1421: The Year China Discovered the World

by Gavin Menzies

  Quite apart from his claim of a Chinese colony based on linguistic evidence, Powers described Chinese settlers as having intermarried with local Indians over centuries. Their descendants were paler than the people of the coast, and, unlike other Indian tribes, the older generation had magnificent beards while the women ‘are as proud of their black hair as the Chinese’. Rather than skins, women wore ‘a single garment in the shape of a wool sack, sleeveless and gathered at the neck, more or less white once’. They were ‘simple, friendly, peaceable and inoffensive’. After death, ‘they generally desire like the Chinese to be buried in the ancestral soil of their tribe’. Again like the Chinese, but unlike other hunter-gatherer tribes of North America, the peoples around the Sacramento and Russian Rivers were sedentary: ‘at least four fifths of their diet was derived from the vegetable kingdom … They knew the qualities of all herbs, shrubs, leaves, having a command of a much greater catalogue of [botanical] names than nine tenths of Americans.’ Their ancestors’ legacy could also be seen in pottery beautifully formed in classic Chinese shapes, whereas the ‘[modern] Indian merely picks up a boulder of trap [a dark, igneous rock] or greenstone and beats out a hollow leaving the outside rough’. The ancestors of the Sacramento and Russian River tribes also used ‘long, heavy knives of obsidian or jasper’ their descendants, Powers found, no longer knew how to make. And while the ancestors had fashioned elegant tobacco pipes from serpentine, their descendants made use of simple wooden ones. They had also ‘developed a Chinese inventiveness’8 in devising methods of snaring wildfowl using decoy ducks – a Chinese custom, but one not found among the Indians. Like the Chinese, they ate snails, slugs, lizards and snakes, and built large middens of clam shells. (For DNA corroboration, see Synopsis of Evidence.)

  On the eastern side of San Francisco Bay, some seventy miles south of the site of the Sacramento junk, there is a small, stone-built village with low walls. In 1904, Dr John Fryer, Professor of Oriental Languages at University College, Berkeley, California, stated, ‘This is undoubtedly the work of Mongolians … The Chinese would naturally wall themselves in, as they do in all their towns in China.’9 This accords with Powers’ succinct description of Chinese people who had created a colony and then intermarried with native Americans.

  It certainly seems that Zhou Man’s fleet left a settlement in California. Were they the first to cultivate rice in the Americas? And was the wealth of blue and white Ming porcelain found in California really brought by Spanish galleons, as conventional wisdom has it, or was it carried in the holds of the junks of Zhou Man’s fleet? The investigation is ongoing, the definitive conclusion yet to be written; meanwhile, I had to press on with my own research, tracking the fleet as it set sail once more from San Francisco Bay.

  After emerging from the bay, Zhou Man’s fleet would have been carried southwards by the wind and current to Mexico. The Waldseemüller map shows the coast with reasonable accuracy, charted just as one would expect from a ship passing by, but there is a gap at the latitude of the Gulf of Tehuantepec in Guatemala, as if the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans met there, which of course is not the case. This is consistent with the Chinese having sailed into the Gulf, but finding it too shallow to proceed, turning back and then drawing what they could see from the entrance: water stretching away for miles in front of them, marking an apparent opening between North and South America.

  I made the assumption that they had sailed beyond the isthmus of Panama, clearly shown on the Waldseemüller, and then been driven back across the Pacific towards China by the winds and current, as one would expect with a square-rigged sailing ship. But on their way down that coast they would have been swept across the Gulf of California and could have made a landfall on the Mexican coast somewhere near Manzanillo in the modern province of Colima. Here a spectacular volcano, the Colima, some 12,700 feet high and clearly visible for miles out to sea, would have attracted them.

  I decided to make a search for another wreck between Manzanillo and Acapulco, a stretch of coastline only around three hundred miles long and again clearly shown on the Waldseemüller map. I started my search with the accounts of the first Spaniards to reach that coast in the 1520s, Fra Bernardino de Sahagún10 and Bernal Diaz del Castillo,11 both of whom described the exotic Mayan civilization, still surviving in 1421 but in decline when they arrived. Many of the things de Sahagún and del Castillo described – chickens, lacquer boxes, dye-stuffs, metalwork and jewellery – seemed to have the imprint of China all over them.

