The BBC had an interesting item last week about this Chinese map that is dated to 1763. It obviously displays knowledge of the Americas, not surprising in a map of that age, but a statement on the map says that it is the direct copy of a map made in 1418. If true, that would buttress claims that Chinese explorers reached America early in the 15th century, bumping Columbus from second (behind the Vikings) to third place in the Post-Pleistocene Discovery of America Sweepstakes. This theory was most recently advanced in Gavin Menzies popular book 1421.I'm sure Menzies is giving people high-fives about this, but there are obvious problems with a second-hand map, even if it is authenticated to 1763. You can't be sure what the 1418 map really looked like - maybe the cartographer only copied the Old World portions from it. But it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I like to keep an open mind about these things. There is no reason that the Chinese couldn't have reached the New World. They were certainly technologically capable of doing it - their ships were at least as good as Columbus's. My first post on this blog discussed some theories of prehistoric contact between Polynesia and California. We do know that Polynesians reached South America in prehistoric times - sweet potates, a South American domesticate, were found throughout Polynesia at European contact. Which means that I erred with my initial PPDA Sweepstakes list, and I must award the Polynesians first place.
But back to the Chinese. We just need some physical proof. Finding the original 1418 map wouldn't hurt, but say some nice Chinese porcelains in a good prehistoric site here in North America would be better.
I mean, we went through all this with the Vikings about 45-50 years ago. Once a Viking settlement was excavated at L'Anse aux Meadows in Canada in the early 1960s, that was settled. The Chinese map story reminded me of the Vinland Map (a portion pictured above) that was a sensation when it came to light in the mid-1960s. Yale University acquired this map and an associated manuscript that were purported to date to the first half of the 15th century. As you can see above, it shows the North American coast as a couple of islands in the Atlantic based on information from the Icelandic sagas.This site collects a lot of information on the Vinland Map and the various controversies that have dogged it. It has variously been trumpeted as a confirming document or denounced as a clever fake. As the Viking settlement in Canada had already been discovered, the stakes were not quite as high for the Vinland Map as they might be. I hadn't heard much about it in recent years, but discovered in researching this that two studies of it in the last five years have given conflicting results. The parchment the map is drawn on was radiocarbon dated and was verified as dating to the 1430s. On the negative side, a chemical study of the ink showed it contained chemicals that weren't used in inks until the 20th century. A modern fake drawn on old salvaged parchment is possible. But then other researchers said they had found the same chemicals in authenticated 15th century documents. It goes on and on. Hopefully this Chinese map won't have as tortured a history.
7 comments:
"...the Post-Pleistocene Discovery of America Sweepstakes."
And here I was thinking I might already be a winner!
You have to buy a ticket!!!
Somewhere once I read an account of artifact innovations and an analysis of how long it took them to travel around the Pacific Rim. I wish I knew where and what that really was. Reid?
My mental picture is humans in small boats paddling themselves along the coastlines from the first moment the small boats were invented. We keep wanting to see such things in terms of today and forget that a) the Arctic Ocean may have been open at various points so that little guys with kayaks could paddle around it, too, and b) the Pacific Ocean is higher than it was so many small communities and campsites are submerged, along with their evidence. Seems like I've seen writing on this, too.
If this turns out to be true, I don't know how you can give any "nation" a prize, since there were probably no nations yet!
Prairie Mary
Mary - you are exactly right. There has been lots of discussion in recent years about how likely it is that at the same time or around the same time that overland migrations occurred through Beringia from Asia to America people were also coming down the coast in boats. It appears that they were technologically capable of doing this. One of the best summaries is "Anatomically Modern Humans, Maritime Voyaging and the Pleistocene Colonization of the Americas" by Jon Erlandson. You are also correct that sea level is higher now and sites that would have been along the coast then are underwater now. One of the oldest sites in this area is a Paleoindian burial, 13,500 years old, on Santa Rosa Island that is 25 mi. offshore now. Even then you would have to have crossed 6-7 mi. of open water to get there. If they had boats capable of that, I'm sure they could have come down the coast. An archaeologist in Florida is finding Paleoindian sites on submerged land-forms 30 ft. under water in the Gulf of Mexico.
I purposefully called it the "Post-Pleistocene" Sweepstakes for the reason you named - there were no countries back then. The first "Siberian-Americans" won the original sweepstakes.
I recently read a piece on the Chinese map, which quoted an expert whose name and affiliation I cannot recall. However, he claimed that this map is an obvious fake, a dead ringer for any European map of the eighteenth century, including the presentation of Baja California as an island.
On a strictly personal perusal, I might be willing to believe the Chinese had reached the west coast of America before Columbus, but . . . the St. Lawrence River as well? It's clearly shown on this map. Not likely!
I find it odd that a Chinese map would not have China at the middle. Maps of the world in the Mercator projection from the United states show that region to the left, but they are the exception. Typicaly, a country will put itself smack up front and center on its won maps. In Australia, they even produce maps where south is up so they don't have to be "Down Under"!
http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/
This also brings up a pertainant point about the map: is it oriented right-side-up with respect to the writing on it? If so, I doubt it's authenticity because many ancient Chinese maps places South at the top.
http://www.chinapage.com/map/ancient/direction.html
RAW
There are a couple of issue regarding this map that suggest it is not copied fully from a map from the 15th century, or even itself from as early as 1763. The map throughout exhibits heavy European influence from different periods.
1. The map may be presented as a double hemisphere - which is not something the Chinese did - but it is actually on Mercator Projection, which would have been impossible before about 1600.
2. The mapping of North America is consistent with European cartography c. 1700 - note California as an Island.
3. The mapping of South America is consistent with early maps of that continent by Munster and others c. 1588.
4. The indent into North America from the Arctic is Lake Conibas, a speculative late which appears on European maps after Mercator to roughly 1600.
5. That blob in the south Pacific is a mismapping of the Solomon Islands following the explorations of Spaniards Quiros and Mendana.
6. The funny shape of Alaska is reminiscent of Muller's Peninsula, c. 1760s.
7. The continent of "Antarctica" at the bottom of the map should be a map of the mythical continent proposed based upon Platonic ideas, Terre Australis - but in this case the representation is highly accurate in terms of proportion, more so than any European map from that the 1700s, so I'm not certain what that it about but it suggests this map may be significantly later than even the suggested date, possibly even early 1800s.
Which begs to the question, what it is it? I am guessing this is an amalgam of Chinese and European cartography. The map of America is most likely copied from an early European source, or several, as it seems to conflate cartography from a number of different periods ranging from about 1588 to 1800 - not uncommon in Asian cartography where western maps were rarely available and then often outdated by hundreds of years and, for all intent and purposes, unreadable.
The cartography in the vicinity of China, including India and Southeast Asia, on the other hand, could have been drawn from Chinese sources as it is consistent with late Ming and Early Qing mappings of this region - so it is possible that this part of the map was based upon those maps.
Africa is derived fully from European material.
Kevin
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