examined by Max Uhle, a German archeologist, who named it as Early Inca culture.

  Photographic Insert 3

  A typical scene at the papal court—Pinturicchio depicts the court of Pope Pius II.

  Florence and her most famous son, Leonardo da Vinci.

  RENAISSANCE MEN AND THEIR OUTPUT BEFORE AND AFTER 1434

  Timeline showing key dates in the Italian Renaissance.r />
  Ephemeris table from the Pepysian Library, Cambridge University.

  Needham’s postcard is self-explanatory.

  Regiomontanus’ ephemeris tables.

  Chinese astronomy was clearly more advanced than European efforts until after the 1434 Chinese visit to Florence.

  Where do future discoveries lead us? To America and beyond…

  23

  THE CONQUISTADORES’ INHERITANCE: OUR LADY OF VICTORY

  Trujillo, Spain, July 25, 1434: The Feast of Saint James

  The Pizarro family left their house in the Callera de los Matires at noon. It was but a short walk down a slippery stone path to the Puerta de Santiago. Through it appeared the squat tower of the Church of Santiago where they would attend mass on this, the birthday of Saint James.

  One of the most amazing feats of arms in the annals of humankind had its genesis here in this small mountain village in landlocked Extremadura. None of the Pizarro family had seen the sea; their dusty mountain village, Trujillo, had no maritime tradition. Yet the name of Trujillo would soon be stamped upon the length and breadth of the Americas. A son of Trujillo, Francisco Pizarro, would conquer a mighty Inca empire, triumphing over a civilization of 20 million people with a band of 180 comrades.

  Extremadura, birthplace of the conquistadores, is a land is of unspeakable beauty and savage cruelty. In spring, it is carpeted with flowers. In summer, wolves trail dying sheep as they plod wearily along Mesta trails in search of pasture. The land’s infinite horizons are fringed by mountaintops that are rose pink at dawn, deep velvet by nightfall. At midday, the cracked, red earth vibrates with heat, sending wild pigs scurrying for shelter beneath the olive trees.