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I'm sure some of you have heard the theory that Zhang He in the Ming Dynasty was the first one to discover America. While doing some research for my term paper in colonial American history I came across this article, which though is was printed in January of this year I found fascinating.
I think the last paragraph bears notice. But then again from a Chinese mindset there was no reason to expand into California, to Chinese eyes they Native Americans would have appeared savage and hardly worth conquering. During the Ming Dynasty China was concerned with flexing its muscles but not expanding anywhere.
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Actually, I should think that some unknown group of people from asia were probably the first people to 'discover' America. About 12 thousand years ago.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Bella Bee: Actually, I should think that some unknown group of people from asia were probably the first people to 'discover' America. About 12 thousand years ago.
Well in that sense Asia extends from the eastern shores of Japan to almost Turkey.
We don't have maps from those folks either.
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BB: She's talking about the Native Americans. We didn't need maps because we were already here.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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The beating was due to a case of mistaken identity: they thought Columbus was Italian. And the Chinese were still ticked off at having their noodles being passed off as an Italian invention.
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The Vikings were in Greenland before the 1400's. Some historians believe that they even made it to the mainland of North America, so If the map was written in the 1400's the Chinese didn't get here first either.
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The most interesting part of the story is that, hidden aboard the Chinese ships was a Japanese spy--a Ninja.
Unfortunately the Ninja got stranded on the California coast. He knew that home as Japan--the land of the rising sun, so he headed East. Eventually he hit Neufanland at the same time as some Vikings were settling there.
The clash of cultures was not pretty.
Hence the rivalry to this day between Ninja's and Vikings.
Its almost as bad as the Ninja/Pirate feud, which started when a band of Ninja's mistook a group of marauding Pirates for marauding Vikings, but that's another story.
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The Vikings that settled Greenland and Iceland also had a settlement in New Foundland (Canada) around 900 B.C. It lasted less than a hundred years, mostly because Scandinavian life didn't work and they didn't feel the need to adapt to an American one.
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They died out because they were unable to cope with the encroaching glaciers forming due to the temperature drop during the little ice age, and they were unable to adapt. (I saw a special on the History Channel the other day.)
Edit: At least that's what happened in Greenland.
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quote:Originally posted by andi330: The Vikings were in Greenland before the 1400's. Some historians believe that they even made it to the mainland of North America, so If the map was written in the 1400's the Chinese didn't get here first either.
And they were all long after St.Brendan!
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Actually Europeans were first, the Asians showed up thousands of years later and learned how to flake flint...
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