1421: An Introduction

I have terrible news for all of my readers who come for the refreshing lack of discussion of the topic of history. On my way home from work today I stopped and picked up a copy of Gavin Menzies' 1421: The Year China Discovered America. I've been aware of the book and its fairly obvious thesis for a while and haven't really bothered to care. For those who don't know, the author posits that the Chinese discovered America seventy-one years before Columbus. There's really nothing wrong with this proposition. The Chinese of the Ming Dynasty were fine sailors with skills that exceeded any comparable European sailors save the Vikings. We know that Polynesians in outrigger canoes managed to cross and colonize vast swaths of the Pacific, so certainly Chinese sailors could have reached America if they'd put forth the effort. All in all, it's an interesting theory, but one that's not overly attention grabbing unless you're in to that sort of thing. Over the weekend I was watching an old episode of Ancient Discoveries on The History Channel. Ancient Discoveries is a great show. It's like Mythbusters for the history nerd. They find some crazy account of a historical device, then have some historians, military experts, and other helpful people try to figure out if it was possible. So they go out and try to re-create Greek Fire (which they did, it was awesome. Greek Fire was one of those, "We'll never know how they did it, ah, well," things, too) or use vinegar and fire to try to destroy rocks to prove whether or not Hannibal's engineers were able to cut a path down a sheer rock face over the course of a few days (also totally awesome). Most of the time they find out that ancient people were totally ingenious and that the things historians claimed happened were possible. Then I saw an episode on Chinese super ships. For the most part it was fascinating. The Chinese had a unique set of problems related to control of inland waterways and may well have solved their unique problems with truly bizarre ships that were basically floating citadels. It was all very credulous. Until they brought in Gavin Menzies, his 1421 theory, and Chinese junks the size of cruise liners. I then began to learn that the 1421 theory went far, far beyond showing up and planting a flag. Supporters of the theory spoke breathlessly about how if they could prove it, the discovery that did it would turn history on its head. I'm also not entirely certain, but I think that someone tried to make the claim that the colonization of America by ancient people via the Bering Strait land bridge was preposterous and it made a hell of a lot more sense to say the Chinese colonized America. By boat, apparently. A few decades before Columbus showed up. To their credit, the Ancient Discoveries people brought in a real expert. They interviewed Dr. Stephen Davies, the Director of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. Davies pointed out interesting things, like the fact that modern Pacific Ocean currents and weather patterns would actually have to have been moving in exactly the opposite direction in the 1400s for the 1421 theory to hold. Like any good historian, however, he allowed that the view we have of history is ever-changing. Those who wish to change the picture, however, need actual evidence, not flights of fantasy and mostly fictional accounts. And when I say "flights of fantasy," I mean it. The tail end of the episode was dedicated to the search for a 15th Century Chinese shipwreck in Oregon. The lead guy in the field team showed up at a likely spot (for the life of me I can't figure out why that spot was regarded as likely) and started walking around with divining rods while a lackey followed him and planted red flags every couple of feet. They then pulled out some equipment and drilled for a core sample forty feet down. They were looking for wood. You know, from a Chinese junk. Forty feet below an Oregon sand dune. That they'd been exploring with divining rods and, apparently, dead reckoning. This is not how history is done. It's not how archaeology is done, either. Gavin Menzies and his people apparently regard themselves as latter-day Heinrich Schliemanns. For those who don't know, ol' Heinrich was an amateur historian and archaeologist from the 1800s who had this crazy idea that the Troy of the Illiad was real. So he followed clues in Homer's work and, lo and behold, found Troy. Emboldened by this discovery, he went over to Greece and found Mycenae, too. Nobody believed him until he did it. He left a crazy man and came back a legend. The guy on the dune in Oregon left a crazy man and went back home one, too. They found some bits of wood forty feet down in that dune. There wasn't enough to be tested in a lab. So what did they do? Two other guys got out the divining rods, walked around, and confirmed that, yup, the first guy got it right. So they must have just had the misfortune to drill in to a really thin part of the decking of the Chinese ship that was most assuredly buried down there. Did I mention that this isn't how history or archaeology is done? Either way, when you're basically inventing your location out of thin air and wishful thinking because the evidence you have on hand is less conclusive than Homer's Illiad, you're doing something terribly, terribly wrong. Oh, Dr. Davies mentioned, too, that there are probably lots of wrecked Chinese junks littering the west coast of the United States. There was a pretty big wave of Chinese immigration to the United States in the 19th Century, you see. So even if they had found a junk in that dune, they would have had the burden of proof on them to make sure it didn't have a much more mundane and recent explanation. Either way, this combination of bad history, bad archaeology, relentless self-aggrandizement, and the distinct odor of bat-shit crazy True Believers piqued my curiosity. I figured I'd pick up 1421, leaf through it, and compare it to, shall we say, respectable history. I think I'll make a series of it, something like Left Behind Fridays and not like my series on Wild at Heart. I'm thinking I'll actually pick a day and do a weekly post, but probably not on Fridays... History is, by its very nature, chronological. I'm going to actually go through 1421. I haven't read the book myself yet, so it will mostly be first impressions. And, I hope, snark. Hang on and enjoy the ride. And try to get over your shock that there's actual historical content here at Accidental Historian...