  As in California, when they arrived in Mexico the conquistadors found Asiatic chickens quite different from the European fowl they had left behind. The Mayan names for the birds, Kek or Ki, were identical to those used by the Chinese; like the Chinese but unlike the Europeans, Mexicans used chickens for ceremonial purposes such as divination. These were such remarkable similarities that for these reasons alone I felt a visit to that small strip of the Mexican coast was justified.

  Before departing, I also investigated whether plants originating in China grew in New Mexico or western Mexico. The Chinese Rose did, but that could have been propagated southwards from California. Other than the rose, I found no plants growing in Mexico that had originated in China, but I did find the opposite; plants indigenous to Central America had found their way across the world before the European voyages of discovery.12 Sweet potatoes, tomatoes and papayas were found in Easter Island, sweet potatoes in Hawaii, and maize in China and the Philippines. Maize could have come from South or North America, but the other plants had come from a much narrower area, from what we now call Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

  The Mayan civilization the Chinese would have encountered was almost as old as their own. The Maya’s predecessors were the Olmecs, the earliest civilization in Central America and possibly the whole of the Americas, whose capital was at La Venta on the Atlantic coast of Mexico. By 1200 BC, the Olmec people had constructed two large artificial plateaux at La Venta and San Lorenzo on which they built religious cities nearly as old as Babylon. These great mounds stretching for miles were the centre of a settlement system that integrated Olmec villages and hamlets into one social, political and economic unit straddling what we now know as southern Mexico.

  They set up extensive trade networks with the peoples to the south, importing obsidian, basalt, greenstone and iron ore, and exporting pottery, jaguar pelts, coca and wonderfully expressive sculpture. Examples can be seen to this day in Parque La Venta: mischievous stone monkeys hang from trees; stone dolphins, so lively that one can almost see the water splashing off their bodies, leap between ponds; a man crawls out of the entrance of a tomb carved out of basalt; a distraught mother cradles her dead child in her arms. It is fabulous sculpture, the work of a truly amazing people. But around 300 BC, the Olmecs vanished for reasons that remain unclear. They were followed by the Maya, who created a trading empire spanning Central America. The Mayan epoch was already coming to an end by 1421 and civil war had broken out in Yucatan, but the Chinese would have found a very old and very distinguished civilization.

  I saw traces of that great Mayan civilization everywhere as I took a bus from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast of Mexico. The Atlantic coast is littered with mooring posts, each of which seems to have its own sentinel pelican, watching over a sea teeming with fish. Then come mile upon mile of marshes, with flocks of ducks and skeins of geese crossing the sky. Ibises and storks stand motionless in pools and lagoons. This is Mayan country, with a system of agriculture unchanged for centuries. Milpas – cultivated fields – sprawl across the jungle, the result of the slash and burn system. In the dry season, around Christmas, farmers cut trees with their machetes. From March until May there is little rain and the heat becomes oppressive, an ideal time for burning dried wood, leaving a cleared area for cultivation covered with a nutrient-rich bed of ashes.

  The first rains come at the end of May, preceded by silent lightning. Now farmers take long thick staffs and poke small holes into the wet earth into which they drop kerne
ls of maize, beans and squash seeds. This marvellous trio has provided the healthy diet on which the peoples of the Americas – Olmec, Maya, Toltec, Inca and Aztec – have sustained themselves for millennia. As the corn grows, the beans wind around the stems and the squashes spread across the ground. By July, the sun is blistering but there is abundant rainfall, and in September it is time for harvest. The Chinese would have found such rich agriculture spread right across the land together with a sophisticated irrigation system and raised fields supporting a far higher density of population than is found in the Mexican countryside today. It rivalled their own.

