Now imagine that one of Hong Bao’s ships was either wrecked or badly damaged. It would beach on a Pacific island, where the sailors would seek shelter ashore. With them came their animals, food, diseases, disorders, and parasites. They might have been at sea for months and those without access to women aboard ship might have been driven by the need for sex—as perhaps were the women on the Pacific island itself.
Fast-forward six hundred years: We come across that island, perhaps as scientists, even tourists. If we consider the possibilities, then we certainly shall find the genetic legacy of a ship of six hundred years ago—a time capsule.
This is exactly what we have done. There have been huge advances in tracing genetic inheritance. We can find from DNA analysis who the shipwrecked sailors of long ago were and what they carried on their ships before disaster struck. We can also determine where they stopped en route to collect food or to trade.
The principal tool is DNA research.1 The genetic evidence left by the crews of Chinese fleets is overwhelming. In every place in America that I believe they visited, they have left their genetic legacy. Moreover, we can show that the first Europeans to reach places where the indigenous people have Asian DNA found Chinese or Mongolian peoples already there—in other words, the DNA referred to in this chapter does not arise from Chinese settlers who arrived only recently, during the “gold rush.”
The “blockbuster” report that seems to show irrefutable evidence of the amount of Asian DNA in indigenous people of the Americas was referred to in a book published in 2006, Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church. The author, Simon G. Southerton, an Australian plant geneticist, was once a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons).
Mormons believe the indigenous people of the Americas are descendants of tribes of Israel who took to the sea, landed in North America, conquered peoples there, then settled the continent. Various theories followed (not necessarily Mormon doctrine) that before the Mormons arrived in America there had been a superior civilized race that had itself been overthrown by violent invaders—it was these violent invaders whom the Mormons were now expelling. Mormons and subsequent European conquerors—Spanish, French, and English—tacitly accepted these accounts of earlier barbaric peoples in the Americas because it gave justification for the European conquest. Southerton’s investigation started as a quest to find out who were the barbaric peoples the Israelites had conquered. This could be achieved by DNA research.
More than seven thousand DNA samples were procured, from 175 recognized indigenous Native American peoples (“recognized” means living in designated tribal areas, that is, not living in cities among European descendants or Hispanics).
Analysis of mitochondrial DNA (maternally inherited) and Y chromosomes (characteristic of male cells) was carried out to examine who were their male and female ancestors. The results showed 96.5 percent of indigenous Native American people had mitochondrial DNA from A, B, C, and D founding maternal lineages. Remarkably, those four DNA lineages are found only in Asian populations and nowhere else in the world. Male genealogical studies show that the most common Native American, lineage Q, is closely related to Asian Q lineage, as they share common DNA markers.
In short, Indigenous American peoples are essentially all descended from Asian female and male ancestors.
How did they get there—by crossing the Bering Strait “land bridge” before the ice melted around ten thousand years ago—or by multiple voyages from Asia over the centuries, principally in Chinese ships?
The DNA evidence that follows shows they came by multiple sea voyages from Asia.
My interest in the genetic legacy in its broadest sense was sparked when one of our researchers encountered the work of Gabriel Novick and his colleagues. In Novick’s words there was a “close similarity between the Chinese and Native Americans, demonstrating a recent gene flow from Asia.” Novick’s report, covering twenty-two Indian peoples of the Americas, is clearly and concisely written.
The report shows where the various Native American peoples live. As may be seen, these people are all reached by sea or a great river and these are places where in 1421 I say that Zheng He’s fleets traveled—hence the huge significance to me of this report. The accompanying figure shows the closeness of the DNA of the peoples analyzed by Novick and his team to Chinese DNA—as may be seen, the Buctzotz Mayans are so close they may almost be called Chinese, whereas Nigerians (at the top) are far removed from Chinese.
