Chinese cartography
China beat Columbus to it, perhaps
An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world
Jan 12th 2006 | from the print edition
THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.
It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called “The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft”.
Next week, in Beijing and London, fresh and dramatic evidence is to be revealed to bolster Zheng He's case. It is a copy, made in 1763, of a map, dated 1418, which contains notes that substantially match the descriptions in the book. “It will revolutionise our thinking about 15th-century world history,” says Gunnar Thompson, a student of ancient maps and early explorers.
The map (shown above) will be unveiled in Beijing on January 16th and at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich a day later. Six Chinese characters in the upper right-hand corner of the map say this is a “general chart of the integrated world”. In the lower left-hand corner is a note that says the chart was drawn by Mo Yi Tong, imitating a world chart made in 1418 which showed the barbarians paying tribute to the Ming emperor, Zhu Di. The copyist distinguishes what he took from the original from what he added himself.
The map was bought for about $500 from a small Shanghai dealer in 2001 by Liu Gang, one of the most eminent commercial lawyers in China, who collects maps and paintings. Mr Liu says he knew it was significant, but thought it might be a modern fake. He showed his acquisition to five experienced collectors, who agreed that the traces of vermin on the bamboo paper it is written on, and the de-pigmentation of ink and colours, indicated that the map was more than 100 years old.
Mr Liu was unsure of its meaning, and asked specialists in ancient Chinese history for their advice, but none, he says, was forthcoming. Then, last autumn, he read “1421: The Year China Discovered the World”, a book written in 2003 by Gavin Menzies, in which the author makes the controversial claim that Zheng He circumnavigated the world, discovering America on the way. Mr Menzies, who is a former submariner in the Royal Navy and a merchant banker, is an amateur historian and his theory met with little approval from professionals. But it struck a chord: his book became a bestseller and his 1421 website is very popular. In any event, his arguments convinced Mr Liu that his map was a relic of Zheng He's earlier voyages.
The detail on the copy of the map is remarkable. The outlines of Africa, Europe and the Americas are instantly recognisable. It shows the Nile with two sources. The north-west passage appears to be free of ice. But the inaccuracies, also, are glaring. California is shown as an island; the British Isles do not appear at all. The distance from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean is ten times greater than it ought to be. Australia is in the wrong place (though cartographers no longer doubt that Australia and New Zealand were discovered by Chinese seamen centuries before Captain Cook arrived on the scene).
The commentary on the map, which seems to have been drawn from the original, is written in clear Chinese characters which can still be easily read. Of the west coast of America, the map says: “The skin of the race in this area is black-red, and feathers are wrapped around their heads and waists.” Of the Australians, it reports: “The skin of the aborigine is also black. All of them are naked and wearing bone articles around their waists.”
But this remarkable precision, rather than the errors, is what critics of the Menzies theory are likely to use to question the authenticity of the 1418 map. Mr Menzies and his followers are naturally extremely keen to establish that the 1763 copy is not a forgery and that it faithfully represents the 1418 original. This would lend weighty support to their thesis: that China had indeed discovered America by (if not actually in) 1421. Mass spectrography analysis to date the copied map is under way at Waikato University in New Zealand, and the results will be announced in February. But even if affirmative, this analysis is of limited importance since it can do no more than date the copyist's paper and inks.
Five academic experts on ancient charts note that the 1418 map puts together information that was available piecemeal in China from earlier nautical maps, going back to the 13th century and Kublai Khan, who was no mean explorer himself. They believe it is authentic.
The map makes good estimates of the latitude and longitude of much of the world, and recognises that the earth is round. “The Chinese were almost certainly aware of longitude before Zheng He set sail,” says Robert Cribbs of California State University. They certainly assumed the world was round. “The format of the map is totally consistent with the level of knowledge that we should expect of royal Chinese geographers following the voyages of Zheng He,” says Mr Thompson.
Moreover, some of the errors in the 1418 map soon turned up in European maps, the most striking being California drawn as an island. The Portuguese are aware of a world map drawn before 1420 by a cartographer named Albertin di Virga, which showed Africa and the Americas. Since no Portuguese seamen had yet discovered those places, the most obvious source for the information seems to be European copies of Chinese maps.
But this is certainly not a unanimous view among the experts, with many of the fiercest critics in China itself. Wang Tai-Peng, a scholarly journalist in Vancouver who does not doubt that the Chinese explored the world early in the 15th century (he has written about a visit by Chinese ambassadors to Florence in 1433), doubts whether Zheng He's ships landed in North America. Mr Wang also claims that Zheng He's navigation maps were drawn in a totally different Chinese map-making tradition. “Until the 1418 map is scientifically authenticated, we still have to take it with a grain of salt,” he says.
