1434

by Gavin Menzies

  Our quest to rediscover the world of Zheng He’s era ends at San Lúcar de Barrameda, on the estuary of the Guadalquivir. This powerful, melancholy river symbolizes the change from Old World to New. Once the grand highway that joined Córdoba, the magnificent capital of Islamic Spain, to the rest of the Islamic world in the East, the river became the link between Seville, capital of New Spain, and her New World colonies in the West.

  If the Guadalquivir could speak, she might wearily agree that so extraordinary were the events of Zheng He’s era that it seems God had grown tired of his creation and decided to try something new.

  The last word goes to Omar Khayyám (circa 1074).

  Those who in ancient ages came

  And those that live in later days

  Depart on their successive ways:

  For all the journey is the same.

  This Kingdom of the Earth and Sky

  Remains eternally for none:

  We too must go, as they have gone,

  And others follow by-and-by.

  Our long journey of exploration into the medieval world is over. Like our predecessors, we now commend ourselves to God’s keeping.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is a collective endeavor and could not have been completed without the help of hundreds of people. I am afraid these acknowledgments are likely to be incomplete: if anyone feels aggrieved at being omitted, please let us know. For more extensive acknowledgments, please visit our website.

  I am grateful to the following people who conducted major independent research that they funded themselves and that lasted for more than two years:

  Lam Yee Din

  I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Yam Lee Din in Hong Kong in 2003. Mr. Lam has studied Zheng He maps in exhaustive detail and published his findings in four lengthy papers that are shown on our website. Mr. Lam is, in my opinion, the greatest living expert on Zheng He’s voyages. At my suggestion he was invited to deliver his findings to the Library of Congress, which he did on May 16, 2005. His speech was broadcast to China and Asia by Phoenix Television.

  Tai Peng Wang

  Tai Peng Wang is a historian and journalist based in Vancouver. His family is from Quanzhou, and he can read and speak the version of Mandarin used in his native province. This has been very important in the discussions on the authenticity of the 1418 map, which was created by a Quanzhou cartographer.

  Tai Peng Wang has written and published five papers of the greatest importance, particularly his thirty-two-page paper entitled “Zheng He and His Envoys’ Visits to Cairo in 1414 and 1433.” This is not to imply that Tai Peng Wang agrees with all the statements I have made in this book.

  Cedric Bell

  Before visiting New Zealand in 2003, Cedric read 1421 and decided to do some research on the beaches of New Zealand’s South Island. He sent the results to a company then making a television documentary on 1421. Cedric had found some forty wrecks buried in sand or in cliffs and also the ruins of barracks that the shipwrecked survivors had built ashore and the remains of smelters built to refine ore. To confirm this, I retained well-known ground-penetrating radar and carbon-dating laboratories to check a wreck, a barracks, and a smelter. The results are on our website 1421, along with Cedric Bell’s research. They show conclusive evidence that Chinese people have been smelting iron in New Zealand for two thousand years. Cedric, in my view, because of his finds and subsequent analysis of wrecks coupled with his experience as a marine engineer, has become the leading authority on the construction of junks in Zheng He’s fleets.

  Rosanne Hawarden and Dave Bell

  Rosanne and Dave have followed through on Cedric Bell’s research in New Zealand, investing their own time for four years and without financial support from me. They have done the groundwork that has enabled us to put forward an alternative and less simplistic history of the settlement of New Zealand and the South Pacific—that the original settlers were the Chinese who brought others of South East Asian origin with them. The Polynesians, including the Maori, are their descendents. Rosanne and Dave’s work has been of very great importance in furthering 1421 evidence in New Zealand, Australia, and the islands of the South Pacific.

  Liu Gang

  Mr. Liu Gang, the founding partner of the second-largest law firm in China, has collected maps and works of art for several decades. Five years ago he found in a Shanghai bookstore “Zheng He’s 1418 Map of the World,” described in detail on our 1421 website. At the time, he knew little of Zheng He and filed the map as a curiosity. In 2005 Liu Gang purchased the Mandarin version of 1421 and realized he owned the first recognizable, accurate world map drawn up after Zheng He’s earlier voyages. Please refer to the 1421 website for more about this map and its authenticity.

