by Padre Art

Created on: January 25, 2009

In the year 1405 AD, Chinese emperor Zhu Di ordered a fleet of 100 ships to sail to the ends of the earth in what was the first effort at globalization. There is evidence that the Chinese oceanic voyages in 1421, which were the sixth of what was to be a total of seven voyages, actually circumnavigated the globe.

The plans for these explorations that the Admiral Zheng He (1371-1435) was to command were laid generations before he was born. The lands near the shipyards at Nanjing were planted with forests of trees to supply the builders of huge junks, some 400-600 feet long and 190 feet wide, along with a multitude of smaller vessels. Each consecutive voyage contained a larger number of ships, finally totaling 1600 and carrying almost 30,000 people.

History records the first five of these seven voyages quite well, even though they consist of amazing feats of navigation for the age. Over 100 years before the European "discoverers" found the lands and sea routes that these Arab and Chinese explorers had already surveyed and mapped.

The Chinese had been welcoming Arab immigrants and visitors since the Han dynasty (220 BC - 220 AD), valuing their mathematical, astronomical and navigational skills. Admiral Zheng He was a Chinese Muslim and every ship of the fleet had Persian speaking officers on board as it was the universal language of the times.

The Arabs had been sailing and charting the seas from the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean east to China, Java and the islands around the north coast of Australia, trading in commercial goods and knowledge. Existing maps such as the Java sea chart created by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizimi c.820 AD that shows the tip of Cape York Peninsula as well as the shape of the Carpentaria Gulf and the map charted by Abu Al-Farisi Ishtahari c.934 AD that clearly shows the trade routes from south China to Borneo, Timor and the northern Australian coastline give clear evidence that these were established commercial sea routes.

These maps were verified in 1998 by Tilman Walterfang when he discovered the wreck of an Arab dhow near Buton Island off the south east coast of Sulawesi. The remains of this ship contained 60,000 pieces of pottery from the Tang dynasty (618-907) that had been made in China specifically for export. This evidence backs up the finds on the east coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria of quantities of pottery shards dating from the Han dynasty (220 BC - 220AD) to the early Ming dynasty (1368-1433).

The first three of the seven

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>