1421: The Year China Discovered the World
Page 48
9. Ellen F. Soullière, Palace Women in the Ming Dynasty, Princeton University doctoral thesis, 1987, quoted in Levathes, op. cit., p. 226.
10. Levathes, op. cit., pp. 163 and 164.
11. P.B. Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1996, p. 278.
12. Quoted in L. Carrington Goodrich (ed.), The Dictionary of Ming Biography, Columbia UP, New York, 1976, p. 338.
13. See J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, Pt 3, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1954, p. 525; and J.J.L. Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa, Probsthain, 1949, p. 27, and ‘The True Dates of the Chinese Maritime Expeditions in the Early Fifteenth Century’, T’oung Pao, XXXIV, pp. 395–8.
Chapter 3: The Fleets Set Sail
1. The originals are in Beijing, but the British Library holds copies.
2. J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 3, sec. 20, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1954, p. 230.
3. Ibid., Vol. 4, Pt 3, pp. 565ff.
4. Ibid., Vol. 6, Pt 1, pp. 365ff.
5. Ibid., Vol. 6, Pt 5, pp. 19ff.
6. Ibid.
7. Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage, trs. R.A. Skelton, Yale UP, New Haven, Conn., 1969, p. 56.
8. R.H. Van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China, Leiden, 1961, pp. 308ff.
9. Ibid., p. 125.
10. Ibid., p. 265.
11. Ibid., p. 133.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibn Taghri-Birdi, A History of Egypt, 1382–1469 AD, Berkeley, California, 1954.
14. Ma Huan, The Overall Survey of the Ocean Shores, Beijing, 1433, trs. J.V.G. Mills, Cambridge UP (for Hakluyt Society), 1970, p. 108.
15. Ibid., p. 143.
16. Ma Huan, op. cit., trs. Paul Wheatley in The Golden Khersonese, University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1961, p. 143.
17. Ma Huan, op. cit., trs. Mills, p. 104.
18. Ibid. A slightly different translation is quoted by Richard Hall in Empires of the Monsoon. HarperCollins, 1996, p 89.
19. F. Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, trs. Siân Reynolds, Fontana, 1985, p. 130.
20. Ibid., p. 131.
21. Zheng He, quoted in Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, Images across the Ages: Chinese Portraits, Raintree, Austin, Texas, 1993.
22. The identity of the admiral in command of the third fleet is not known with absolute certainty, but after corresponding with Professor Roderich Ptak of the University of Munich I believe Chou Wen to be the most probable leader.
Chapter 4: Rounding the Cape
1. Stone inscription in the Palace of the Celestial Spouse at Chiang-su, dated 1431, trs. J.J.L. Duyvendak, ‘The True Dates of the Chinese Maritime Expeditions in the Early Fifteenth Century’, T’oung Pao, XXXIV, p. 347.
2. Stone inscription in the Palace of the Celestial Spouse at Liu-Chia-Chang, dated 1431, trs. J.J.L. Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa, Probsthain, 1949, p. 29.
3. Professor Needham, Richard Hall and Louise Levathes.
4. Richard Hall, Empires of the Monsoon, HarperCollins, 1996, p. 550, has splendid illustrations.
5. Ma Huan, The Overall Survey of the Ocean Shores, Beijing, 1433, trs. J.V.G. Mills, Cambridge UP (for Hakluyt Society), 1970, p. 138. It can be seen that Muslim people are ruling Hindus.
6. Ibid., pp. 140 and 141.
7. Poggio Bracciolini, The Travels of Niccolò da Conti, 1434, partial translation in R.H. Major (ed.), India in the Fifteenth Century, Hakluyt Society, 1857.
8. The Travels of Niccolò da Conti, quoted in Hall, op. cit., p. 124.
9. J.H. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea, Elek, 1979, p. 45.
10. See postscript for details of this and a further conference in Kunming.
11. 100,000 li equals 40,000 nautical miles. The circumference of the globe is 21,600 nautical miles.
12. As translated by J. Needham in Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, Pt 3, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1954, p. 572.
13. Ibid.
14. Quoted by Eannes de Zuzara, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, trs. C.R. Beazley, Hakluyt Society, 1896–9.
15. Hall, op. cit., pp. 124–6. See postscript for an important update on the status of da Conti.
16. Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McIntosh, letter to the author, 2001.
17. Chuan Chin, one of the Koreans who organized the publication of the Kangnido.
18. The work of M. Chevalier and his colleagues.
19. Antonio Galvão, Tratado Dos Diversos e Desayados Caminhos, Lisbon, 1563. The translation I have used is that of Richard Hakluyt, 1601, pp. 23–4, quoted by F.M. Rogers in The Travels of the Infante Dom Pedro, Harvard UP, Cambridge, Mass., 1961, p. 48.
