Calling it macaroni

China beat Columbus to it, perhaps

The Economist: The brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.

It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called “The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft”.

Next week, in Beijing and London, fresh and dramatic evidence is to be revealed to bolster Zheng He's case. It is a copy, made in 1763, of a map, dated 1418, which contains notes that substantially match the descriptions in the book. “It will revolutionise our thinking about 15th-century world history,” says Gunnar Thompson, a student of ancient maps and early explorers.

I read much of 1421: The Year China Discovered the World”, a book written in 2003 by Gavin Menzies that brought to the West's attention the possibility that China may have been first--and by centuries--to many of the 'discoveries' traditionally ascribed to Western explorers.

I didn't find the book believable--the way it was written failed to inspire confidence, instead you felt as if Menzies was simply throwing in anything that supported his preconceived conclusions.

The Economist in the body of the article mentions both Menzies's work and questions about the new map, but concludes:

The consequences of the discovery of this map could be considerable. If it does indeed prove to be the first map of the world, “the history of New World discovery will have to be rewritten,” claims Mr Menzies. How much does this matter? Showing that the world was first explored by Chinese rather than European seamen would be a major piece of historical revisionism. But there is more to history than that. It is no less interesting that the Chinese, having discovered the extent of the world, did not exploit it, politically or commercially. After all, Columbus's discovery of America led to exploitation and then development by Europeans which, 500 years later, made the United States more powerful than China had ever been.

It matters, of course, a lot. China is rising in the world; it's increasingly not easy for Europeans to take for granted their superiority in all things non-American, especially when it comes to the future. After all, nobody is accusing China today of not exploiting their opportunities on the world stage.

I wonder what happens to Europe's fragile psyche once their assumed superiority in even the past is taken away? What if our notions of 'European mastery' are built on a mix of ignorance, and prejudice?

To borrow a favorite line from the movie Spartacus, "We've already been made to look a fool, let's not add the trappings of a clown!" Will Europe's exploratory mastery go the way of its 'discovery' of the printing press--and the noodle? [Did anyone outside of Italians ever really think they were the ones to come up with pasta?!]

Perhaps showing how provincial the British really are, the Economist article includes this paragraph (egads, a world without England!):

The detail on the copy of the map is remarkable. The outlines of Africa, Europe and the Americas are instantly recognisable. It shows the Nile with two sources. The north-west passage appears to be free of ice. But the inaccuracies, also, are glaring. California is shown as an island; the British Isles do not appear at all. The distance from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean is ten times greater than it ought to be. Australia is in the wrong place (though cartographers no longer doubt that Australia and New Zealand were discovered by Chinese seamen centuries before Captain Cook arrived on the scene).

1763 copy of Chinese map dated 1418 via The Economist.