[Colombo / continued]
The Seattle Times (3/10/'02) reported: "Chinese may have beaten Columbus."
Headlines such as this show the total lack of comprehension of historical events people have. What exactly is the claim?
A British historian, Gavien Menzies, claims that a Chinese admiral reached America decades before Columbus. The claim is "based on contemporary European maps and records, Chinese star charts and archeological finds." According to Menzies, Zheng He commanded seven voyages of exploration from 1403 to 1433. Going west, He (before Magellan, obviously) circumnavigated the globe. Mentioned parts of this circumnavigation are East Africa, the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Australia, [The order of the last three sites is puzzling, but one may presume that He went northward along eastern South America, to the Caribbeans, and then backwards, heading west on the Pacific and reaching Australia.]
I am not familiar with the original evidence, but if all this is correct and assuming that the Chinese terms were properly transposed into European terminology [the use of the term "south America" etc.] , we should rejoice in admiration of the Chinese for their discovery ventures of the world. (Many discoveries and inventions are made almost simultaneously and independently of one another. He detracts nothing from Columbus, who detracts nothing from He.) But there is another side to the story.
Menzies contends that "Chinese maps passed to the west through the Portuguese, by way of an Italian traveler, Nicolo` da Conti, who went on some Portuguese voyages. According to Menzies, Columbus, Magellan, and Cook always refer to maps they carried with themselves before setting sail. So, Menzies contends that "somebody must have drawn these maps before the Europeans got there [to America]."
Indeed, says Manzies, there is a 1424 map of Europe and the Atlantic that "shows the islands of Puerto Rico and Guadalupe [Caribbean islands]." Gillard Hutchinson, curator of the History of Cartography at London's National maritime Museum says
she is convinced. The map "shows that people knew that there were islands out there in the Atlantic, but it does not necessarily mean that they can be identified with any island we know of."
Let's take this claim [a new myth] apart bit by bit:
-- Manzies thinks that the maps Columbus and the others had with them had to be based upon the 1424 map, because certainly their maps could not be of their own making, precisely because they could not draw what they had not discovered yet. It never crossed Manzies mind that, for example, Columbus had generic maps based upon Toscanelli's geographical speculations and on Columbus elaborate experience of sea and wind currents in the Atlantic close to Europe (which were of great importance to seamen), and the like. What could the 1424 map offer Columbus or anybody else? A couple of distant islands which even today one could not identify, by their contours of other features, as being Puerto Rico or other Caribbean Island. The drawing must be a far cry from European Portolan maps with highly accurate countours, directions and milage information. A poor map-maker of the flat earth today would show the Azores as being close to the edge of the Ocean, rather than being relatively close to Spain, and if this map-maker had explored the real Caribbean, he would show some of the mainland. (If Columbus had made a drawing of Puerto Rico and called it Japan, we could recognize it as being Puerto Rico rather than Japan.)
-- Even supposing that the 1424 map showed that there were islands far away across the ocean and roughly on the parallel of the Strait of Gibraltar, what could make Manzies think that the map ever reached Columbus (not to mention later people)? Once he assumed that the 1424 map was essential for Columbus trip, he had to assume that he received it, even though there is absolutely NO evidence for this. Let's follow the trail: Chinese voyagers - Nicolo` da Conti - Columbus.
If the Chinese discovered or invented something and made records or maps of it, they would not be passing out the information. (Information about ceramic production, silk production, etc, was always kept under lock and key, and was not even for sale.) Manzies assumes that the Chinese made information easily available. He also assumes that the Portuguese could not have rounded the Cape of Good Hope, unless the Chinese provided information; he does not believe that Europeans are capable of exploratory missions.
Let's look at this mystery man, Nicolo` (or Niccolo`) da Conti, also known as Niccolo` di Conti or Nicolo` de' Conti (1395-1469):
http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/discovery/conti.html
He was a Venetian merchant. He left Venice in 1419, moved to Damascus and learned Arabic. Then he embarked on many journeys in Asia... sailed the Persian Gulf and, along the coast of Iran, he learned Persian [an Indo-European language];...
proceeded to the west coast of India... In 1421 he crossed to Sumatra... sailed to the mouth of the Ganges... passed overland to Burma... sailed to Java... went to north-west Vietnam... sailed back to Quilon... traveled overland via Mt. Sinai to Cairo. He returned to Venice in 1444, where he remained as a respected merchant.
For his deviation from the Christian faith, Pope Eugenius IV gave him the penance of dictating his travels to the papal secretary, the famous humanist Poggio Bracciolini. [Now, that's what I call a useful penance!]
Presumably some of his sea faring was done on Portuguese ships, but there are no clues that he ever received from the Portuguese any information about the westward ocean route to the far East or about any land mass, such as the one the Chinese presumably discovered. (If they did, they kept the secret and apparently established no connections with the Amerindians either at the time of the discovery or later. ) There is absolutely no evidence either that da Conti and Columbus ever heard of each other or communicated between them. Manzies just builds a myth out of nothing.
Some of the biographical references about da Conti are quite interesting. For example:
-- Major. R. H. (Ed.): India in the Fifteenth Century, being a collection of narratives and voyages... preceding the Portiguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope.(1857).
By the way, the Cape of good Hope was sighted by the Portuguese navigator B. Diaz in 1488. If for some weird reason the Chinese had given away navigation maps to the Portuguese around 1424 and da Conti, for more wierd reasons, was given the map before 1444, when he retired, WHAT DID ALL OF THESE VOYAGERS DO UNTIL 1492? Did they wait for Columbus to show up? Well, well...Columbus showed up in Portual and was REJECTED -- never mind him receiving navigations maps which the Portuguese themselves would have used, if they had them.
-- Anonymous (printed by V. F. Alemao): Marco Polo. Ho liuo de Nycoalo veneto... (Lisbon 1502) This was the first Portuguese translation of the travels of Marco Polo, bound together with the Travels of the Venetian Niccolo`. Obviously the Portuguese had an interest in the travels of Marco Polo and of da Conti EVEN after Columbus had crossed the Ocean sea.
Manzies has a brain full of holes.