Four years later, in September 2005, Liu happened to spot versions of 1421 in English and Chinese at a bookstore in the Beijing airport. He bought a copy and opened it to the map tracing Zheng He’s voyages. Liu Gang instantly realized that the map in his archive might be the most valuable map in the world and certainly the first map of the entire globe.
He only contacted me after reaching out to six Chinese cartographers, enclosing photos of the 1418 map. When none responded or even acknowledged his letters, he contacted my office on October 14 and after an email exchange sent us a copy of the map.
The problem was that I didn’t see his message immediately, because it was placed in a stack with other overnight mail. When I finally did see it, I dismissed the copy and paid no attention, assuming wrongly that it was a montage of Di Virga’s map of the Eastern Hemisphere and Waldseemüller’s map of the Western Hemisphere. It was some while before my cowriter, Ian Hudson, brought the map to my attention and pointed out that it had come from Liu Gang.
Even then I was suspicious. The map still seemed to be a combination of Di Virga’s and Waldseemüller’s maps. If it were genuine, it was a substantiation of my explanation in 1421, though it also meant that Zheng He had a whole world map even three years earlier than I had thought. Marcella and I discussed the possibility that I was being set up by a forger. Nevertheless, the details in both hemispheres were almost identical to Di Virga and Waldseemüller. If it had been forged, it would have been the work of an exceptionally skilled operator who was not only able to write in medieval Chinese but also intimately acquainted with the other two mapmakers.
After two days of debate, Marcella and I decided the scenarios for the map being a forgery were unlikely. Liu himself was a prominent person and his reputation as an attorney and as an art collector would have been ruined if he were caught knowingly passing a forgery. But if someone else had been involved, how might that have happened? Liu had bought the map four years before I had reconstructed Waldseemüller’s. No one else would have had the raw material to do it. The same was the case with the Di Virga map. In 1419, the latest date for that map, European voyages of exploration had not started. How can you forge something that hasn’t happened and that no one knows about?
Finally I traveled to Beijing to meet with Liu Gang. We decided to have the map authenticated and dated either at Cambridge University in England or Waikato University in New Zealand, both well known for their accurate dating of maps.
We also agreed that we would announce the discovery of the map three weeks after certification of the dating was completed—on January 16, 2006, in Beijing, and the following day at the National Maritime Museum in London.
Unfortunately, though, we hadn’t accounted for Christmas, when the Waikato dating department would be closed, and so we wouldn’t be able to meet the January 16 deadline. Despite the risk—both Liu’s and my reputation would be shattered if the map were found faulty or fake—Liu and I decided to announce the map anyway. He agreed with my analysis that there was no way that a modern forger would have known about the existence of the other maps. In agreeing to announce the map, he showed a huge amount of faith in my judgment.
The news was covered in newspapers, radio, and television around the world. At the news conference, Liu made it clear that this was a stellar discovery with “the potential of the information in the map to change history.”
Despite the care of our analysis, we met criticism and complaints once more, amazingly, in fact, even before some of our critics had even seen the map at our news conference. We subsequently learned that the premature statements that the map was a fake were coordinated by people at the National University of Singapore as a spoiling exercise.
Some criticism was expected, but the complaints were based on foolish reasoning. First, one critic charged that the Chinese in Zheng He’s era did not know the world was round. This incredible assertion did not need answering—one might as well contend that the Ford Motor Company had never made automobiles. Second, some critics called it a forgery by claiming that a number of place-names on the map did not coincide with the names for those same places during the Ming dynasty. The most glaring foolishness came from the National University of Singapore, where some claimed that simplified Chinese characters used on the 1418 map did not come into use in China until Mao Zedong introduced them in 1949. This was easily proved to be incorrect—some simplified Chinese characters had been in use for a thousand years.
Every word that the critics alleged was not in use in the Ming was analyzed by our team, which included experts in Ming calligraphy as well as in Persian, Arabic, and in the languages of minority peoples within China that were in use during the Ming dynasty. We found that the critics were correct in stating that a number of the words on the map were not in use in the Ming, but they were in use by the Hui peoples of Yunnan and by Hui Chinese in particular. So we could show that the cartographer came from Yunnan and was a member of the Huihui, or Hui, people. This, in our opinion, only reinforced the authenticity of the map.
