No history without conspiracy :-)
Also, if all this is true, why didn't He colonize the fuck out of the place? Could this be a regrettable oversight that further contributed to the subsequent demise of the kingdom of heaven in the face of Western barbarian hordes?
Hakki
Note: barbarian hordes from the east are barbarian hordes, if it's from the west it's called Chinese xenophobia
http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/2002-03-19/61510.html Will British historian's discovery fill gap in the map?
03/19/2002 Chinese historians and navigation experts are preparing to rewrite history books after a British historian's claim that Chinese explorers got to the Americas 72 years before Christopher Columbus.
Speaking in London late on Friday, Gavin Menzies, a 64-year-old retired Royal Navy submarine commander, has presented new evidence to support his theory that the Chinese reached the Carribean America 72 years before Christopher Columbus.
He also tried to debunk another milestone claimed by Europe - saying that early maps and recalculated star charts show that Chinese sailors circumnavigated the globe 100 years before Portugal's Ferdinand Magellan.
Meanwhile, in Beijing, Li Xiaocong, deputy-director of the China Ancient History Research Centre of Peking University, said that if experts confirm the authenticity of the chart, which it is claimed was drawn in 1459, the history of navigation would be rewritten.
The chart, according to Reuters, clearly marks the location of the Cape of Good Hope, with detailed depiction of Chinese expeditionary vessels, including navigation notes which record that a fleet once sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to reach Cape Verde Islands.
"So far I cannot say Menzies' new view is well-founded because I have not seen that chart and as far as I know, China has no charts drawn in the mid-15th century. I cannot offer relevant evidence to support his view," Li said.
Chen Yanhang, director of the Chinese Ancient Vessel Research Centre, said: "I suppose the new view might be true, because records show that the vessel used by admiral Zheng He was 126 metres long with a beam of 51.5 metres - big and advanced enough to reach America.
"In fact the domestic academic field raised the idea as early as the 1980s that the farthest point Zheng He's fleet reached was the Cape of Good Hope, not the widely accepted Mombasa," Chen said. "Actually, where Zheng He reached has always been a disputed issue. Therefore we rule out the possibility that he set foot in America."
Zhu Jianxiu, a research fellow with the Zheng He Research Society, said, "The major task for us now is to make sure the chart was really drawn in 1459 and truly used by Zheng He. If we can prove the two points mentioned above, maybe we can say Menzies is right."
Zhang Rujie, professor of geodesic, photogrammetry and cartographic science and technology at Wuhan University, said that he doubted Menzies' viewpoint.
He explained that Zheng He was a eunuch for Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) before he was made an admiral. He was well-known at the time and his life was recorded in detail in the book "The History of the Ming Dynasty."
"In addition, Zheng He also recorded his navigation routes himself. If he really had been to the Americas, why have we never found any clue in historical records?" he asked.
But Chen Yanhang said that according to historical records, Liu Daxia, an official and contemporary of Zheng He, strongly opposed his navigation and burned reports Zheng had written to the throne, as well as navigation notes recorded by Zheng himself.
"It is still not known if such facts were included in the documents that were destroyed," he added.
In London last Friday, academics at the private presentation at the Royal Geographical Society said Menzies did not present sufficient evidence to support his theory.
Menzies said he had located the wrecks of Chinese Admiral Zheng He's 1421-23 fleet in the Carribean, but would not reveal their whereabouts until he had published a book on his findings.
Historians agree that Zheng He's ships reached Africa and may have rounded the Cape of Good Hope.
Menzies said the Chinese admiral's 107-strong fleet split up and went much further, exploring near the North and South Poles and crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, plotting the position of stars vital for navigation on their way.
Menzies displayed 15th- and 16th-century European maps that he said showed parts of the Carribean, North America and Australia long before the European explorers reached the New World.
The only possible source for the information in these maps, he said, was the Chinese.
"If people disagree with me they have got to come up with an alternative scenario - I say there is none," he said.
Menzies said the Chinese discoveries passed to early Western mapmakers through the Portuguese, by way of an Italian traveller, Nicolo da Conti, who went on the Chinese voyages.
Menzies issued 17 pages of "supporting evidence" to back his findings, including lists of Ming porcelain and stone monuments found along the fleet's course, accounts of contemporary historians and surviving Chinese maps and star charts.
Academics at the event said they could not review Menzies' thesis properly until he published his promised book.
Xinhua-Agencies