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International: From 12/13 October 2005
Re: Gavin
Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World. London,
Bantam Books, 2002. Billed as follows in promotional literature: “The
book that's rewriting history! - The Chinese were the first to
discover America, 70 years before Columbus - The Chinese discovered
Australia, 350 years before Captain Cook - The Chinese reached the
so-called Magellan Straits 60 years before Magellan was even born.
The Chinese discovered the vital secret of Longitude 300 years before
Harrison did in England.”
For the 1421 website, go
to: http://www.1421.tv/
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NB: In September 2005 is published a new book by a technology writer: Anatole Andro, The 1421 Heresy: An Investigation into the Ming Maritime Survey of the World. Authorhouse, September 2005. English language, ISBN 140873490. Check website: www.1421heresy.com/
LOST WORLDS has lately (mid-October 2005) been receiving much e-mail critical of Menzies' book, 1421. So much, that the time has come to ask: should 1421 be consigned to the fiction shelves? If so, who should be doing the re-consigning? Readers? Librarians? Webmasters in cyberspace? Makers of TV documentaries? Or, the publishers of 1421?
For a variety of anti-Menzies information, visit a website for scholars, being the H-Asia We Homepage, a Net-list set-up, at: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
An overview of the controversy about 1421 is available at: http://hnn.us/articles/18698.html
See also for critique of the controversy: http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/11/2005/01/
On riddle of a lost Chinese city on the American Atlantic Coast (dated 24 Feb 2005) see: http://www.asianpacificpost.com/news/article/332.html
Preamble: To whom it may concern: I have just
submitted the following complaint against Transworld Publishers
to http://www.consumercomplaints.org.uk/complaintmap.asp
The
complaint derives from Transworld publishing and advertising
1421 as a history book, which I believe is a violation of the
British Trade Descriptions Act of 1968.
Best wishes,
Geoff Wade
Follows, the substance of a complaint from Dr. Geoff Wade, Singapore, October 2005 (lodged with this website on 12/13-10-2005 - Ed)
I [Geoff Wade] have purchased a copy of
Gavin Menzies' book, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World,
published by Transworld on the basis that it was classified as
"History" in their catalogue. A detailed reading of the
text revealed that the work is a fairtytale and fiction of the worst
kind. I detail some of the outrageous fiction perpetrated within the
volume:
Claims by Mr. Menzies followed by facts...
1. Claim: Four eunuch admirals - Hong Bao, Zhou Man, Zhou Wen and Yang Qing - led fleets to the Americas, Australia, Greenland and the Antarctic during voyages between 1421 and 1423.
Fact: There are no Chinese or other texts which suggest in any way that these four eunuchs, or any other Ming commanders, traveled anywhere at all beyond Asia, the Middle East and the East coast of Africa. All other voyages derive solely from Mr. Menzies' imagination. Further, the currents, winds and dates Menzies cites in support would not have carried the ships anywhere near where he claims. In short, there is no archaeological, textual or archival material to support the Menzies thesis as set down in 1421. In this book Menzies intentionally distorts known materials and deliberately alters known facts in order to support his thesis.
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2. Claim: Sailors and concubines from these fleets settled in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and islands across the Pacific. In evidence, he cites studies of "recent" inflow of "Chinese genes" and "East Asian DNA" into the Americas.
Fact: There is no evidence of Ming settlement sites in, or even Ming knowledge, of these places until the arrival of the Jesuits in China in the 16th century. The genetic evidence on which Menzies relies is provided by a company whose genetic tests have been labelled a "scam" by Stephen O'Brien, the US National Cancer Institute's laboratory chief.
3. Claim: There exists a range of wrecks of the ships from these voyages spread around the world, and these are proof of the voyages claimed by Menzies.
Fact: Not one wreck which can be linked with the eunuch voyages in the first 30 years of the 15th century (or indeed any Chinese wreck) has been identified outside of the Asian region.
4. Claim: The Ming voyagers built celestial observation platforms at 24 places across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Menzies names and provides coordinates for these platforms. (1421, p. 416/17, 457)
Fact: There is no textual or archaeological evidence to even begin to suggest that the Ming voyagers built observation platforms anywhere in the world. Again, their existence derives only from the fertile imagination of Mr. Menzies.
5. Claim: The Ming armadas left a range of other built structures around the world, particularly in Australasia and the Americas, including the Newport Round Tower, the Gympie pyramid and other structures and mines. They also left a ship's slipway made of stones on the Bimini islands in the Caribbean.
Fact: Not one of the structures Mr. Menzies cites has been shown to have any links with China. The Bimini "slipway", which is in any case parallel to the shore, has been shown to be a completely natural formation.
6. Claim: The Chinese "were aware that the earth was a globe and had divided it into 365 and a quarter degrees (the number of days in the year) of latitude and longitude." (1421, p. 449)
Fact: There is no evidence that during the early Ming [period], the Chinese had any knowledge of the earth as a globe and certainly none that they were aware of latitude and longitude.