20. Ibid.
21. H. Harisse, The Discovery of North America, 1892, p. 272.
22. [British] Admiralty, Ocean Passages of the World, third edn, 1973.
Chapter 5: The New World
1. Bibliography in J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, Pt 3, sec. 29, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1954, p. 542.
2. Note VII on the Piri Reis map, translated by G.C. McIntosh in The Piri Reis Map of 1513, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 2000, p. 46.
3. Charles R. Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by HMS Beagle, 1832–36, Henry Colburn, 1839, pp. 54 and 124.
4. Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage, trs. R.A. Skelton, Yale UP, New Haven, Conn., 1934, p. 54.
5. Note XXIII, in McIntosh, op. cit., p. 44.
6. Note XXIV, ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ma Huan, The Overall Survey of the Ocean Shores, Beijing, 1433, trs. J.V.G. Mills, Cambridge UP (for Hakluyt Society), 1970, p. 155.
9. See chapter 9.
10. A detailed and extensive bibliography of plants and animals brought to the Americas before the European voyages of exploration is contained in J.L. Sorenson and M.H. Raish, Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography, Provo Research Press, 1990.
11. Ferdinand Magellan, 13 December 1519, in The First Voyage round the World by Magellan, translated from the Accounts of Pigafetta by Lord Stanley of Alderley, Hakluyt Society, 1874, and Antonio Pigafetta, Primer Viage Alrededor del Mundo, Leoncio Cabrero Fernandez, Madrid, 1985.
12. J. de Acosta, ‘Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias’, No. 34, Cronic., Venice, 1596. Acosta used linguistic evidence to demonstrate the spread of pre-Columbian chickens in South America.
13. George F. Carter, ‘The Chicken in America’, in Donald Y. Gilmore and Linda S. McElroy (eds), Across before Columbus?, NEARA Publications, Edgecomb, Maine, 1998, p. 154.
14. Ibid., p. 158.
15. M.D.W. Jeffreys, ‘Pre-Columbian Maize in Asia’, in Carroll Riley et al. (eds), Men across the Sea, University of Texas Press, 1971, pp. 382ff.
16. Maize: Antonio Pigafetta, Primo Viaggio intorno al Mondo, MS version of c. 1524 translated in E.H. Blair and J.A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands 1493–1893, 1906, Vols 33 and 34, pp. 154, 164, 182 and 186; M.D.W. Jeffreys, ‘Who Introduced Maize into Southern Africa?’, South Africa Journal of Science, Vol. 63, Johannesburg, 1963, pp. 23–40; A. de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants, 1967, p. 355. See also ch. 8, n. 20, and ch. 5, n. 18.
17. Ibid.
18. J.J.L. Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa, Probsthain, 1949, p. 32.
19. Wu Pei Chi and the Shun Feng Hsiang Seng, Beijing.
20. Chiu Thang Shu, quoted in J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, sec. 20, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1954, p. 274.
Chapter 6: Voyage to Antarctica and Australia
1. Charles R. Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by HMS Beagle, 1832–36, 1839.
2. Ibid.
3. Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage, trs. R.A. Skelton, Folio Society, 1975, p. 49.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 50.
6. Ibid., p. 57.
; 7. Professor C. H. Hapgood, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, Chilton Books, New York, 1966, pp. 193ff.
8. Erich von Daniken, Chariots of the Gods, trans. M. Heron, Souvenir, 1969, p. 20.
9. British Admiralty Chart 554.
10. Ludovico Varthema, Travels of L. de Varthema (1510), trs. J.W. Jones, Hakluyt Society, 1863, p. 249. ‘He told us that on the other side of the said island [Java] … there are some other races who navigate by the said four or five stars opposite to ours [the Southern Cross] and moreover … beyond the said island the day does not last more than four hours, and that it was colder than in any other part of the world.’
11. Ibid.
12. Longitude 70°W.
13. Latitude 60°S.
14. Latitude 64°S.
15. The Scott Polar Research Institute of Cambridge has kindly provided ice charts for the Antarctic.
16. As may be verified with the Microsoft computer program Starry Night.
17. See Note VI on the Piri Reis map, translated by G.C. McIntosh in The Piri Reis Map of 1513, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 2000, pp. 16 and 17.
18. L. Carrington Goodrich (ed.), The Dictionary of Ming Biography, Columbia UP, New York, 1976, p. 1365.
19. Ibid., p. 199.
20. Zvi Dor-Ner, Columbus and the Age of Discovery, Grafton, 1992, p. 10, and Richard Hall, Empires of the Monsoon, HarperCollins, 1996, p. 92.