  Dave Cotner

  In 1985 Dave Cotner, a retired U.S. Navy pilot, found the wreck of an old ship along the Oregon coast, buried in water beneath thirty feet of sand. The local museum curator classified the wreck as Chinese. When Dave contacted us, we commissioned a well-known firm, GPR Geophysical Services of Portland, Oregon, which conducted the ground-penetrating radar surveys of “Cotner 1” and confirmed in all respects Dave’s MAS survey of 1985—position, size, shape, depth, angle, and sitting. Core drilling started in November 2007. The wreck has unfortunately deteriorated into wood slurry. A few small wood chippings have been retrieved, and these will be dated and classified in early 2008. Dave has found a number of other buried wrecks in the area. Very substantial sums will be required to excavate them.

  Dr. Gunnar Thompson

  Dr. Thompson is an expert in pre-Columbian New World discovery, and his books and research on multicultural findings and early Asian voyages to the Americas have been invaluable to the development of 1434. In Secret Voyages, Thompson provides evidence that between 1277 and 1287 Kublai Khan, emperor of China, dispatched Marco Polo to the Americas, where he reached Hudson Bay. Dr. Thompson presented his findings at the Library of Congress on May 16, 2005. His research can be found at www.marcopolovoyages.com.

  Dr. Siu-Leung Lee

  Dr. Siu-Leung Lee was born and educated in Hong Kong, where he graduated from the Chinese University. He has a PhD from Purdue University, did postdoctoral research at Yale University, and became a professor of chemistry at Texas A&M University, pioneering in the enzyme biosynthesis of natural products.

  Dr. Lee has set up a very popular website called Asiawind (www.asiawind.com). In collaboration with Ms. Fu Yiyao, Dr. Lee published a calligraphy book on Chinese wisdom. He is an internationally known expert on Chinese calligraphy.

  Since 2002 Dr. Lee has been a reasoned critic of 1421. However in 2006 he acquired a medallion that had been found buried near Asheville, North Carolina. Dr. Lee believes this was part of the gifts intended by the Xuan De emperor for American chieftains through his representative. Having found a great deal of corroborative evidence, Dr. Lee now believes that during the Ming dynasty, the Chinese visited North Carolina. In June 2006, he presented his findings at the University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong History Museum, and the City University of Hong Kong. See Dr. Lee’s website for further details.

  Paul Chiasson

  Paul Chiasson is a fifty-five-year-old Canadian architect born on Cape Breton Island. Paul built up a successful practice with a distinguished list of clients. His specialty became Asian art and architecture.

  There is a legend of the local Mi’kmaq people of Cape Breton Island that long ago foreigners came from the other side of the world and settled on a headland now called Cape Dauphin. Five years ago Paul decided to explore the colony where these strangers built their town. On climbing onto the plateau he found the remains of a stone town laid out on Buddhist lines overlooking the Ciboux Islands. Paul’s findings are now contained in his best-selling book, Island of the Seven Cities.

  In 2005 Paul invited Cedric Bell and me to join him on a survey of the site in Cape Dauphin. In my view the site, while Buddhist, is not of Zheng He’s era but much older. Eventually I feel it will be sho
wn to be from the voyages of Kublai Khan’s fleet.

  Charlotte Harris Rees

  Charlotte Harris Rees has researched extensively about the early arrival of Chinese to the Americas. As a child she lived in Taiwan then Hong Kong with her Baptist missionary parents Marjorie and Dr. Hendon M. Harris. Dr. Harris’s find of an ancient Asian map displaying the western coastline of the Americas led to his 1975 book The Asiatic Fathers of America: Chinese Discovery and Colonization of Ancient America. In 2006 Charlotte came out with an edited and abridged version of that book.