Most forgeries are driven by a commercial imperative, especially when the market for ancient maps is booming, as it is now. The Library of Congress recently paid $10m for a copy of a 1507 world map by Martin Waldseemuller, a German cartographer. But Mr Liu says he is not a seller: “The map is part of my life,” he claims.
The consequences of the discovery of this map could be considerable. If it does indeed prove to be the first map of the world, “the history of New World discovery will have to be rewritten,” claims Mr Menzies. How much does this matter? Showing that the world was first explored by Chinese rather than European seamen would be a major piece of historical revisionism. But there is more to history than that. It is no less interesting that the Chinese, having discovered the extent of the world, did not exploit it, politically or commercially. After all, Columbus's discovery of America led to exploitation and then development by Europeans which, 500 years later, made the United States more powerful than China had ever been.
First Americans 'reached Europe five centuries before Columbus discoveries'
Scientists claim first Americans arrived long before Columbus bumped into an island in the Bahamas in 1492
Giles Tremlett Madrid Tuesday 16 November 2010 17.43 GMT
Christopher Columbus did not introduce the first native Americans to Europe, according to new research. When Christopher Columbus paraded his newly discovered American Indians through the streets of Spanish towns at the end of the 15th century, he was not in fact introducing the first native Americans to Europe, according to new research.
Scientists who have studied the genetic past of an Icelandic family now claim the first Americans reached Europe a full five centuries before Columbus bumped into an island in the Bahamas during his first voyage of discovery in 1492.
Researchers said today that a woman from the Americas probably arrived in Iceland 1,000 years ago, leaving behind genes that are reflected in about 80 Icelanders today. The link was first detected among inhabitants of Iceland, home to one of the most thorough gene-mapping programs in the world, several years ago.
Initial suggestions that the genes may have arrived via Asia were ruled out after samples showed they had been in Iceland since the early 18th century, before Asian genes began appearing among Icelanders. Investigators discovered the genes could be traced to common ancestors in the south of Iceland, near the Vatnajˆkull glacier, in around 1710.
"As the island was practically isolated from the 10th century onwards, the most probable hypothesis is that these genes correspond to an Amerindian woman who was taken from America by the Vikings some time around the year 1000," Carles Lalueza-Fox, of the Pompeu Fabra university in Spain, said. Norse sagas suggest the Vikings discovered the Americas centuries before Columbus got there in 1492.
A Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, in the eastern Canadian region of Terranova, is thought to date to the 11th century. Researchers said they would keep trying to determine when the Amerindian genes first arrived in Iceland.
"So far, we have got back to the early 18th century, but it would be interesting to find the same sequence further back in Icelandic history," Lalueza-Fox said. The genetic research, made public by Spain's Centre for Scientific Research, was due to be published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
Bron: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/16/first-americans-europe-research
Bron: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/16/first-americans-europe-research
Christopher Columbus, Then and Now
Published: October 12, 1992
Michelangelo was a teen-ager when Columbus sailed west. Leonardo da Vinci was 40. It was a long time ago. A different time. And that's a point to remember on this 500th anniversary of the great explorer's first landing in the Americas.
There were some 60 million people living in Europe in 1492, emerging from medieval hopelessness into a period of renaissance. Indeed, the excitement of finding a "new world" helped hasten Europe's rebirth and led, of course, to further discovery and expansion.
People had known for at least two centuries that the world wasn't flat, but they still believed it was the center of the universe; it would be another 50 years before Copernicus advanced his notion that planets revolve around the sun.
Undiscovered, across the Atlantic, were another 40 million people whose ancestors had settled in the Americas thousands of years earlier: the Maya civilization in Central America, the Incas to the south, and many nations with many hundreds of tribes to the north. Columbus, landing somewhere in the Caribbean, called them Indians, believing he'd reached the Indies off Asia.
Even today, whether they're called Indians or Native Americans, they are commonly considered to have been one people. They were not. Some were warriors, others peaceful. Some denied their women equal standing with men; others had women as chiefs. They spoke languages as different as Swedish and Swahili.
By now, it's no secret that Columbus and those who came after him abused the natives, drove them from their land and introduced European diseases that decimated their population. While this point has been raised and repeated through the better part of five centuries, it has perhaps never been so widely recognized as now.