Nevertheless, we continue to weigh all criticism seriously; each challenge has been analyzed and we remain on solid ground. For example, we determined that the original cartographer was not only a Huihui, probably with a Persian background, but also lived and worked in Quanzhou (some names are slang used in Quanzhou).
Every criticism known to us has been placed on our website.4 So, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the critics have failed across the board to show any inconsistency. By rejecting the map before they had seen it, some academics have, I think, brought their universities into disrepute, not least of them the National University of Singapore.
THE SUBSTANCE OF LIU GANG’S MAP
Liu Gang’s map provides remarkable information about Zheng He’s voyages. A full rendering of every place-name and the nomenclature of mountains, rivers, bays, inlets, and islands would take a book in itself. I have selected two examples—what is shown on the 1418 map in South America and the position of Australia. Later on we will consider the rivers shown on the North Atlantic coast of North America, as well as Europe. A full summary of what the 1418 map shows is provided on our website.5
The 1418 map shows South America with one apparently unknown river on the southwest coast, together with inscriptions that say in Chinese “Here the people practiced the religion of Paracas” and “Here the people practice human sacrifice.”
I was not familiar with the reference to the Paracas religion, nor with the river of the same name shown on the map in southern Peru. Marcella and I decided to travel to the region in May 2006 to have a look. It was quite easy to narrow the search to that stretch of coast. South American civilizations there are as old as any on the planet. The Caral-Supe civilization is 4,000 years old. For comparision: Chinese civilization is some 3,900 years old; India, 4,600; Egypt, 5,300; Mesopotamia, 5,700; Minoan, 5,000.
The greatest civilizations on this stretch of coast, starting with the Caral, followed by Chavin, were based between the Lambayeque River in the north of Peru and the Pisco River in the south. South of the Pisco River, the coast narrows considerably and north of Lambayeque the Humboldt Current and fish supplies peter out. So this stretch of Peruvian coast was home to the richest civilizations of them all and would have been where the great trading cities existed when Zheng He’s fleets roamed the oceans. We knew this was where we should begin our search.
Peru is awash with evidence of Chinese visitors for the past two thousand years. A list of the principal evidence is found on our website.6 We’ve already discussed the villages with Chinese names in Peru’s Ancash province. The Inca people have East Asian admixture in their blood to such an extent that their DNA profile could almost be called Chinese.7
It is relatively easy to narrow where Zheng He’s fleets would have visited. Peru appears on the Chinese world maps long before the 1418 map was published. Zheng He’s nautical chart also shows Peru. Peru also appears on Diogo Ribeiro’s master chart of the world in 1529. Rib
eiro’s map, which was published before the first Europeans, that is, Pizarro’s expedition, reached Peru, describes Peru as “province and cities of Chinese silk.” Assuming that the latitudes on Ribeiro’s map are correct, which they appear to be, it would seem that “the cities of Chinese silk” he describes were between Chan Chan, to the north of Lima, then coming south, Chancay, Pachacamac in the southern suburbs of modern Lima, then Paracas, four hundred miles south of Lima. Records tell us that Chancay suddenly started to mass produce pottery in the 1420s, some of which they called “china,” so my first thought was that Chancay was the port that Zheng He visited. In medieval Castilian the name means “city of Chinese silk.” So he probably did trade there, but unfortunately, on our journey we found that the place had been so badly looted it is impossible to be sure. So we needed other clues.
PARACAS
Soon after viewing Liu Gang’s map of 1418, I researched Jesuit and Franciscan records to determine when the religion was first mentioned in European annals. To my surprise, there were no accounts of the name. To investigate further, we then drove south to the Paracas Peninsula, where today there is a national reserve protected by the Peruvian government. Within this reserve is the Julio C. Tello Museum, where we learned the answer to the riddle. The Paracas people buried their dead in very rich funerary bundles made of a fabric made from local cotton and vicuña wool, colored with the most beautiful natural dyes. The fabric was first seen on the Lima market in the late nineteenth century and examined by Max Uhle, a German archaeologist, who named it “early Inca culture.”