7. Claim: The Ming voyagers surveyed South America, Antarctica, North America and the Atlantic as well as Australasia. "The whole world was accurately charted by 1428." (1421, p. 411)
Fact: There is no text or other evidence which suggests that the Ming voyagers went anywhere near these places and no Chinese maps which indicate any surveying of these places. Further, there are no contemporary Ming artifacts found in any of these regions.
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8. Claim: A range of European maps show anomalies which can only be explained by accepting the Chinese voyages proposed by Mr. Menzies as having taken place.
Fact: The cartographic anomalies which Mr. Menzies points to, real or imagined, can be explained through many avenues, the most likely being that Arab navigators, who had been traveling these waters for 600 years before the Chinese, had produced maps of areas they traveled to.
9. Claim: Mr. Menzies noted that the Venetian Niccolo da Conti was the crucial and only link between Chinese and European cartographers. Menzies claims that he participated in the voyages over several years and carried Chinese maps back to Europe. He notes that Da Conti "had spent years aboard a junk of the treasure fleet" and that "Chinese maps passed from Da Conti to Fra Mauro, and from him to Dom Pedro of Portugal and Prince Henry the Navigator". (1421, pp. 369, 84-87, 92-93).
Fact: Da Conti, who left us detailed accounts of his travels, recounts neither meeting any Ming envoy in Calicut, nor traveling on any Chinese ship for even a day, nor seeing or receiving any Chinese maps showing a new world. The utter and complete contempt for truth with which Menzies depicts these events is disheartening.
10. Claim: Mr. Menzies claims that a number of mylodons (a type of giant sloth) had been taken from South America to New Zealand and China by the Ming ships.
Fact: All available evidence suggests that the Mylodon has been extinct for several thousand years, which militates somewhat against the likely veracity of Mr. Menzies claims in this respect. But such sloppy research is found throughout the volume. He notes, for example, rubber trees in Malacca 450 years before they had been introduced from South America by the British etc etc, ad nauseum.
In short, representing this work as history is a flagrant violation of the [UK] Trade Descriptions Act of 1968 which makes it an offence both to apply a false description to any goods and to supply or offer to supply any goods which have a false trade description applied.
To be an offence the Act notes that the indication must be false to a material degree. To represent fiction as history does indeed meet this criterion.
The role of the Local Trading Standards authorities is to enforce the provisions of this Act and they are able to take whatever steps they consider necessary to prevent others from being deceived. I trust that appropriate action will be taken in this case.
If you require further information, please do not hesitate to contact me [Geoff Wade in Singapore].
With best wishes,
Geoff Wade
NB: Dr. Geoff Wade is a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, NUS. He previously co-ordinated the China-ASEAN Project in the Centre of Asian Studies at University of Hong Kong. He is a historian with interests in China-Southeast Asian historical interactions and comparative historiography - Ed.
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See also: Dennis De Witt, 'Cheng Ho and the Ming Treasure Fleets', Dutch Courier, February 2003., page 20 and 29. (The author is from Malacca, of Dutch descent, and maintains interest in the Dutch influence in Malaysia. Check a Dutch Descendants website: http://www.geocities.com/dutchdescendants/ (For a non-detailed debunking of Menzies' 1421 by an Australian, see article, '1421: The Year China Didn't Discover Terribly Much', by Peter Barrett, (vice-president of Canberra Skeptics), The Skeptic, Vol. 25, No. 3, Spring 2005., pp. 48-51. - An Australian magazine) For wider information on the history of the use of the Indian Ocean more so by Islamic mariners in the periods treated in 1421, see the lavishly-illustrated cyber-magazine presentation from Saudi-Aramco World (issue in print July-August 2005) at: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/
The Note below is from the Editor of Lost Worlds The Website, Dan Byrnes, who in another life has long-term interests in the maritime history of the British Empire, generally, and more especially, regarding Australia.
Of course, it can't be proved, but when I first read Gavin Menzies' book, 1421, I put it down thinking, “What a marvellous sci-fi tale, and what an unusual setting, early Ming dynasty!” Whatever, I found it an enjoyable, stimulating read, quite imaginative, and thought it would make a marvellous movie, perhaps of the ilk of Dune, by Frank Herbert, which is a marvellous sci-fi novel, but a horrible dog of a movie. But is 1421 proper history? I really didn't think so! Slowly, a decision gells...
