China actually discovered America
Of course the Chinese would claim that they discovered all parts of the world before the rest of us worms crawled out of caves and blinked at the sun, but the BBC reports a newly discovered map that purports to show America. The map, made in 1763 by Mo Yi Tong, claims to be a copy of a 1418 map. However, take a look at it:
Comparing this with another 15th century world map, drawn by 15th-century Italian mathematician Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli, we see that not only does the Chinese map include a fairly accurate rendition of the new world, but also a much higher level of precision in the old:
I don’t believe that that a map in 1418 could be so well drawn–clearly Mo Yi Tong took the 15th century map’s style, and added his own cartographic embellishments. The BBC comes a similar conclusion:
Even if it does prove to have been drawn in 1763, sceptics will point out that we still only have the mapmaker’s word that he copied if from a 1418 map, rather than from a more recent one. But for some, this would still not make the Chinese admiral the first modern discoverer of the Americas, as they believe that Viking Leif Eriksson sailed to north America in the year 1000.
Hurray for my ancestors, the noble Vikings!!
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 14th, 2006 at 12:50 am and is tagged with italian mathematician, accurate rendition, leif eriksson, mapmaker, sceptics, 15th century, world map, hurray, cartographic, del pozzo, discoverer, 1418 map, vikings, caves, admiral, tong, ancestors, worms, bbc, north america. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
2 Responses to 'China actually discovered America'
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on January 25th, 2006 at 3:18 am
It’s amazing how easily people are programmed into believing the Chinese, Columbus, or Leif Erikson discovered America as if nobody was already living there, as if nobody had ALREADY discovered it.
It would be more appropriate just to say they found out about America.
Think about it, for thousands of years people were already living in the Americas before any Europeans arrived there. Imagine how absurd it would sound if an Aztec rowed his boat up the Thames River and claimed, “Look at me! I’ve discovered England!” or Europe or whatever.
Columbus was originally looking for a route to India and he never found it.
He simply ran into a place he didn’t know existed and then took credit for discovering it (in his ethnocentric kind of way).
on August 8th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
The discovbery of America cannot be claimed by anyboddy even Amerigo Vaspuci which the continent was named after , Columbus Ignorant make him to loose the credit given to Vaaspuci yet they all agreed that American has been in exisitence before they got thier they only exposed her and subject her to colonisation by the European Powers