In 1925 the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello visited the Paracas Peninsula and excavated areas that he called “Cerro Colorado” and “Wari Kayan.” These were two cemeteries characterized by Tello as “cavernas” and “necropolis” styles. Tello realized that what he had found was not Inca culture at all but a new culture, which he called “Paracas.” So Europeans did not know of this culture until 1925, yet it appeared with that name on Liu Gang’s 1418 map. The name has been used by the local people for centuries and, in my view, would only have been placed on the 1418 map by somebody who had been there.
To the north of Paracas Peninsula is the Pisco River, to the south the Eka River. The Pisco and Eka rivers and their tributaries are the same shape as the river shown on Liu Gang’s 1418 map. When we visited in May 2006 both were dry, although they had been running with water because their banks were lush and fertile. We traveled up both rivers. At one time the Pisco would have been at least ten miles wide, as one can see from the erosion of the cliff banks twenty miles upriver, near the ancient Incan outpost of Tambo Colorado. At Tambo Colorado the river forks, just as shown on the 1418 map, so it seemed to us that the Pisco River was the most likely candidate for that shown on the 1418 map. We decided to learn what the first Spanish found when they reached the Pisco, a century after Zheng He’s voyages.
The most complete account of what the Spanish found is that of María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco in her book History of the Inca Realm. After explaining that the name Chincha is the equivalent of Chinchay (meaning “Chinese silk,” in medieval Catalan), she describes the Inca “Topac Yupanqi’s peaceful conquest of the Chinchas and how they were absorbed into the Inca hierarchy, and of the courtesy first extended by Topac Yupanqui to the Chincha leader and then by Huana Capac and Atahualpa.” Rostworowski describes how when the the lord of Chincha met Pizarro, the lord was being conveyed along in a carriage without wheels in the same procession as the emperor Atahualpa. In short, the Chincha lord was of similar status to the Inca chief. Atahualpa explained that the Chincha lord once had one hundred thousand ships. Bartolome Ruiz, one of the first Spaniards to visit the place, described catching a Chincha raft at sea laden with goods of great value. Pizarro’s coat of arms includes a Chinese junk, as one can see in Seville’s General Archive of the Indies.
Rostworowski describes a number of similarities between Chincha and Chinese peoples. Alone among ancient Peruvian people, the Chincha were expert at astro-navigation using the star, Cundri. They were very skilled merchants, traveling as far north as Ecuador and using a type of copper money as international currency. They were expert smiths of silver and gold.
She also describes the legends of the people farther north who referred to foreigners arriving before the Spanish expedition. They came by sea in fleets of rafts. The foreigners settled among them. She describes Chincha as being a rich and prosperous province of Incas, speaking their own language, Runa Simi, rather than Quechua of the Incas. She concludes, “Why did Chincha become seafarers and how did they learn skills of navigation? Our present knowledge does not permit a satisfactory answer—perhaps they came into contact with navigators from different places who taught them maritime skills.”8
TAMBO COLORADO: A CHINCHA CAPITAL
In Prehispanic Cultures of Peru,9 author Justo Caceres Macedo emphasizes the importance of Chincha merchants. He describes an origin story in which the Chincha valley was conquered by outside invaders who were devoted to an oracle, Chinchacama. The Chinchas, Macedo says, formed alliances, grew in number, and traveled “to the land of the Collas and the shores of Lake Titicaca at the time the Incas were found in Cusco.” Spanish explorers arriving in the sixteenth century found a vibrant, prospering Chincha society, “the most prosperous and prestigious in the Andes.” He described commerce and trade as being extensive, moving beyond the Chincha valley, north on the Pacific coast to Ecuador, and south to Valdivia in Chile. According to Macedo, there were as many as six thousand Chincha merchants conducting such trade in the century before Spaniards arrived.
Chincha was conquered by the Incas during Topac Yupanqui’s reign and annexed to the empire in 1476 A.D. When the Incas peacefully conquered the Chincha, they took over the site at Tambo Colorado and added new buildings to it.