  Beehives are scattered along the fringes of the forest; honey was important to the Maya for sugar, as a basis for wheat-fermented alcohol and as a cash crop enabling the farmers to buy shoes and the cotton cloth their wives embroidered in traditional patterns. To this day, their children wear smocks exquisitely embroidered in vivid colours identifying family and village, very similar to those painted in the frescoes of long ago. The traditional Na houses peep out of the rainforest, unchanged for millennia. The foundations, an oval platform of rocks, are bound together by limestone cement. Horizontal beams are lashed to the uprights with rope made from fibres of the agave plant. Smaller bamboos complete the framework and the roofs are of dried fan palms. This traditional construction is still used in hotels and resorts throughout southern Mexico and Guatemala. The Maya still sleep in hammocks, and their everyday greeting remains ‘Have a hammock.’

  The jungle of Central America provides a rich and varied diet; man only needs to hunt, fish and gather fruit for two or three days each month, and in the sultry heat he needs few clothes. Building materials, vegetables, medicines, coca, coffee, edible birds and animals of all descriptions surround him. The jungle is never silent; night is punctuated by cries, whistles, screams, muffled roars and croaks. In this rich jungle environment, the Maya built glorious stone cities. Nothing I have seen on this fabulous planet, not even Machu Picchu or the Acropolis, has equalled the Mayan city of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, rising out of the white mist of a perfect summer’s day. The city was built by the Maya in their glorious golden age (c. AD 325–925) and lay hidden under its cloak of jungle for a thousand years. Constructed on a series of adjacent hills overlooking the plains, it spreads over three and a half square miles. Each hill group comprises a cluster of buildings – pyramids, temples and palaces. Within each group, white stone palaces surround an enchanting central plaza with a backdrop of verdant, bottle-green jungle. The buildings have been superbly positioned to accentuate the natural features of hill and valley, while a placid river wends through the middle of the site. When the Chinese met the people of Mexico it is highly probable that they would have been shown Palenque, the finest Mayan city.

  At the time, Palenque would have appeared to the Chinese as the work of a people whose talent equalled their own. It is the complete Mayan city, suddenly abandoned with its treasures intact. Here there is everything the archaeologist or historian could wish for: the fabulous tomb of a ‘pharaoh of the jungle’, filled with treasures; palaces of kings and priests covered in hieroglyphics telling the story of the site; observatories, temples, ball courts and, perhaps most important of all, the houses of ordinary people. Every aspect of art is here, from masks, statues, jewellery and ceramics to the humble pots and pans, fishing hooks and spears used by ordinary folk to hunt game.

  The extraordinary white pyramid of King Pakal dominates the site. The Cuban scholar Alberto Ruz Lhuillier spent years digging down a secret stairway into the chamber at the very bottom. In 1952 his team wrenched aside a huge stone and entered a darkened vault.

  Out of the dim shadows emerged a vision from a fairytale, a fantastic ethereal sight from another world. It seemed a huge magic grotto, carved out of ice, the walls sparkling and glistening like snow crystals … the impression, in fact, was that of an abandoned chapel. Across the walls marched stucco figures in low relief. Then my eyes sought the floor. This was almost entirely filled with the great carved stone slab, in perfect condition … Ours were the first eyes that gazed upon it for more than a thousand years.

  In feverish excitement, Alberto Ruz Lhuillier and his team jacked up the huge lid and peered inside.

  My first impression was that of a mosaic of green, red and white. Then it resolved itself into details – green jade ornaments, red painted teeth and bones, and a fragment of the mask. I was gazing at the death face of him for whom all this stupendous work – the crypt, the sculpture, the stairway, the great pyramid with its crowning temple – had been built … This, then, was a sarcophagus, the first ever found in a Mayan pyramid.13

  The most spectacular of the exotic treasures that accompanied Pakal to the next life was his burial mask of jade, with shell eyes and obsidian irises. It must be one of the finest works of art ever made by man, of incalculable value. The dead king’s wrist, neck, fingers and ears were adorned with exquisitely carved jade jewellery. Here were objects to rival or even eclipse the finest products of the Chinese or Japanese craftsmen. The beautifully proportioned pyramid with its simple, smoothly faced stone, the hidden stairway, the interior crypt and the superb mask and jewellery are the work of a people of immense architectural, engineering and artistic talent.