I take several conclusions from the report. By examining Novick’s documentation, one can see that the native peoples of Greenland and Alaska have very similar DNA. If the peoples of Greenland were descendants of the first supposed immigrants to North America, who had marched across the Bering Strait on the frozen ice to Alaska, then migrated eastward across North America to Greenland, one would expect the DNA of intervening people to initially resemble Alaskan DNA, then gradually mutate. This is not the case. For the Greenland and Alaska natives’ DNA to be so strikingly similar, these peoples must have received their “recent gene flow from Asia” at about the same time. Alaska is on the Pacific coast and Greenland is in the North Atlantic Ocean, stretching up to the Arctic. The only way that Greenland and Alaska people could have received their gene flow at about the same time is by ship—moreover, from ships that sailed in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Because of the prevailing winds and tides, these simultaneous voyages must have been conducted by different fleets.
Maximum-likelihood tree illustrating human phylogenetic relationships. The distance between population groups is proportional to the branch lengths on the tree. (Novick et al.)
The Greenland and Alaskan natives and the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Caribbean obviously lived thousands of miles apart. The second conclusion we can draw is that if the “recent gene flow from Asia” had been from across the Bering Strait, one would have expected the intervening peoples between Alaska and the Yucatán Peninsula in the Caribbean to have DNA that gradually mutated from Alaska to the Yucatán as the people migrated southeast. This is not the case. The DNA signature among Buctzotz Maya is far closer to Alaskan DNA than it is to the Indian people who live on either side of the Maya. The Maya on the Atlantic coast and the Alaskans on the Pacific coast must have received their “recent gene flow from Asia” at about the same time, too. Again, multiple fleets would be required.
The same argument can be applied to the Incas of South America’s Pacific coast region, since their DNA is closer to the Chinese, the Maya of the Atlantic coast, and the natives of Greenland than it is to the Indian people who lived to their east or north. Novick’s team, which finds “close similarity between the Chinese and Native Americans,” has sampled the DNA of peoples far distant from each other in the high Arctic, on the Atlantic and Pacific coast, in Amazonia (thousands of miles up that great river), in Patagonia, and in Bolivia, again thousands of miles upstream, on the Paraguay and Parana rivers.
For each of these places to have recently acquired Asian DNA, thousands of miles apart, in different hemispheres, not only would different fleets be required, but they would have to be huge as well.
It seemed to me from reading Novick’s report that these huge Chinese fleets must have sailed to North and South America via both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Furthermore, there is a wealth of supporting evidence summarized on our website that Chinese fleets visited each place where Novick and his colleagues found DNA evidence of “recent gene flow from Asia.” Because we could also show that the first Europeans to reach those places where Novick’s team found Asian DNA also found Chinese people already there, their report was powerful substantiation that huge Chinese fleets had visited the Americas.
We decided to research other DNA studies for more detail and found that, fortuitously, there had been enormous advances in the accuracy of DNA analysis in the past decade. Thirty years ago, there were two principal methods of analysis. The first was mitochondrial, which traced a
person’s heritage through the mother and her female ancestors. The second involved the Y chromosome, which traces heritage through a person’s father and his male ancestors. Then came the bombshell of the Human Genome Project. A number of research companies appreciated that they could use genetics to improve the efficacy of drugs made by pharmaceutical companies. For example, some people of African origin have a different reaction to medicines than have Europeans. Some drugs of the same strength have a vastly more powerful effect on Asian people than on Jewish. By analyzing a person’s heritage, geneticists could therefore offer pharmaceutical companies and governments improvements in efficiency and hence lower the cost of prescription drugs.
A number of major American research companies raised considerable amounts of money to invest in research. We analyzed those companies’ research and determined that the most cost-effective for us was DNAPrint Genomics of Sarasota, Florida, which indeed was very helpful. The firm’s chief scientific officer, Dr. Tony Frudakis, met with me many times over the years and allowed us to use his company’s reports.