21. Vanessa Collingridge, Captain Cook, Obsession and Betrayal in the New World, Ebury, 2002.
22. K.G. McIntyre, The Secret Discovery of Australia, Souvenir, Melbourne, 1977, p. 268.
23. Ibid., p. 269.
24. Ibid., pp. 271ff.
25. See postscript for an update.
26. Ibid., p. 289.
27. Professor Wei Chuh-Hsien, The Chinese Discovery of Australia, Hong Kong, 1961.
Chapter 7: Australia
1. The southern portion of the map was based on a chart found on the person of a Spanish seaman captured by the Ottomans in 1501.
2. Hsi-Yang-Chi, quoted by J.J.L. Duyvendak in ‘Desultory Notes on the Hsi-Yang-Chi’, T’oung Pao, XLII, 1953, pp. 20ff.
3. Don Luis Arias, letter to the King of Spain, quoted in A.W. Miller, The Straits of Magellan, Portsmouth, 1884, p. 7.
4. F. Fernández-Armesto (ed.), Times Atlas of World Exploration, Times, 1991, p. 167.
5. Lin Dao, Sui Shu (official history of the Sui dynasty), AD 636, ch. 82.
6. 32°40′S; 152°11′E.
7. 43°42′S; 146°32′E.
8. Rex Gilroy, Pyramids in the Pacific, Gympie, Australia, 1999.
9. Robyn Gossett, New Zealand Mysteries, Auckland, 1996, p. 31.
10. Gilroy, op. cit.; Brett J. Green, The Gympie Pyramid Story, Gympie, Australia, 2000, and Gossett, op. cit., p. 148.
11. B. Hilder, ‘The Story of the Tamil Bell’, in Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 84, 1975.
12. Elsdon Best, ‘Note on a Curious Steatite Figurine Found at Mauku, Auckland’, in NZ Journal of Science and Technology, Vol. II, 1919, p. 77.
13. Gossett, op. cit.
Chapter 8: The Barrier Reef and the Spice Islands
1. K.G. McIntyre, The Secret Discovery of Australia, Souvenir, 1977, and ‘Early European Exploration of Australia’, unpublished paper, p. 11.
2. China 29%, India 16% – Angus Maddison, Class Structure and Economic Growth in India and Pakistan since the Moghuls, Allen & Unwin, 1971.
3. Those records seen by Fr Ricci and early Jesuit missionaries to China: Chui Hiao (‘Atlas of Foreign Countries’) and sixth-century scrolls telling of voyages of massive junks to Australia, and The Classics of Shan Hai Jing. Rex Gilroy, Pyramids in the Pacific, Gympie, Australia, 1999.
4. Saltpetre, copper, carbonates, haematites, quartz, amethyst, alum and cinnabar formed the first; the second comprised sulphur, mercury, feldspar, copper sulphate, magnetite, azurite and realgar; and the third group included stalagmites, iron, iron oxides, lead carbonate, lead tetroxide, tin, agate and fuller’s earth. J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 3, sec. 25, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1954, p. 643.
5. Ibid., pp. 653ff.
6. Warren, Delavault, Hawksworth and others. Ibid., p. 678.
7. Ibid., pp. 653ff.
8. For this information I am indebted to Brett Green, whose family recorded the Aboriginal songs and folklore of this coast. See Brett J. Green, The Gympie Pyramid Story, Gympie, Australia, 1998, and Gilroy, op. cit.
9. Needham, op. cit.
10. Gilroy, op. cit., and Green, op. cit.
11. Green, op. cit.
12. A. Grenfell Pike (ed.), The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific, Limited Editions Club, New York, 1957, p. 77.
13. Other cartographers of the Dieppe School depicted the Gulf differently: Desliens showed it narrower than it should be while Desceliers depicted it close to its actual size, suggesting that the Dieppe cartographers were using more than one Portuguese chart – a note on the Piri Reis map referred to four Portuguese mappae mundi.
14. Governor Grey, quoted in McIntyre, Secret Discovery, p. 79.
15. The date of this figurine has recently been disputed. Professor Needham, in Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, Pt 3, p. 537 and at Fig. 991, states, ‘The statuette is in style Ming or early Ching, quite reasonably contemporary with Cheng Ho.’ He writes at p. 537, ‘Wei Chu-Hsien (4), p. 99, concurs.’ (This reference is to The Chinese Discovery of Australia, Hong Kong, 1960). Professor Needham further cites H. Doré, Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, Vol. XI, p. 966, and P.M. Worsley, ‘Early Asian Contacts with Australia’, in Past and Present, No. 7, 1955. The current curator of the Technological Museum in Sydney, where the statuette is housed, states, ‘The Museum’s preferred dating of this object is the early nineteenth century.’