The 100-year contrast in attitudes makes the point: In 1892, one orator declared that "unnumbered millions who enjoy in their liberties and their happiness the fruits of his [ Columbus's ] faith, will reverently guard and preserve, from century to century, his name and fame." Today, in New York City, Spain officially commemorates the 500th anniversary by observing a "Day of Respect for Native American Cultures."
Yet it is as unfair to burden Columbus with all the depredations that followed his voyage as it is to credit him alone with the development of the Western Hemisphere. It is enough that a long and different time ago, he opened the way.
Bron: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/12/opinion/christopher-columbus-then-and-now.html?src=pm
Once Upon a Time in China
By BRUCE BARCOTT Published: December 2, 2007
Here’s a lesson in the graceful acceptance of defeat. In 1298, the Genoese navy bested the Venetian fleet at the Battle of Curzola. Unable to live with the disgrace, one Venetian commander, Andrea Dandolo, killed himself by beating his head against his ship’s mast. Another Venetian leader, Marco Polo, surrendered calmly, was taken prisoner and spent a few years writing his memoirs in comfortable captivity. Dandolo’s fame died on the deck; Polo’s will outlive our grandchildren. Few famous names have as much vagueness attached to their exploits, though. Marco Polo opened Asia to European trade, so we’re told, but we generally don’t know much else. Laurence Bergreen remedies that by bolstering Polo’s reputation and arguing for his historical importance in a book as enthralling as a rollicking travel journal. Bergreen, who has written biographies of Louis Armstrong, James Agee and Irving Berlin, turned his attention to ancient explorers with “Over the Edge of the World,” which tracked Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe. I was a fan of that book, but “Marco Polo” far outshines it, and not surprisingly. Marco Polo, unlike Magellan, left his biographers a masterpiece of a memoir to work with.
Marco Polo wasn’t the first European to venture into what we now know as China; he wasn’t even the first Polo. In 1253, Marco’s father, Niccolò, and uncle Maffeo set off on a trading journey to the heart of the Mongol empire established by Genghis Khan. To their contemporaries, this was madness. Genghis Khan had established his kingdom by leading expert warriors, 100,000 strong, on campaigns marked by extreme brutality. Word got around. In Europe, Bergreen writes, “the Mongols were considered Satan’s spawn, among the most lawless, violent and sinful people on the face of the earth.”
The Polo brothers knew something their peers didn’t: Genghis Khan and his successors were pitiless warriors, but they were just as fierce about keeping the post-conquest peace. Sensing a chance for profit in the Pax Mongolica imposed across Asia, the Polo brothers journeyed to the court of Genghis’s grandson and imperial heir, Kublai Khan. The man they met bore no resemblance to his reputation. Kublai Khan welcomed foreign traders and exhibited a rare tolerance and interest in all religions, including Christianity.
Sixteen years later — business trips were a stretch back then — Niccolò Polo returned to Venice to find that his wife, now dead, had given birth to a son 15 years earlier.
In 1271, Niccolò and Maffeo took Marco with them on another journey to the court of the great Khan. Marco hit it off so well with the emperor that he stayed with the Mongol ruler for the next 17 years, earning his keep as a tax assessor and trusted adviser. Acting as Kublai Khan’s eyes and ears, Marco roamed Asia and Africa and reported back to the emperor on the people and taxable commerce he encountered. Shortly before Kublai Khan’s death in 1294, Marco returned to Venice, assumed his place as a prominent merchant, fought the Genoese at Curzola and eventually wrote his famous memoir.
He should have been forgotten by history. The merchant Benjamin of Tudela and the Franciscan missionaries Giovanni da Pian del Carpini and William of Rubruck beat him to market with manuscripts about their travels in the exotic land. But Marco Polo, Bergreen points out, had two advantages rival authors lacked: he took great notes and had a terrific ghostwriter.
On his return journey to Venice, Marco Polo carted back years’ worth of journals and reports. While a captive of the Genoese, he sent for those notes (nobility had its privileges even in a prison) and used them to jog his memory. Also prodding him was his co-author, Rustichello of Pisa, a fellow prisoner and experienced writer of popular romances. Rustichello knew how to play up the drama, and in Marco Polo he found a rare subject. “Without the stubborn Pisan to force the Venetian wayfarer to sit still long enough to dictate his overflowing reminiscences,” Bergreen notes, “the story of Marco’s travels would never have been written.”