DNAPrint Genomics devised a novel method of accurately measuring genetic structure by computationally screening the human genome sequence for ancestry information markers (AIM). The results suggest that biographical admixture (a person’s heritage) can be reliably read from DNA. Furthermore, their research showed that DNA admixture between American Indians and East Asians (Chinese) is far more frequent than was hitherto supposed. Because DNAPrint Genomics selected the genomes’ best AIMs, which earlier methods had not, their results more accurately measured genetic structure. Frudakis discussed the evidence at a symposium in Washington, D.C., on May 15, 2005, that was organized by the Library of Congress and focused on Zheng He’s voyages. Frudakis said “there is substantial and statistically significant recently acquired East Asian admixture in Native American Indian peoples of twenty, thirty, sometimes forty, percent.”
Research by a number of distinguished geneticists concurs with the DNAPrint Genomics report as well as with the research by Professor Novick and his colleagues. The following material is a summary of their findings. The full text and details are available on our website.
• Professor Noah Rosenberg et al., “Genetic Structure of Human Populations,” Science 298 (December 20, 2002): “Most Maya, Pima and Colombian groups had East Asian admixture.”
• Theodore G. Schurr et al., “Amerindian mitochondrial DNAs have rare Asian mutations at high frequencies, suggesting they derived from four primary maternal lineages,” in American Journal of Human Genetics 46 (1990): “The mitochondrial DNA (MT DNA) sequence variation of South American Ticuna, the central American Maya and the North American Pima was analyzed. . . . The analysis revealed that Amerindian Populations have high frequencies of MT DNAs containing the rare Asian RFLP hine II, morph 6. . . . In addition the Asian-specific deletion . . . was also prevalent in both the Pima and the Maya.”
• Felipe Vilchis, “HLA Genes and the Origin of the Amerindians,” Genetica Biomedicina Molecular 2000 résumé GYE 2, Monterrey, Mexico (translated by Ian Hudson): “The results of the philogenetic analysis reported here support the idea that the autochthonous Pueblos based in meso-America and South America had common ancestors, with as many coming from the migratory wave from the north as those that took the transpacific route. . . . Of even more interest, the allelic distribution . . . showed a genotypic pattern that was very similar to that found among Asian peoples . . . which represents a very high incidence in the population that was studied.”
• Antonio Torroni et al., “Asian Affinities and Continental Radiation of the Four Founding Native American mtDNAs,” American Journal of Human Genetics 53 (September 1993): “The sequencing of 341 nucleotides in the mtDNA loop revealed that the D-loop sequence variation correlated strongly with the four haplogroups defined by restriction analysis and it indicated that the D-loop variation, like the haplo-type variation, arose predominantly after the migration of the ancestral Amerinds across the Bering land bridge.”
• Tulio Arends and Emil Gallengo, “Transferrins in Venezuela Indians: High Frequency of a Slow-Moving Variant,” Science 143 (January 24, 1964): “In 58 percent of the Upa Indians of Venezuela there is a slow-moving transferrin electrophoretically indistinguishable from Tf Dchi, which to date has only been found in Chinese. This finding is additional evidence for the existence of a racial link between South American Indians and Chinese.”
• Fidias E. Leon-Sarmiento et al., “Peopling the Americas,” Science 273 (1996): “People with the so-called ‘new’ allele . . . such as the Cayapa Chachi from Ecuador also display an aldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency that is molecularly similar to that found in South East Asia and Japanese people but absent in North East Asians. . . . These similarities add strength to the proposal that ancient voyages could follow the Pacific sea currents that join Japan to South America as well as other routes.”
• Fidias E. Leon-Sarmiento et al., “HLA Transpacific Contacts and Retrovirus,” Human Immunology 42 (1995): “[Marie] Cerna et al. . . . stated that some of the genetic markers on HLA that they found could have been introduced to South America through some ancient transpacific contacts. Such statements fit with our recent investigations on neurological diseases, specifically those related to retro virus; we also suggested that HTLV-1 retrovirus could have been introduced to South America through transpacific contacts. . . . A Colombian aboriginal group living near the Pacific Colombian coast named the Noanama-Wanana is clustered genetically closer to Japanese peoples than to other American natives.”
