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Thread: Do you believe that Chinese circumnavigated the world in 1421?
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[quote=CHRISWAUGHBJ,39248]It's been fairly well established that thousands of years ago proto-Austronesian people moved southwards from Taiwan through the Phillipines into Malaysia and Indonesia, thence eastwards through Melanesia into Austronesia. The genetic and linguistic relationship between the Maori and the Gaoshan (aboriginal) people of Taiwan has nothing to do with Zheng He nor do they provide any evidence to back up Gavin Menzies' claims. Sure, it's entirely possible for Zheng He and his men to have sailed all around the world, but possibility does not constitute proof, and it's the proof that seems to be lacking. Take this for example: http://mailman.geo.uu.nl/pipermail/maphist/2006-January/006434.html On that page Michael King, a New Zealand historian, is quoted extensively punching huge holes in Gavin Menzies' "proof" that the Chinese discovered New Zealand before Cook (and, one would assume, before Tasman). To sum it up, the shipwrecks Menzies uses as proof are neither old enough to have been a part of Zheng He's fleet nor from China. In fact, one of them was made of totara, a native New Zealand tree. Also Michael King demonstrates that Menzies clearly knows very little about New Zealand- people living in Dusky Sound? No. The one Maori family Cook met there in 1770 had left already when Cook returned in 1773. Torei Palma beach? That's obviously not a New Zealand place name. The quality of Menzies' "scholarship" speaks for itself. Sorry, but I can't believe his claims, not when people who really do know their subject can so easily shoot such huge holes in his book.[/quote]
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