Starry Night Charts Support Theory Chinese Beat Columbus to America

By SPACE.com Staff. Posted: 04:00 pm ET 03/18/2002
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A Chinese explorer reached America 72 years before Columbus and circled the globe a century before Magellan accomplished the feat, ...according to a review of star positions in the 15th Century along with secret maps and other evidence.

If proved true, the speculative new theory would force a rewriting of textbooks around the world.

British amateur historian Gavin Menzies used 'Starry Night' software, run on his home computer, to generate the locations of Southern Hemisphere stars in the 1420s and help support his suspicions about an epic Chinese voyage by an admiral named Zheng He.

Stars change location over long periods of time, relative to terrestrial vantage points, because of changes in Earth's axis of rotation. Starry Night software, published by SPACE.com, can be set forward or back in time to display the positions of stars and other celestial objects.

Menzies presented his new theory March 15 in a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society in London. It was received courteously but cautiously by historians, who have long thought the Zheng He venture ended near the southern tip of Africa.

Circumnavigating the globe
Sent by the Chinese emperor Zheng, He led more than 100 ships, armed with weapons and loaded with treasure, to the Middle East and Asia.

That much is widely agreed upon.

Menzies thinks the admiral continued on to South America and also explored the Caribbean and the Sea of Cortez, tucked inside Baja California. The journey ran from early 1421 to late 1423.

A navigation expert and retired Royal Navy submarine commander, Menzies says maps used by Columbus in 1492, Ferdinand Megellan in 1519, and other Europeans of the era were based on earlier Chinese charts. Menzies used these documents to recreate the Zheng He voyage, a path along which he then found other clues.

He also presented evidence to the Geographical Society of shipwrecks near Australia and in the Caribbean, as well as porcelain and stone Chinese artifacts found in various locations, as proof, all of which he said supports his view. A full account of his findings, however, is being withheld for the moment. Menzies, 64, and his publicist hope to get a contract for a book, which will divulge the full body of evidence, in the near future.