  A walk downriver from Pakal’s pyramid brought me to a museum filled with Mayan decorative art, mostly symbolic plants and animals – jaguars, serpents with fangs and claws, birds with their feathers and scales, so lifelike they appear to leap out of the display cases. It is an astounding cornucopia of artistic treasure. At last, after years of sailing the storm-tossed oceans, the Chinese had met a civilization nearly as old and as fine as their own. They had found jade jewellery as exquisite as theirs, and Cholula ware even thinner than the best Chinese porcelain, Jingdezhen from Jiangxi province. At long last, they could exchange their silks and blue and white ceramics for wonderful works of art.

  10

  COLONIES IN CENTRAL AMERICA

  I FOUND SOME of the strongest signs of Chinese influence when I arrived in Uruapan in the mountains of western Mexico. It lies approximately two hundred miles upriver from the Pacific, with the river and the sea to the south and the mountains to the north. The town owes its name to the Spanish monk Fra Juan de San Miguel who was so impressed by the lush vegetation when he arrived in 1533 that he christened the area Uruapan – ‘eternal spring’. To this day, it is renowned for its avocados and fruit, and for the beautiful lacquer boxes and trays that delight tourists.

  Lacquer, known in Mexico as maque and in China as Ch’i-ch’i, is a highly unusual, complex and time-consuming method of decoration. The lacquer tree occurs in a wild state in China, regarded as the original birthplace of lacquer, and is also cultivated in plantations. The Chinese recognized the protective qualities of seshime, the resin extracted from the branches of the lacquer tree, at least three thousand years ago. They introduced it throughout south-east Asia; the Chinese and Japanese lacquering processes are essentially the same. The oldest known Chinese examples date from the Shang dynasties (c. 1523–1028 BC) when the Middle Kingdoms began using lacquer on household utensils, furniture and art objects, and to preserve historical objects carved on bamboo. To their astonishment, the first Europeans to reach southern California and Mexico found that the process of lacquer decoration was flourishing in the states of Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacán and as far north as Sinaloa on the Gulf of California.1 Uruapan is considered to be the centre of the maque art, but how could the people of Pacific Mexico have come to know of it? Was it developed independently, or did the Chinese introduce it?

  Lacquer’s unique characteristic is its need for a moist and temperate atmosphere in order to dry. Warm dampness converts the sap into a dense mass that hardens as enamel. Density and drying vary with temperature, thickness and humidity. Perfect conditions are found in the moist, warm Pacific winds of Uruapan. Before applying lacquer in the traditional way, the surface of a box or other object is prepared by filling all the cracks with a mixtu
re of rice flour and seshime. The correct consistency is achieved by mixing it with rice paste, or, in the case of Mexico, with volcanic ash. The box is then sanded down and the first of between ten and a hundred coats of lacquer applied with a very fine brush made of human hair. Each layer has to be completely dry, sanded and polished before the next is applied. Polishing was an art in itself, using a whetstone and deer-horn powder applied with a soft cloth; sixty or seventy coats were common.

  This process is virtually identical in China and Mexico, with Chinese technology being adapted to the climate and materials found in Mexico. Preparation of the surface is identical: cracks are filled with a mixture called nimacarta, the object is sanded until completely smooth, and as many coats of nimacarta as necessary are applied, each one dried, sanded and polished with a whetstone.

  Although the process is the same, the ingredients in Mexico do vary. The maque is a semi-liquid paste formed using a mixture of animal and vegetable oils and natural refined clays. The principal animal ingredient is grease extracted from the aje insects (Coccus lacca) bred by the local people around Uruapan. The insects are gathered during the rainy season and dropped alive into boiling water until their bodies release a hard, waxy substance that floats to the surface. When the water cools, the substance is collected, washed and reheated to remove any water. It cools like slabs of butter. The second ingredient, chia vegetable oil, serves to thin the aje mixture. The oil is extracted from the seeds of the sage plant, a native of Mexico. Chia oil has a high glycerine content that quickly absorbs oxygen from the air, forming a hard elastic surface when dried. The third ingredient, finely ground dolomite called teputzuta, a mineral clay, gives body to the maque mixture.