Did China Discover America Before Colombus

[ConspiracyBuff]

A controversial map gives support to a theory that a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher. However, many people belive Viking Leif Erickson was the first to discover America anyway.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4609074.stm

[BEST45CAL]

I was taught that Leif Ericson discovered North America 500 years before Columbus discovered what is known as the West Indies. That pre-dates the Chinese maps.

[aaron11]

Does it really matter?

[DesertFox]

DocDoom discovered America first during the Crapazoic Era 500 gajillion years ago before the earth was even formed.





Dude old

[ldb83]

America was discovered by nomads. There WERE people here when these explorers made their "discoveries".

[HomeschoolrsRUs]

America was discovered by nomads. There WERE people here when these explorers made their "discoveries".

Were you one of them? :smirky:


Otherwise, got any info to back up your assertion (links, article references, etc.)? I would be interested in reading such.

[Eagle1]

so thats where that chinese california indian tribe that custer fought came from???

wow, now it all makes sense!!!!

[Incident_command]

America was discovered by nomads. There WERE people here when these explorers made their "discoveries".

Yea and then the evil white man took it all away BWAHAHAH

[DesertFox]

There WERE people here when these explorers made their "discoveries". The point of attributing the discovery of America to Columbus isn't that America was personless before; but that Columbus brought to the New World the Western civilization that resulted in modernity -- the idea that men have rights, the birth of science and modern medicine, the beginnings of technological society. All these owed to the arrival of Columbus and all that followed.

China's wasn't such a civilization, and neither were the indigenous civilizations.

[routerider]

The point of attributing the discovery of America to Columbus isn't that America was personless before; but that Columbus brought to the New World the Western civilization that resulted in modernity -- the idea that men have rights, the birth of science and modern medicine, the beginnings of technological society. All these owed to the arrival of Columbus and all that followed.

China's wasn't such a civilization, and neither were the indigenous civilizations.


Do "men" not include indians?

[UnkHiram]

Desert Fox nailed it. It does not matter who stepped foot on American Soil FIRST, Columbus is the one that carried the news back to the civilized world and the Muslims. (Yes that was a snide comment)

[ldb83]

The point of attributing the discovery of America to Columbus isn't that America was personless before; but that Columbus brought to the New World the Western civilization that resulted in modernity -- the idea that men have rights, the birth of science and modern medicine, the beginnings of technological society. All these owed to the arrival of Columbus and all that followed.

Yes, thank you for that. I was just being a smartass.

[DoctorDoom]

DocDoom discovered America first during the Crapazoic Era 500 gajillion years ago before the earth was even formed.Yep, it was on a see-the-universe trip after I retired.

[Patriot Heart]

Has anyone here heard of the Heavener Runestone? It is a fascinating piece of archaeology located in eastern Oklahoma. It is believed that the huge flat rock's hieroglyphics were made by early Scandanavian explorers (600-800 AD)who made their way up the Arkansas river from the Gulf of Mexico.
http://www.heavener.k12.ok.us/community/runestone/rune.htm

[PaulRevere]

Sorry. No friggin way. The map also includes Europe and the coast of west Africa.

More impossible, it includes the Arctic coast as well as the Columbia and Mississippi rivers and tributaries.

So claim that Admiral He sailed around these areas or knew of them in 1418 is ridiculous.

Admiral He sailed south through the Strait of Molucca, extorting money and supplies from the locals, the richest of which were, ironically, overseas Chinese who had settled there to escape Chinese imperial oppression and got rich as traders. He continued on to India and perhaps the east African coast. However, as there were no trade routes to exploit and no commercial value in sailing east across the Pacific, He didn't. He never even went to Japan.

[The_RANDy_Corporation]

Did China Discover America Before Colombus


This is so well-established it is usually skipped over by the Illuminutty like ConspiracyBuff so they can move on to such meaningful crap like the eye at the top of the pyramid on the dollar.

Did China discover America? Answer: Duh. Is there anyone in the world left that believes they didn't?

[Tumblehome]

the idea that men have rights
All these owed to the arrival of Columbus and all that followed.

I would be interested in seeing you back the assertain that the first nations peoples didn't believe tha men had any rights. As I understand it much of the idea of democracy that grew up in north america came from native cultures such as the Iriquois Confederacy.

[Popperite]

I wonder, couldn't this map have been copied from a 1418 map with later discoveries just being added by the person who copied it?

