1421 THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED AMERICA

"Exhaustively researched ....an intriguing and highly persuasive thesis told with passion and energy...informed by firsthand knowledge of the world's oceans, currents and trade winds....." In 1542 the Venetian explorer Giovanni de Verrazano sailed northwards from Virginia to the eastern tip of Nova Scotia, commissioned by Francis I of France to find a sweaty to the Pacific and the Spice Islands. On what is now Rhode Island, he noticed local people who were 'the color of brass, some of them incline more to whiteness: others are of yellow color, of comely visage, with long and black hair.' The women wore dresses rather than furs. These people, he was convinced, came from neither North America nor Europe, but from a wholly different civilization.... Received wisdom about the exploration of the world, however, holds that it was Europeans who discoed North and South America, Australia, the Pacific Islands and the poles. If that was the case, then in 1542 there should certainly have been no one but American Indians and Europeans on Rhode Island. Yet if there are people from another culture in America at that time, who were they and where did they come from? The answer, according to Gavin Menzies's book 1421, is that they were Chinese, descendants of sailors and their concubines who had been part of one of the great treasure fleets that sailed the worlds oceans between 1421 and 1423. And not only did they end up on both coasts of America, but almost everywhere where Europeans laid claims to pioneer status: Australia, New Zealand, and Central America."