What the two came up with was nothing short of a blockbuster. Marco Polo’s “Travels” spilled over with sex, violence, suspense, exotic lands, strange people and bizarre practices. Mongol horsemen thundered out of its pages. Marco dazzled readers with descriptions of the singing sands of the Desert of Lop and a firsthand account of the metropolis of Quinsai, now known as Hangzhou, the most advanced and prosperous city in the world. Marco recounted the cutthroat politics of Kublai Khan’s court in all its delicious drama, complete with power-mad counselors, back-stabbing colleagues and grisly executions.
Temptations of the flesh abounded. Marco was forever stumbling into the 13th-century version of the farmer’s daughter joke. Time and again the delighted young man — remember, he was teenager when he set out from Venice — found villagers lined up outside his tent offering their nubile daughters for his pleasure and their honor. His description of Kublai Khan’s sexual talent search, with scouts scouring the provinces to send the best of the best to the emperor’s bedchamber, reads like a fable spun by Scheherazade.
Lest readers think his journey was one big Tom Jonesian romp, Marco included the dark side, too. He had to elude marauders, survive shipwrecks and cross treacherous deserts. Anxiety, loneliness and thirst were constant companions. In Myanmar, he survived a night among villagers who regularly murdered noble visitors to trap their souls and bring good fortune to the house. Poor Marco. As he rode into each new town, he didn’t know whether he was checking into the Playboy mansion or the Bates Motel.
The world he encountered was stranger than any fable he’d been told in Venice. “Wherever he roamed,” Bergreen writes, “Marco Polo found examples of the natural order of things overturned: astrologers conjuring up tempests at will; salt employed as money; householders inviting strangers to lie with their wives, sisters and daughters; deadly serpents yielding life-saving medicine — a dizzying succession of curiosities and paradoxes.”
Curiously, the figure who makes the greatest impression in Bergreen’s biography isn’t Marco Polo but his patron, Kublai Khan. Marco was many things: master capitalist, ancient journalist, all-time champion traveler. As a person, though, he’s a bit thin and empty. He’s more of an Everyman watching amazing events unfold.
Kublai Khan, by contrast, comes off as both a giant of history and a man of flesh and blood. His excesses were legendary, of course — Samuel Taylor Coleridge immortalized his summer palace, Xanadu — but the emperor doesn’t deserve the Caligula rap. His religious tolerance and encouragement of international trade marked him as a ruler with wisdom that put him centuries before his time. Marco describes Khan as a bold, politically deft administrator who knew how to play territories and factions off one another to keep the kingdom’s peace. The emperor used paper money, unheard of in Europe, to unify the empire’s economy. “Marco revealed Kublai Khan’s splendid realm not as a static, remote fantasyland populated by savages,” Bergreen writes, “but as a vital state constantly on the alert for danger — an empire that never slept, where swift messengers moved by night if necessary, their way marked by reassuring rows of trees and lit by flickering torchlight.”
In the end, Marco Polo’s greatest contribution to history was to deliver this simple news to Europe: The Asians, they’re not so bad. They’re kind of like us. In some ways, they’re better.
Short Biography
Profile and facts about the life of Marco Polo
The following short biography information provides basic facts and information about the life and history of Marco Polo a famous Medieval character of the Middle Ages:
Nationality: Italian - Marco Polo was born in Venice
Lifespan: 1254-1324
Date of Birth: He was born on on September 15, 1254
Family connections : He was the son of Niccolo Polo and the nephew of Maffeo Polo
Date of Death: Marco Polo died on January 1324 in Venice. Marco Polo was almost 70 years old
Marco Polo was buried in the Church of San Lorenzo
Accomplishments or why Marco Polo was famous: The life story and his autobiography was called 'The Travels of Marco Polo' or 'Il Milione' provided inspiration for many other explorers including Christopher Columbus
Marco Polo Biography
The story and biography of Marco Polo which contains interesting information, facts & the history about the life of this Medieval person of historical importance
Marco Polo travels to Cathay (China)
Marco Polo lived from 1254-1324. Some years before St. Louis led his last Crusade there was born in Venice a boy named Marco Polo. His father was a wealthy merchant who often went on trading journeys to distant lands. In 1271, when Marco Polo was seventeen years old, he accompanied his father and uncle on a journey through the Holy Land, Persia and Tartary, and at length to the Empire of China, then called Cathay. It took the travellers three years to reach Cathay.