• Peter Parham, in response to “Peopling the Americas,” in Science 273 (1996): “Another recombinant—of the 4003 which was just discovered in the Guarani and was described as being specific to South America has now been found in Koreans, Japanese and Mongolian. . . . Given this insight the HLA class haplotype B*4003, CW*0304, A*0211 becomes a candidate for having found its way to South America by a route not involving passage through South America.”
Reviewing the data, the preceding scientists all reached the same clear conclusion by means of different DNA methods: that the populations of South America encountered by Europeans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were of Asian ancestry and that their ancestors arrived in the New World by sea. The argument that they crossed the Pacific to reach American shores is supported by Katsushi Tokunaga and his colleagues in an article published in Human Immunology in 2001: “A 24-CW8-B4B was commonly observed in Taiwan indigenous populations, Maori in New Zealand, Orochon in north east China, Inuit and Tlingit. These findings further support the genetic link between East Asians and Native Americans.”
Further evidence provided by M. Hertzberg,2 Shinji Harihara,3 Fuminaka Sugauchi,4 and their respective colleagues support the earlier geneticists’ findings that certain North and South American Indian peoples’ ancestors came by sea rather than across the Bering land bridge. They also point to the presence of mitochondrial DNA among the populations of the islanders of Oceania, including Cook Islanders, Fijians, Maori, Niueans, and Tongans. I’d submit that a thoroughgoing reappraisal is in order for the Bering land bridge as supposedly allowing the peopling of the Americas by humans crossing the ice on foot—some two thousand miles of it. My belief is that historians who contend that the Americas were populated by sea, by multiple and repeated waves from Asia, are absolutely correct. Zheng He was part of the last and greatest of these waves of exploration.
Finally, on the subject of such migrations, I cite two more startling reports, one by Geoffrey K. Chambers declaring that “Pacific Maoris may have come from China.” “The information that has come from several studies in my laboratory turns out to be consistent with a pattern of migration [the Maori people] starting with an ancestral population in mainland Asia. This has been taken up by Dr. Winston Peters, foreign minister of New Zealand, who stated in his address to the Association of East Asian Countries on July 26, 20
06, ‘The first inhabitants of New Zealand came from China.’”5
The second is even more surprising, a study by Antonio Arnaiz-Villena and his colleagues at the University of Madrid:
The Peopling of America sequence may have been more complicated than previously thought; it seems that Mongoloids from China, Mongolia (but not from Siberia) are found to have been both in America or the middle Atlantic (Azores) before Columbus.6
Arnaiz-Villena’s study captured my imagination. It led to information that predated the charting of the Atlantic to two decades before even Zheng He.
Studies and new evidence have been accumulating about the Chinese presence in Europe and the New World. Arnaiz-Villena uncovered this surprise: “We unexpectedly found Oriental genes (but Chinese) in the present day Azorean populations, and postulated that the arrival of the genes was before the Portuguese. . . .”7
Arnaiz-Villena and his colleagues focused on HLA, human leukocyte antigen, a gene complex related to disease and to the immune system. Their report says HLA is particularly relevant.
Some individuals tested in the Azores showed genetic characteristics “closer to Orientals (continental Asians, like Mongolians and Chinese) than to Europeans and Mediterraneans.”8
Their analysis goes on to say that the evidence suggested an Asian presence in the Azores before the Portuguese arrival at the islands in 1439.9
If this were the case, it is most intriguing that the Mongoloid component of the Azorean HLA genetic profile is more similar to the one found in continental Asia groups than the profile found in the American Indians . . . the frequent Mongoloid HLA haplotypes found in the Archipelago are Asian continental rather than American Indians.
The Spanish researchers said that since there was no historical record that American Indians or Asians had gone to the Azores after Columbus’s first voyage in 1492, it follows logically that “the first inhabitants of the islands may have been Asian or American Indians.”10
Who Discovered America? : The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas (9780062236777) Page 6
