[link|http://www.lauralee.com/index.cgi?pid=4041|http://www.lauralee....ndex.cgi?pid=4041]

EXTRACT
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Description
On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was "to proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.

When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. Also concealed was how the Chinese colonized America before the Europeans and transplanted in America and other countries the principal economic crops that have fed and clothed the world.

Unveiling incontrovertible evidence of these astonishing voyages, 1421 rewrites our understanding of history. Our knowledge of world exploration as it has been commonly accepted for centuries must now be reconceived due to this landmark work of historical investigation.
Listen to interview of Gavin Menzies by Laura Lee: 1421 Chinese Expedition to America

About the Author
Gavin Menzies was born in 1937 and lived in China for two years before the Second World War. He joined the Royal Navy in 1953 and served in submarines from 1959 to 1970. As a junior officer he sailed the world in the wake of Columbus, Dias, Cabral and Vasco da Gama. When in command of HMS Rorqual (1968-1970), he sailed the routes pioneered by Magellan and Captain Cook. Since leaving the Royal Navy, he has returned to China and the Far East many times, and in the course of researching 1421 he has visited 120 countries, over 900 museums and libraries and every major sea port of the late Middle Ages.

Gavin Menzies is married with two daughters and lives in North London.
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Editorial (Doug Marker)
I read this book and found it highly interesting. Some people have attacked the Author as
fanciful while others have applauded his inquiring mind and the effort and depth of thinking
he put in to reach his controversial theories. I rate him as a very good amateur unlike the
infamous waffler (Von Danekin) who wrote "Chariots of the Gods" etc: (an Aliens did it all
'fairy story'). Menzies attempts to use his not to be dismissed navigational experise to
explain the pre-columban maps of the world from the perspective of a navigator and the
thinking of the persons who drew them. He makes allowance for the fact that ships in that
era could only sail before the wind and not into it. This meant they sailed in one direction
with one set of winds, arrived, waited for the period when the winds changed, then sailed
back before the wind.


In a nutshell the book began when Gavin Menzies visited China & while on the great wall
asked when it had been completed. He was told it had been extended to its greatest in 1421.
While visiting the Ming Tombs he asked when they were built - completed in 1421 !
While visiting the Forbidden city he asked when it was built - completed in 1421 !
When later reading about some of the above he discovered that China had sent four massive
fleets around the world on their most ambitious sailing to date, in - you guessed it 1421.


My own assesment of the book is - it is a facinating read, I believe I can see some flaws in
parts of what he concludes, but because it would be clearly impossible for him to get everything
just right I don't hold this against him. The overwhelming nature of his finds raise so many
possibilities that I believe he will be remembered long and well for his efforts, like Thor
Heyerdal (who had great theories but eventually proved some of them wrong by going and trying
to replicate the theory (such as the Kon-tiki expedition)) and unlike Von Danekin who is mostly
remembered as a pipe-smoking arm-chair researcher (charlatan) who blithely ignored (or was the
ignorat of) the known facts about his topics.

The bottom line is, the book could be well on target & thus change history as we know it.

It is the sort of book that will sort out those people with open & inquiring minds & many
with distinctly closed ones.



Doug Marker

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[link|http://www.1421.tv|http://www.1421.tv] The official Gavin Menzies 1421 Web site

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[link|http://www.hackwriters.com/China1421.htm|http://www.hackwriters.com/China1421.htm] Independant Review
EXTRACT
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If someone told you that everything you learned about in history, about who discovered the world,
was wrong and could prove it, would you be upset?
Columbus a fraud? Batholomew Dias and Vasco De Gama upstarts. Magellan just following a map,
Australia known and explored centuries before Captain Cook. Suppose I tell you that there was a
map of the world drawn in 1423 and it shows ALL the key points and landmarks and currents of the
entire globe. It discusses longitude and latitude, has the key navigational points of the polar
starts both North and South. Not only had someone been there before the Portuguese and English
but they had tried to settle and breed plants and start a network of key ports and settlements
that, if successful would have meant that this country would have controlled the world before
Columbus was born. Not with force, but under Confucian law and with a fantastic tribute system
that de facto acknowledged that China was the centre of the world and the true ruler of all that
was in it. Yes China.
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[link|http://edition.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/01/13/1421/|http://edition.cnn.c...books/01/13/1421/] CNN review

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Did the Chinese discover America?
New book asserts a different version of history
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[link|http://books.historywiz.org/moreinfo/1421.htm|http://books.history...moreinfo/1421.htm] Book reviews
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UPI
is likely to be the most fascinating read of 2003.

Daily News
Captivating...a historical detective story...that adds to our knowledge of the world, past and present.

Toronto Globe and Mail
Menzies' enthusiasm is infectious and his energy boundless. He has raised important questions and marshaled some fascinating information.

Diane Rehm, The Diane Rehm Show
What you've done, brilliantly, is to raise many questions that people are debating.

Christian Science Monitor
No matter what you think of Menzies's theories, his enthusiasm is infectious.

New York Times Magazine
makes history sound like pure fun...a seductive read.
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I recall reading lots of inventions claimed by Soviets in the 100s & 1900s - one was that they flew before the Wright Brothers. (I guess Stalin destroyed all the records :-)

Cheers

Doug