[DesertFox]

I would be interested in seeing you back the assertain that the first nations peoples didn't believe tha men had any rights.You're asking me to prove a negative, which isn't possible. It's up to you to prove your point.

The ballyhoo about the Iriquois is just ballyhoo. Not to mention that I said nothing about democracy, but that men have rights. That idea originated with Englishman Thomas Locke.

I wonder, couldn't this map have been copied from a 1418 map with later discoveries just being added by the person who copied it?That is mentioned in the original article.

[Teenager]

I wonder, couldn't this map have been copied from a 1418 map with later discoveries just being added by the person who copied it?


My thoughts exactly. If you remember correctly, Marco Polo journied to China 1275(?). It is possible that he gave the Chinese copies of maps he made/had.

It is also possible that the Chinese figured they could sail to Europe by sailing east? Ergo, they landed in America....

:question:


Correction: I said west when I really meant East.

[Wyatt_Junker]

The ballyhoo about the Iriquois is just ballyhoo.

Yes but Sesame Street scripts, inclusive as they are, have a way of gnawing at your subconscious. The Cookie Monster is so multicultural now that he won't even eat Oreos anyomore without a disapproving look from the off-camera producer. NTM every feel-good scene must be crowded with extras from all races. Otherwise the libs at public broadcasting wouldn't get their spliffs(grants).

Tumble is the target audience; unquestioning, vapid and accepts the agitprop like a good little boy.

[Popperite]

My thoughts exactly. If you remember correctly, Marco Polo journied to China 1275(?). It is possible that he gave the Chinese copies of maps he made/had.

It is also possible that the Chinese figured they could sail to Europe by sailing west? Ergo, they landed in America....

:question:

Well, Europe was known to the Chinese. They traded with the Persians who knew the Romans, back in antiquity and later there were other contacts, direct or indirect. It is doubted nowadays if Marco Polo ever went further than Persia. In 1418 they would have had a rough idea what Europe looked like. They had been to East Africa, but I doubt that they could have known the shape of West Africa by then. By 1763 however all of that, including the existence of the America's would certainly have been known by the Chinese.

[MSGT]

Well we got it now and if anyone wants it they can come over here and try to take it.

[dPrasse]

My thoughts exactly. If you remember correctly, Marco Polo journied to China 1275(?). It is possible that he gave the Chinese copies of maps he made/had.




Did Polo actually go to China ???

Scholars now suspect, however, that Marco Polo never went to China. The argument for this case has been laid out by Frances Wood in her book Did Marco Polo Go to China?

The basic argument against Marco Polo involves a set of telling omissions. First of all, no reference has ever been found in Chinese archives to an Italian visitor like Marco Polo, despite the fact that China's bureaucrats kept numerous forms of documentation and recorded the presence of many other westerners. If Marco Polo really did serve as a special emissary to the Great Khan, it seems unusual that his presence would never have been noted.

Second of all, Polo's account omits many details about Chinese culture that seemed very important to almost all later European travellers. For instance, Wood notes Polo's "apparent failure to pick up even a few Chinese or Mongol place-names in his seventeen-year stay in China." Nor does he ever mention the Chinese style of writing, despite the dramatic difference between Chinese script and the Roman alphabet.

Marco Polo does not mention seeing woodblock printing, which was then unknown in Europe. He never mentions the Chinese custom of drinking tea (also unknown in Europe at that time), despite the fact that he discusses varieties of Chinese wine. He never mentions the practice of foot-binding, even though this custom fascinated all other Europeans who travelled to China. He never mentions the use of chopsticks; and finally, he fails to mention the Great Wall of China.


http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/polo.html

I read this book a few yrs ago ... it was an interesting read , but , I'll admit I'm not knowledgeable enough on the topic to say true or false ...

Maybe hedid get to China ???

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/marco.htm

[Popperite]

It is thought he went no further as Persia, then ruled by Mongolians, who also ruled over Northern China. There he must have heard about China and the Great Khan. It is quaint that all Chinese geographical names he uses are all Persian exonyms. The way these places were called in Persian.

[hdmundt]

America was discovered by nomads. There WERE people here when these explorers made their "discoveries".

What became America was populated by "nomads" (those who crossed the landbridge that is now the Bering Strait). The "noble savages" were actually specieists who contaminated the pristine flora and fauna that was the Western Hemisphere in the pre-human days! HaHaHaHaHa!!!!!
:grin:


(BTW; why does the "maniacal grin" smilie convert into the less-than-maniacal icon? What am I doin' wrong?)

