Did Chinese Explore the World First?
by Charles Coughlin

A recent article claimed that the discovery of the New World and the first circumnavigation of the world was not done by Columbus and Magellan, but by a Chinese navigator, Zheng He (also Cheng Ho). The reason for this claim is a Chinese map that reportedly dates back to 1418 showing a fairly accurate map of the world. A gigantic wooden rudder was found in a Chinese port which supports a claim that the Chinese built giant wooden ships as much as 500 feet long and one island off Africa has a population with Chinese artifacts and the population itself appears to have mixed-Oriental ancestry.
One website notes “In 1999, New York Times journalist Nicholas D. Kristof reported a surprising encounter on a tiny African island called Pate, just off the coast of Kenya. Here, in a village of stone huts set amongst dense mangrove trees, Kristof met a number of elderly men who told him that they were descendants of Chinese sailors, shipwrecked on Pate many centuries ago. Their ancestors had traded with the local Africans, who had given them giraffes to take back to China; then their boat was driven onto the nearby reef. Kristof noted many clues that seemed to confirm the islanders’ tale, including their vaguely Asian appearance and the presence of antique porcelain heirlooms in their homes. If Kristof’s supposition is correct, then this remote African outpost retains an echo of one of history’s most astonishing episodes of maritime exploration.” (more…)