RITUAL SACRIFICE
The 1418 map says the peoples of South America practiced ritual sacrifice. This is correct. About ten years ago, the volcano of Sabancaya erupted, splattering hot ash on the nearby volcano of Ampato, melting the snow. Further eruptions threw out of the melted earth the Virgin of the Sun, buried about 1440 after the ritual sacrifice. She was named Juanita. Her perfectly preserved frozen body can be seen in a deep freeze at Arequipa University. Her body was taken to Tokyo University for DNA tests and carbon dating. She died in about 1440 and hence was conceived in about 1425. Her DNA has substantial Chinese (Taiwanese) admixture. (You can view a photograph of her in the first color insert of this book.)
I believe that the river shown on the 1418 map is the Pisco. The people did practice ritual sacrifice and they did practice the Paracas religion. Some of Zheng He’s sailors had love affairs with the local people and one of the offspring of these was the young Virgin of the Sun, Juanita. The Chincha were descendants of Zheng He’s fleets.
AUSTRALIA
It appears on the 1418 map that Australia is in the wrong position. A number of critics have asked how this could be when Zheng He’s fleets were so adept at astro-navigation and had mastered the principles of latitude and longitude. The reason is that in 1418 the Chinese had not worked out a method of projecting what is on a globe onto a flat piece of paper. The two hemispheres of the 1418 map are in fact a globe cut in half, with each half of the globe then drawn out as it looks to the observer on a flat piece of paper. Thus Australia is left dangling in the middle, between the two hemispheres, in the middle of the Pacific. The maker of the 1418 map solved the problem by superimposing the two hemispheres. In effect, this cuts out the Pacific.
If the two hemispheres are pulled apart, Australia is left dangling in the middle, in the correct position relative to Southeast Asia, China, and South America. We plan to use computer graphics programs in the future to place the two hemispheres of the 1418 map back on the globe, as they originally were. Unfortunately, such programs are extremely expensive.
Other places shown on the 1418 map will be described later. Let us now start with the visit of Zheng He’s fleet to North Caro
lina.
CHAPTER 13
North Carolina and the Virginias
THE 1418 MAP LEADS US TO NORTH AMERICA
Further research into Zheng He’s 1418 map takes us beyond the original thesis I presented in 1421. We have now been able to broaden our search. Thus after 2006 I began to focus increasingly on the role of rivers in exploration and settlement.
The areas of the 1418 map with rivers around them appear to be described in the most detail. Rivers are the lifeblood of inland civilization, providing much-needed nutrients and moisture for agriculture as well as transport corridors and abundant fish for food. Hence the great deal of importance that is afforded them in maps of the world.
By looking at Liu Gang’s map closely we can concentrate on various points around the world that are of specific importance and interest. One such area is the Northeastern Seaboard of North America, which the 1418 map shows in great detail, with mountains and river systems delineated. Inscriptions on Liu Gang’s map note that “there are more than one thousand tribes and kings here. . . . Most of the people here have learned equitation and toxophily . . . anthropophagi . . . the land of this area is rich in gold and silver, and the people here use gold as currency. . . .”
The map shows two river systems on the Atlantic coast of North America. The northernmost one, opposite Greenland, is clearly the St. Lawrence River. What, however, is the southernmost river system on the North American continent, as depicted on this remarkable map? Although there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that the Chinese had navigated far up the waters of the Mississippi, this great river for some reason does not seem to appear on Liu Gang’s map. The river system that we can see empties into the Atlantic on the northern tip of a promontory—in the same position and with the same shape as Cape Hatteras, part of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Leading inland from Albemarle Sound, behind the Outer Banks, is the Roanoke River, forking just to the southwest then to the northwest, as shown on the 1418 map. The 1418 map shows this river branching into three arms—the northwest arm is in the same position as the New River (which becomes the Scioto River, located in what is now Ohio), the southwest arm is initially the New River and then the Tennessee, and the southeast arm is the Cape Fear River. This is corroborated by the mountains shown on the 1418 map; counterclockwise, to the north are the Blue Ridge Mountains, then the Cumberland Plateau to the west, to the southwest the Appalachians, and in the south the Piedmont. The only mistake the cartographer has made is to show the branches of the river joining near what is now Roanoke, Virginia, when in fact they all rise in the Appalachians, to the west of Roanoke.
Who Discovered America? : The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas (9780062236777) Page 15
