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submitted 7 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] akrz@programming.dev 74 points 7 months ago

Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies (14 August 1937 – 12 April 2020)[1][2][3] was a British submarine lieutenant-commander who authored books claiming that the Chinese sailed to America before Columbus. Historians have rejected Menzies' theories and assertions[4][5][6][7][8]: 367–372 and have categorised his work as pseudohistory.[9][10][11]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies

[-] kbin_space_program@kbin.run 39 points 7 months ago

The Haida and other native groups of coastal BC have no record of Zheng He's voyage.

And because his ships weren't capable of handling the open ocean, the only way he'd be able to do such a trip is by hugging the coast, so they'd have absolutely seen them.

[-] Microw@lemm.ee 28 points 7 months ago

Mansa Muhammad's travel is also considered to never have reached the Americas, if it even happened in the first place

[-] grue@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I'd never heard about this "Zheng He in America" thing before, so I just did a little reading about it. One thing I read said he supposedly sailed around Africa and to the east coast of America, which is even more implausible.

[-] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 7 points 7 months ago

They did sail to Africa. They picked up giraffes and shit and brought them back to China. They intervened in local conflicts like "both of you lose! China wins! Give tribute."

[-] grue@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

Sure, I'm not saying I doubted that part. The part that apparently doesn't have real evidence and thus seems implausible is the notion that they continued all the way around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Atlantic.

[-] kbin_space_program@kbin.run 5 points 7 months ago

They didnt have to sail to Africa per say. By the time of those trips, there had been a reliable trade network for more than 1500 years stretching from Africa up through the Middle East into India.

I don't doubt that it'd be possible to harbour hop those boats down to Africa, but they only needed to go as far as India/Persia to connect.

[-] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 5 points 7 months ago

They did sail to Africa. It's well documented in primary and secondary sources. They made a map with Africa on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Kun_map

[-] kbin_space_program@kbin.run 1 points 7 months ago

Yes, but there is still doubt:

It has also been suggested by J.J.L. Duyvendak and Paul Pelliot that the map may have been partly based on Arab nautical charts.[10]

[-] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 28 points 7 months ago

Except Mali and China's crossing is pure fiction and Polynesia's is plausible but missing a lot of evidence you'd expect to find

[-] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 13 points 7 months ago

Hasn't it been proven that eastern polynesians have amerindian DNA, and also that their word for their crops of sweet potatoes is related to the Quechua word for similar crops still in south america?

[-] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah in 1200-1300 not 700AD, but there is some evidence of eariler voyages to South America and Antarctica

Also the DNA is the other way around and also a coin flip as to whether it came from Madagascan slaves after the slave trade or from Polynesians hundreds of years earlier, and the sweet potato is also not hard evidence as it could be coincidence, and there is some evidence of it having spread earlier

However oral history is quite strong in Polynesia and for whatever reason there's no stories of large landmasses to the east, only icy ones to the south

Essentially there's no hard proof like there is with Leif Erikson and Columbus as it was at most a couple of accidental crossings which may not have even been return journeys, but there is a lot of evidence that suggests there was contact of some sort or another

[-] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago

IIRC the oral history could be explained, in that the folks on Rapa Nui were actually not the ones sailing to South America, it was actually the other way around.

Were that the case then South America wouldn't necessarily be documented in an oral history, just visitors from a far away land.

[-] magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 18 points 7 months ago

And the reason why Columbus managed to get funding for his journey was because he used incorrect estimations of the earth’s circumference, which indicated a much shorter distance to India than previous (much more accurate) estimations.

[-] kbin_space_program@kbin.run 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Oddly enough it seems the same is true for Mansa's trip. Except that as regent, he gave himself the funding, twice.

However, as wikipedia notes: ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_voyage_of_the_predecessor_of_Mansa_Musa )

No african artifacts have ever been discovered in South or Central America.
Only one of the ships returned, and it only reported the existence of the "Canary Current" which that ship did not enter.

In addition. The dark skin of some South Americans is genetically distant to modern Africans, but has ties to the same markers in some asian cultures, implying its addition was prehistoric and happened in the old world.

[-] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Not incorrect measurements of the earth's circumference, rather he used incorrect maps that showed Asia as being like 4 times bigger than it actually is, with the Polynesian islands and Japan being a continent sized chain, each at minimum the size of Sardinia

The reason people think he was using an incorrect circumference is because one of his journal entries can be read to either say he was close to mount purgatory, which would have been super far from where he'd have been, or that he believed he was heading in that direction, which to be fair he actually would have been had the mountain existed.

I forget who but someone put it like this, if you asked Columbus for what continent he was on, he'd have been wrong, but if you asked for his coordinates on the earth's surface, he'd have actually been pretty close to accurate.

He knew "where" he was, he just didn't know where that where was.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 9 points 7 months ago

The Irish have entered the chat...

https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/irish-monk-america.htm

[-] perishthethought@lemm.ee 9 points 7 months ago

This is the kind of gold I keep coming back to lemmy for. (no /s)

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 7 points 7 months ago

eaf fhy memes

[-] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 7 points 7 months ago

Also, they had potatoes and tomatoes in Gondor long before any of this.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

They go extinct in the Fourth Age, I'm 5,753 steps ahead of you -

Joseph Road Rage "It's In My Notes" Tolkien

[-] zout@fedia.io 5 points 7 months ago

Columbus was the first catholic to land in America. Guess who wrote our history books.

[-] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 4 points 7 months ago

Mugatu?

[-] Liz@midwest.social 4 points 7 months ago

Bruh, it's because Columbus kicked off the age of colonization that led to the modern world. All other claims to the first discovery are either the initial settlement or largely inconsequential meetings between worlds.

[-] Umbrias@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago

Columbus did not in fact do that, nor is that "the reason" the modern world exists. Broken window fallacy, slaughtering people and generally doing colonialism is not an effective way to create technological progress.

[-] Liz@midwest.social 2 points 7 months ago

Sooorrrrta, extracting huge piles of wealth off the backs of your colonies is actually a decent way to up the standard of living back home and free up people for higher-tech.

That's not actually what I was arguing though, I was just pointing out that that's the obvious moment that completely changed the fate of the Americas, Europe, and Africa. None of those other contact events had any particular impact on the world. Colombus and the colonial era absolutely did. Good or bad wasn't really my point.

[-] Umbrias@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago

In doing so you sacrifice the wealth and progress of the people you are colonializing. Like I said, broken window fallacy. Slaughtering while cultures doesn't actually as a rule lead to an increase in human wealth or progress towards this future.

And "great person"ing Columbus who was more a bumbling symptom of the colonialist sentiment that already existed is silly. There would have been colonization without him. He's just the face that got to start genocides for Spain in the Americas first.

[-] Liz@midwest.social 1 points 7 months ago

I'm not the person down voting you, just FYI.
Again, I didn't say this was good, only that it's an obvious turning point in history that lead to the modern world. It wasn't inevitable that we got here from there, but we did, so that's the obvious start.

[-] Umbrias@beehaw.org 2 points 7 months ago

Beehaw doesn't have nor does it federate down votes, so don't worry. People can be as upset as they want but if they won't engage in discussion to voice it I'll never know.