Marco Polo meets Kublai Khan in Peking
The emperor of Cathay was a monarch named Kublai Khan who lived in Peking. Marco Polo's father and uncle had been in Cathay once before and had entertained Kublai Khan by telling him about the manners and customs of Europe. So when the two Venetian merchants again appeared in Peking, Kublai Khan was glad to see them. He was also greatly pleased with the young Marco Polo, whom he invited to the palace. Important positions at the Chinese court were given to Marco Polo's father and uncle, and so they and Marco Polo lived in the country for some years. Marco Polo studied the Chinese language, and it was not very long before he could speak it.
Marco Polo works as an envoy for Kublai Khan
When Marco Polo was about twenty-one Kublai Khan sent him on very important business to a distant part of China. He did the work well and from that time was often employed as an envoy of the Chinese monarch. His travels were sometimes in lands never before visited by Europeans and Marco Polo had many strange adventures among the almost unknown tribes of Asia. Step by step he was promoted. For several years he was governor of a great Chinese city. Finally Marco Polo, his father and his uncle desired to return to Venice. They had all served Kublai Khan faithfully and he had appreciated it and given them rich rewards; but he did not wish to let them go.
Marco Polo leaves China
While the matter was being talked over an embassy arrived in Peking from the king of Persia. This monarch desired to marry the daughter of Kublai Khan, the Princess Cocachin, and he had sent to ask her father for her hand. Consent was given, and Kublai Khan fitted out a fleet of fourteen ships to carry the wedding party to Persia. The Princess Cocachin was a great friend of Marco Polo, and urged her father to allow him to go with the party. Finally Kublai Khan gave his consent. Marco Polo's father and uncle were also allowed to go, and the three Venetians left China.
Marco Polo escorts the daughter of the Kublai Khan to Persia
The fleet with the wedding party on board sailed southward on the China Sea. It was a long and perilous voyage. Stops were made at Borneo, Sumatra, Ceylon and other places, until the ships entered the Persian Gulf and the princess was safely landed. After they reached the capital of Persia the party, including the three Venetians, was entertained by the Persians for weeks in a magnificent manner and costly presents were given to all. At last the Venetians left their friends, went to the Black Sea and took ship for Venice.
Marco Polo returns to Venice
They had been away so long and were so much changed in appearance that none of their relations and old friends knew them when they arrived in Venice. As they were dressed in Tatar costume and sometimes spoke the Chinese language to one another, they found it hard to convince people that they were members of the Polo family. At length, on order to show that they were the men that they declared themselves to be, they gave a dinner to all their relations and old friends. When the guests arrived they were greeted by the travelers, arrayed in gorgeous Chinese robes of crimson satin. After the first course they appeared in crimson damask; after the second, they changed their costumes to crimson velvet; while at the end of the dinner they appeared in the usual garb of wealthy Venetians. "Now, my friends," said Marco Polo , "I will show you something that will please you." He then brought into the room the rough Tatar coats which he and his father and uncle had worn when they reached Venice. Cutting open the seams, he took from inside the lining packets filled with rubies, emeralds and diamonds. It was the finest collection of jewels ever seen in Venice. The guests were now persuaded that their hosts were indeed what they claimed to be.
Marco Polo is captured by the Genoese
Eight hundred years before Marco Polo's birth, some of the people of North Italy had fled before the Attila to the muddy islands of the Adriatic and founded Venice upon them. Since then the little settlement had become the most wealthy and powerful city of Europe. Venice was the queen of the Adriatic and her merchants were princes. They had vessels to bring the costly wares of the East to their wharves; they had warships to protect their rich cargoes from the pirates of the Mediterranean; they carried on wars. At the time when Marco Polo returned from Cathay they were at war with Genoa . The two cities were fighting for the trade of the world. In a great naval battle the Venetians were completely defeated. Marco Polo was in the battle and with many of his countrymen was captured by the enemy.
Marco Polo dictates an account of his travels
For a year he was confined in a Genoese prison. One of his fellow-prisoners was a skilful penman and Marco Polo dictated to him an account of his experiences in China, Japan, and other Eastern countries. This account was carefully written out. Copies of the manuscript exist to this day. One of these is in a library in Paris. It was carried into France in the year 1307. Another copy is preserved in the city of Berne. It is said that the book was translated into many languages, so that people in all parts of Europe learned about the adventures. of Marco Polo.
The Legacy of Marco Polo - The Travels of Marco Polo (Il Milione)
About a hundred and seventy-five years after the book was written, the famous Genoese, Christopher Columbus, planned his voyage across the Atlantic. It is believed that he had read the description by Marco Polo of Java, Sumatra and other East India Islands, which he thought he had reached when he discovered Haiti and Cuba. So Marco Polo may have suggested to Columbus the voyage which led to the discovery of America.