[ConservativeYouthMovement]

I would be interested in seeing you back the assertain that the first nations peoples didn't believe tha men had any rights. As I understand it much of the idea of democracy that grew up in north america came from native cultures such as the Iriquois Confederacy.

Or perhaps from greeks, romans or the BRITISH who held a bicameral legislature, elected leaders, and was a democracy before the revolution even came to be by nearly one hundred years.

Our democracy is simply the same democracy england has, with some modifications to make it better. The role of the iriquois confederation is largely over played, and totally ignores the fact democracy was around in europe 2000 years before it existed on any other continent. Did it have a role? Not really. Everything the Iroquois did had already been done by greeks, romans, and britons.

[Tumblehome]

Yet if you are willing to admit that the Iriqois did it too, then it invalidates the claim that they believed men have no rights.

[Lazarus]

America was discovered by Buffalo.............Led by Doc, of course...

[Rhino]

Does it really matter?
That's what I was thinking.

I would be interested in seeing you back the assertain that the first nations peoples didn't believe tha men had any rights.
I assume he was referring to the theory of inherent or inalienable rights. In primitive cultures, and even to some extent in some European cultures of the time, rights were not inherent, but granted by the ruler or rulers of the particular culture. In other words they were not true rights at all, but rather given or taken away at the whim of those in charge. This is all relative though, because there are no absolutes either way, and not all rights are inalienable. Locke just made the theory of inalienable rights a forefront issue and a mantra for existing governments to adopt, and for future governments to embrace as a central foundation, ours being the best example. In effect, he made inalienable rights a mainstream idea, and the European 'discovery' of the Americas brought that mainstream thinking to continents that really didn't have it to any appreciable extent. I think that's what DF was referring to.

[DesertFox]

Our democracy is simply the same democracy england has, with some modifications to make it better.Um, no. The British version is very much more class-based and elitist. There, you vote for a Party and the Party names its leader when it wants to. Here, we vote for a guy. We didn't even have Parties until Aaron Burr in the early 1800's, whereas in England the Tories and Whigs had been at swords drawn for a coupla hunnert years by then.

There, a Prime Minister can theoretically stay in office forever. Here we have term limits on our prez -- four years at a shot, no more than two shots. Our prez is both head of state and head of govt. There, the royal family is head of state of state and the govt is run by the Party in power.

There, a PM (and his govt) can be removed by a vote of no-confidence, and in theory that could happen the day after they assume power. It has nothing to do with malfeasance or crimes. Here, you can only take a prez down by impeachment, which can only happen on a finding of high crimes and misdemeanors.

The govt in England is, and always has been, much more authoritarian than ours has ever been. The govt censors the press regularly and always has. Not so here. Their democracy got going as a way to protect the rights of the propertied classes from the whims of kings; ours got going as a way to protect the rights of everybody without regard to class or property ownership.

The British (John Locke) did coin the whole idea of natural rights, but their govt was already centuries old by then and they don't respect individual rights to anything like the degree we do. Our govt started from that point (of natural rights) and made the rights to life, liberty and property the central thesis of society and govt.

America's democracy is unique in the world. Others have copied our Constitution almost word-for-word, but then didn't practice what the Constitution said. Sadly, we started out very much concerned about the Constitutionality of govt actions and have devolved toward the same yawn that all other govts in history have shown toward written documents that tried to limit govt authority.

"Authority," by the way, implies accepted process and procedures that limit power; hence the term "authorized," meaning somebody has legitimate power to act within a given sphere. While "power'" is inherent in "authority," "power" is largely what you get when no one respects those limits.

[Popperite]

One of the favourable sides of the US democracy is that the US could build their system from scratch, without being burdened by past systems, while the British system evolved very slowly. That plus the fact that the UK was never directly influenced by the French Revolution and has kept all kinds of medieval remnants in their system.

[DesertFox]

Shrewd comment, Popperite. We did indeed have the advantage of starting fresh. We didn't actually build from scratch, though, since our system was the end result of centuries of hard British effort. Americans can't appreciate this unless they've spent some time in England or have studied all this. Toqueville, I believe, was the first to note that America was the first place in the world where "work" was something to be proud of. In the Old World people went to some lengths to present themselves as not having to work, as being above all the hardscrabble folks who did. To an extent that is still true.

The French, as usual, completely botched their revolution. I'm afraid that theirs is the pattern our liberals want us to follow.

[Rhino]

Yep, it was on a see-the-universe trip after I retired.
And with one hand tied behind your back.