  The oldest of the Hendon Harris Fusang Maps are Ming Dynasty. They are believed by some to date back to a 2200 B.C. Chinese map. The Harris Map Collection was at the Library of Congress from 2003 through 2006 while it was being studied. It was examined by Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, chief of the Asian Division; Dr. John Hebert, chief of Geography and Maps Division; and by Professor Xiaocong Li, from Peking University, Beijing. At my request Charlotte presented her findings at a Library of Congress symposium in May 2005. She continues to write and speak. Her website is www.asiaticfathers.com.

  Professor Robert Cribbs

  Professor Robert Cribbs is an adjunct professor of engineering at California State University and a visiting professor of scientific archeology and music in Cairo, Egypt. He started, and runs, several corporations involved in medical and industrial ultrasound and high-speed video and radar processing. He also possesses the world’s third-largest collection of medieval astrolabes. In consequence he has become, in my opinion, one of the world’s leading authorities on the different methods used by ancient and medieval astronomers to determe latitude and longitude, the diminution of the ecliptic, the equations of time of the sun and moon, and the determination of longitude by the slip between sidereal and solar time or by the angular distance between moon, planets, and stars.

  Professor Cribbs has explained these methods to me with such clarity that I have been able to explain them to others. Professor Cribbs presented his findings at a seminar on Zheng He held at the Library of Congress on May 16, 2005.

  M. Benoit Larger and Dr. Albert Ronsin

  M. Larger is a retired French banker living in Saint-Dié-des-Voges. He sponsored an exhibition held at Musée Pierre-Nöel between May and September 2007. The exhibition drew together the work of a group of savants including Martin Waldseemüller who had been recruited by Saint-Dié’s ruler, Duke René II, to produce a world map copied from separate maps received from Portugal. This exhibition, which prominently featured the work of Dr. Albert Ronsin, honorary conservator of the museum, was the collation of the lifetime’s research of many learned scholars into Martin Waldseemüller’s maps of 1507 and 1516 and globe of 1506. Their research has been adopted in this book. I am very grateful for it—it saved me a lifetime of research.

  Dr. Tan Ta Sen

  Dr. Tan Ta Sen is a leading Singapore businessman who is also president of the International Zheng He Society. This society collates knowledge relating to Zheng He’s voyages between 1403 and 1434. I have been invited to attend many of the society’s meetings and have in consequence learned a great deal from the experts. Dr. Tan introduced me to the foreign minister of Singapore, who suggested the 1421 exhibition subsequently held in 2005. Dr. Tan kindly lent several priceless works of art to this exhibition, financed the production of model junks of Zheng He’s fleet, arranged the loans of very valuable artifacts, and provided invaluable support in many other ways. The 1421 exhibition is now in Dr. Tan Ta Sen’s museum in Malacca in the former offices and warehouse of Admiral Zheng He.

  Lynda Nutter

  Lynda Nutter is a dancer and choreographer who understands Japanese, Chinese, and the Nyungah language of the aboriginal people who live in the Swan valley east of Perth in Western Australia. Five years ago Lynda found carved stones that form an astronomical observatory from which longitude may be calculated. These stones have inscriptions in a medieval Chinese script and are at the heart of the Nyungah territory. Lynda has correlated markings on Zheng He’s navigational chart with the coastline around Perth as a result of reading and translating the Chinese.

  Cristopher Pollard

  Christopher Pollard has spent a lifetime studying medieval Spain, notably the history of Extremadura. The final chapter of this book is an abridgment of my notes of Christopher’s lectures. For those who wish to explore the subject in more depth, Christopher runs Christopher Pollard’s Tours based in Taunton, England, and personally leads these tours through the magical cities of medieval Spain.