16. Admiralty sailing instructions, Cook, op. cit.
17. Cdr A.W. Miller, RN, The Straits of Magellan, Griffin, Portsmouth, 1884, p. 7.
18. Don Luis Arias, letter to the King of Spain, quoted, ibid.
19. John Merson, Roads to Xanadu, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989, p. 75.
20. On maize found in the Philippines: M.D.W. Jeffreys, ‘Pre-Columbian Maize in Asia’, in Carroll Riley et al. (eds), Men across the Sea, University of Texas Press, 1971, pp. 382ff.; E.L. Sturtevant, ‘Notes on Edible Plants’, New York State Department of Agriculture 27th Annual Report, 1919, p. 616 (‘In 1521 maize was found by Magellan at the island of Limasava’); H.W. Krueger, ‘Peoples of the Philippines’, Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies No. 4, Washington DC, 1942, p. 23 (Pigafetta observing maize cultivation on Limasava); W. Richardson, General Collection of Voyages and Discoveries Made by the Portuguese and Spaniards during the 15th and 16th Centuries, 1789, p. 496 (‘The islanders invited the General into their boats in which were their merchandise viz cloves … and maize’; C. O. Saver, ‘Maize into Europe’, in Accounts 34th Int. Cong. Amer., Vienna, 1960, pp. 777–88 (Pigafetta’s ‘miglio’ translated as maize); Antonio Pigafetta, Primo Viaggio intorno al Mondo, MS version of c. 1524 translated in E.H. Blair and J.A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands 1493–1893, 1906, pp. 164 and 182 (cakes of ‘riso e miglio’ on island of Zubu (Cebu)); Pigafetta, op. cit., p. 154 (‘ears like Indian corn … shelled off like lada’); J.J.L. Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa, Probsthain, 1949, p. 32.
Chapter 9: The First Colony in the Americas
1. 11°N.
2. Peter Whitfield, New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration, British Library, 1998, pp. 54–5.
3. Article by Dr Tan Koonlin in The Rose (journal of the American Rose Society), Vol. 92, Pt 4; R.E. Shepherd, History of the Rose, Macmillan, New York, 1954; E. Wilson, Plant Hunting, Vol. 2, Stratford, Boston, Mass., 1927.
4. Sacramento Bee, 26 January 2001, and Enterprise Record of Chico, 23 January 2001.
5. Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000, pp. 68–80.
6. Stephen Powers, ‘A
borigines of California: An Indo-Chinese Study’ in Atlantic, Vol. 33, 1874, and Stephen Powers, Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. 3, Department of the Interior, Washington DC, 1877.
7. Powers, Ethnology, p. 417.
8. All ibid., introduction and pp. 146–434.
9. Referring to California’s East Bay walls in John Fryer, Ancients in America.
10. Fra Bernardino de Sahagún, The Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain 1325–1550, School of American Research, Santa Fe, 11 vols, 1950–69.
11. Bernardino Diaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, New York, 1956.
12. Barbara Pickersgill, ‘Origin and Evolution of Cultivated Plants in the New World’, Nature, 268 (18), pp. 591–4.
13. Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, ‘The Mystery of the Temple of the Inscriptions’, Archaeology, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1953, as quoted by Charles Gallenkamp in Maya: The Riddle and Rediscovery of a Lost Civilisation, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1987, pp. 93–104.
Chapter 10: Colonies in Central America
1. Lacquering is described by Fra Bernadino de Sahagún in The Florentine Codex: General History of the Affairs of New Spain 1325–1550, trs. A.J.O. Anderson and C.E. Dibble, Salt Lake City, 1970.
2. Ma Huan, The Overall Survey of the Ocean Shores, trs. J.V.G. Mills, Cambridge UP (for Hakluyt Society), Cambridge, 1970.
3. H. Mertz, Gods from the Far East: How the Chinese Discovered America, New York, 1972, pp. 72–3.
4. Stephen C. Jett, ‘Dyestuffs and Possible Early Contacts between South Western Asia and Nuclear America’, in Across before Columbus?, NEARA Publications, Edgecomb, Maine, 1998, pp. 141ff.
5. Ibid., p. 146.
6. De Sahagún, op. cit.
7. An attempt is being made to compare DNA of Michoacán dogs with that of shar-peis. The results will be posted on the website.
8. Nicolás León, ‘Studies in the Archaeology of Michoacán: The Lienzo of Jucutácato’, in Smithsonian Institution Annual Report, Washington DC, 1889.
9. J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, Pt. 3, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1954, pp. 540–3.