The Crucial Year of 1421
History would never lie whereas a historian might do that. A historian might set aside his conscience, or even throw it out of the window, just to distort history to serve the power-that-be. Of course, there were those who would be truthful to historical facts. One typical example was a Chinese historian named Si Ma Qian [司马迁].He was a renowned scholar during the Han Dynasty of China.He wrote a magnificent volume of the 'Historical Records' [史记,Shi-Ji].


He chose to defiant the wishes of the emperor in order to be truthful to the historical facts that he was put in jail and castrated(Castration as an alternative to the death penalty).

In school our history lesson taught us how Christopher Colombus[ 哥伦布] founded the America continent while Ferdinand Magellen[麦哲伦] was proclaimed as the first person to circumnavigate the globe. But,with the emergence of new findings of the research by Mr.Gavin Menzies as published in his book entitled '1421' in 2003, what we had learnt earlier in school about Colombus and Magellen would have to be unlearnt, or to be thrown into the ash heap of history. In his book, Gavin Menzies maintained that it was the Chinese who were the pioneers to perform the feats that were attributed to Colombus,Magellan and the others.

Like the great historian Si Ma Qian, Gavin Menzies stood firmly on the ground of the Truth rather than siding his fellow Europeans to distort historical facts. As a British retired submarine captain,he had a deep knowledge of seamanship,cartography and astro-navigation.He did an extensive cum intensive study of the treasure fleets led by Admiral Zheng He(郑和)during the Ming dynasty of the fifteenth century.In his research he had 'visited over nine hundred museums' all over the world and consulted many distinguished experts related to the fields.It took him fourteen long years to write the book. It was noted in his book that:

"On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China to "proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas." When the fleet returned home in October 1423, the emperor, Zhu Di,had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in the long,self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan." Through a wealth of physical evidence such as Chinese porcelain,silk,votive offerings,artifacts,carved stones left by the Chinese admirals as monuments to their achievements;the ship wrecks on the coasts of Africa,America,Australia and New Zealand; the sound of cockcrows in Peru which were typical of Asiatic hens;the DNA of the diseases found on the aborigines of the African and American continents as compared to those of the Chinese;the style of the clothing they wore which were similar to the long robe worn by the Chinese;the crops transplanted and animals that were transported from China to different parts of the world; Gavin Menzies established and concluded that Zheng He and his subordinates had circumnavigated the globe by at least half a century earlier than their European counterparts.

In fact Gavin Menzies has suggested Colombo, Magellan and many others from the West might not be able to make the 'same discoveries' had it not for the copies of the maps charted by the Chinese which they carried with them when they set off on their own journeys into the 'unknown'. In other words,it was Zheng He and his fleets that had paced the way for the western powers to colonise the world in the later part of history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzFq0Ivwz9g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BLWXBJGX0I&feature=related