by Ray Burke

Created on: April 29, 2009

Did the Chinese discover the world in 1421?

Retired Royal Navy submarine Commanding Officer, Gavin Menzies, wrote a remarkable book called: "1421 The Year China Discovered the World" (2002) in which he theorised that the Chinese sailed, discovered, and mapped much of the unknown world in 1421, seventy years before Columbus discovered the Americas. In their huge 480 foot-long ships accompanied by an armada of hundreds of merchant junks and other warships, the Chinese voyages around the world, including Africa, North and South America, Australia and Antarctica, lasted two years. The Chinese fleet was very accomplished, far more than any European navy, and as Menzies contended throughout the book were far more adept at reckoning longitude and latitude. In fact, it was how Australia and Antarctica were discovered three centuries before Cook even sailed to the south Atlantic.

Among others, Menzies recounted the voyage of one Admiral Hong Bao who was tasked with sailing to the South Pole in order to fix the positions of southerly stars for aid in navigation maps and charts. Hong Bao may have sailed as far as Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula in 1422 (Menzies 2002: 141-2). In apparent support of Menzies' theory are the Falkland Islands, which may hold two important clues to possible Chinese voyages. There are two supposed on-going investigations, one searching the ground on Mount Adams for possible Chinese carved stones which may have been used to sight Canopus for navigation purposes (Menzies 2002: 128-9) and secondly investigations into the warrah, a thought-to-be indigenous, but now extinct fox or wolf-like animal whose origins are disputed. While DNA tests are carried out to resolve its ancestry, there are also tests being sought to argue for the warrah being descended from Chinese dogs left behind by Hong Bao's sailors (Whipple 2003: 80-1; Menzies 2002: 135). This research may take some time, considering that much doubt has been cast upon the whole theory by academics.

Hong Bao may have also discovered and sailed through Cape Virgines and the Magellan Strait, and down the west coast of Tierra del Fuego (Menzies 2002: 136-7). Menzies also estimates that after the trip down Tierra del Fuego, a voyage of fourteen days depending on wind and current speeds would have led him to the South Shetland Islands, which he would have charted (Menzies 2002: 144-5). Admiral Hong Bao, while charting the position of the South Pole in 1422, could have beaten the first Europeans

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