In the early 1990s, former British Naval Officer and Commander of HMS Rorqual Gavin Menzies came across a map in the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota which aroused his curiosity. but Columbus wasn’t the only one who sailed to the East away from the sun, 1421- THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED the WORLD is destined to become a classic work of historical detection.In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Our knowledge of world exploration as it has been commonly accepted for centuries must now be revised. It brings to light the artefacts and inscribed standing stones left behind by the emperor's fleet,the evidence of sunken junks along its route and the ornate votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, in thanks to Shao Lin, Goddess of the sea.1421 is the story of a remarkable journey of discovery that rewrites our understanding of history. Now, in a fascinating historical detective story, he shares the remarkable account of his discoveries and the incontrovertible evidence to support them, bringing together a compelling narrative, ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts by Chinese explorers and the later European navigators. They has also discovered Antarctica, reached Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook and solved the problem of longitude three hundred years before the Europeans.Gavin Menzies has spent fifteen years tracing the astonishing voyages of the Chinese fleet.
Lost was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. The great ships rotted at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Their journey would last over two years and circle the entire globe.When they returned Zhu Di had fallen from power and China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.
The ships, 500 foot long junks made from the finest teak and mahogany, were led by Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. On 8 February 1421 the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. Print 1421: The Year China Discovered the World
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