  Libraries

  Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Owners of Waldseemüller’s 1507 and 1516 world maps. The Library of Congress kindly invited me and supporters of 1421 to a symposium on May 16, 2005, on the subject of Zheng He’s voyages. They were roundly abused for doing so by critics who claimed that 1421 was a fraudulent book and hence such an august body as the Library of Congress should not give us a platform. The library replied they believed in the basic academic principle of free speech, and the symposium went ahead as planned.

  The British Library

  The British Library provides a superb service. An array of helpful experts is there to help those of us who cannot speak the language. If by chance the British Library does not hold the book (certain constituent books of the Yongle Dadian, for example), one is quickly put in touch with the library that does hold that book. I and five researchers have been using this superb service for years. Without it 1421 and 1434 could not have been written.

  The Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge University

  This holds the 1408 astronomical calendar.

  Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

  Holder of the Waldseemüller Green Globe of 1506 and Dr. Monique Pelletier’s research into the provenance and authenticity of that globe—a vitally important map in the 1434 story.

  Hong Kong Central Library

  The principal library in Hong Kong is modern and most efficient. The majority of Chinese illustrations found in 1434 came from here and we are indebted for their services.

  Library of the Duchess of Medina-Sidonia, Sanlucar de Barrameda, Andalucia, Spain

  The duchess’s family, hugely wealthy landowners in fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Spain, backed Christopher Columbus and inherited his papers. These describe Columbus’s several visits to the Americas before 1492.

  The Arquivo Nacional, Torre do Tombo, Lisbon

  The repository of records of pre-Columbian Portuguese voyages to the New World. In my submission this will be a gold mine for future research. My thanks also to the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS); and the London School of Economics.

  Museums, Institutions, and Universities

  The British Museum holds a superb collection of Yuan and Ming dynasty ceramics and works of art, not least the Chinese map of the twelfth century that accurately depicts China overlaid with latitude and longitude lines. Some of the ceramics were excavated from remote parts of the world, for example, a fine blue-and-white early-Ming teapot buried in Australia.

  Much evidence of the Chinese visits to Venice has been and will continue to be found in the Louvre, Paris—for example, Pisanello’s sketches and drawings.

  The Musée Pierre-Nöel contains collections of Waldseemüller and his friends and colleagues’ memorabilia, the repository of records of Vespucci’s voyages, and is the best place to base research on Waldseemüller and his globes and maps.

  The Doge’s Palace, Venice, holds the world map from India to America, constructed according to notations on the map itself, from information brought to Venice by Niccolò di Conti and Marco Polo. This was copied and given to Dom Pedro in 1428. The map is upside down—as some Chinese maps of that era were.

  Chicago University has sponsored the superb electronic database system JSTOR, which has been invaluable to me and the 1421 team.

  Surrey University has pioneered a nondestructive system of analysis of materials employing Rutherford backscattering t
echniques. In broad terms, this enables dating within 5 percent and the capacity to analyze material with sufficient accuracy to determine its origin. Surrey University has kindly advised us how to utilize this valuable resource, which we believe will prove of great assistance in analyzing artifacts found in or near wrecked junks around the world.

  Classic Works Relied Upon for 1434

  Professor Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Cambridge University Press (various dates past 50 years)

  The monumental work of thirty-five volumes is to me one of the most extraordinary pieces of human endeavor ever created. I have read all the volumes over the past fifteen years; without them I would not have started 1421 or 1434. Needham was a genius; his mind can cover the span of human knowledge from how the Chinese fermented liquor to more obscure aspects of Chinese cryptoanalysis. He has no peer.

  John L. Sorenson, emeritus professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University, and Martin H. Raish are authors of the majestic work Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas Across the Oceans. This is an annotated bibliography that briefly describes written works that discuss the transmission of fauna and flora across continents before Columbus. There are some six thousand entries. It seems to me this book demolishes any idea that Europeans can claim to have discovered the New World, and furthermore it seems extraordinary that this book is not in every school in the world. Every time that I give a talk, I do my best to acknowledge Sorenson and Raish. The research team and I are extraordinarily lucky to have had this invaluable resource.