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This website, Lost Worlds, maintains an editorial policy as follows - "Lost Worlds has the ambition of enhancing the influence of the New Age Movement through an appreciation of historical accuracy." At times, my associates and I pursue this policy with tongues firmly in cheeks. In fact, we are sceptics with a due sense of mystery-about-the-universe and about life-in-general. We try to report in a disinterested way. We do, however, happen to take science and historical accuracy very seriously, versus wishful thinking, magical thinking and blind faith, more so due to the fascinating scenarios and arguments which can arise when historical accuracy finds itself markedly improved – which happens from time to time. The issues arising can be quite absorbing. (That is, and very often, and just for fun, we are sceptical about scepticism... and we admit that we happen to find the maths of fractals rather fascinating. We also find that human history is replete with moral, intellectual and psychological fractals, though we don't pretend to understand this well, either.)
But in reporting this fracas re 1421, this website now puts aside its usual disinterested attitudes about issues, our attitude current since 1998, and we become involved. This is because we take these particular issues seriously – what in history is fact versus what is fiction?
After I first read 1421, I carefully went through it again and made notes which soon appeared on timeline pages of this website by way of advertising what I thought one day might become an entertaining debate. Before upload, I edited these notes severely, due to respect for Menzies' ordinary rights in terms of ordinary copyright law.
About chronology: The notes from 1421 I did NOT put on the Net concerned the following: the activities of naval fleets can be illuminated well, and easily enough, if historians go through the ships' logs and compare and contrast the experience of each ship. This could be done, but has still not been done, with the case of the First Fleet to Australia, 1786-1789. As far as I know, for any report on just when the First Fleet ships arrived home to British ports, Australians had to wait till around 1989 for the noted Australian researcher on the First Fleet, Mollie Gillen, to report on such matters. This question had interested me – when did the First Fleet ships arrive home? - and I wrote to Gillen on such matters. So my views on such research matters here in maritime history comes from real-and-recent experience on a relatively recent historical scenario. If interested, see: http://www.danbyrnes.com.au/blackheath/)
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It is rare for historians to compile a holistic view of a fleet's activity, even a wartime fleet, in order to find out anything. (If you doubt this, try to find a useful report, in English, translated from Spanish historians, of the English repulse of what the English usually regard as the problem of The Spanish Armada!)
There are no Chinese ships' logs for Gavin Menzies to consult, as far as we are aware. Menzies with 1421 I feel has stepped unwittingly here into a historian's trap – what is the best methodology for treating the experience of an entire fleet? As far as I know, the activities of Nelson's war fleet which won the Battle of Trafalgar was not compiled from the various ship's logs till about 1922 – which means, that despite British patriotism for decades about winning the Battle of Trafalgar, no Britisher actually knew just how the French lost, or how Nelson won, in terms of maritime battle tactics. Conclusion? Across the Twentieth Century, even experienced university historians can remain inexperienced at overviewing the activities of entire fleets of ships!
I also happen to know, as a maritime historian, that British historians have still not written an acceptable history of Britain's Russia fleet, which used in the heydays of sailing ships, say 1800 or so, to be about 120 ships per year. (That by 2000 or so, Britain's Russia fleet still remains unexamined by British historians is, on reflection, quite remarkable! Quite remiss, too! Where did I gain this impression? By visiting the archives of the Port of London Authority in mid-1989! But that is quite another story!)
So it seems here that despite his “naval experience” as a British submariner, this had not crossed Menzies' mind as he wrote 1421, about the methodological problems of the historical logging of naval (full-fleet) activity. Curious here, I re-chronologised Menzies' claims about his Chinese mariners' progress by way of re-chronologising his comparative information on where the ships of each Chinese squadron would be, by date, at any one time. That is, if one squadron is busy coasting parts of Antarctica, where, day-by-day, is his Chinese squadron which rounded Africa and allegedly went into the Atlantic? Where is his Chinese squadron which is allegedly criss-crossing or current-hopping the Pacific? In fact, I never got back to this set of notes, but I shall go through them again soon to see what I made of Menzies' information at that time. (If any netsurfer reads this and is interested in the exercise, I'll do this even more quickly). Suffice to say, this re-chronologising exercise, which became rather detailed, made me even more sceptical about Menzies' book. I distracted myself by reading Louise Levathes' worthwhile book on the Chinese voyages about the 1420s.
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Time went on and I happened in early 2005 to be asked by New Dawn magazine in Australia to write an article on Menzies' claim in 1421 vis-a-vis the mystery of The Mahogany Ship at Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia. (In October 2005 I find that this article has been lifted in entirety from New Dawn's website, and with proper attribution, though with no contact with myself as writer, by an African news digest-type website which appears, on examination, to actually emanate from Germany! If not England (?). See: http://www.mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=243516)
Menzies feels the Mahogany Ship is a Chinese junk, circa 1421-1422, but Menzies did not show at the September 2005 symposium held in Warrnambool on this very mystery, claiming ill-health. Generally, Menzies via his website seems to feel that, long-term, Australians have confronted his claims in 1421 with “a screen of silence”. (Read: Australians simply don't believe it. I happen to know that New Zealanders view Menzies' claims about “Chinese in NZ” in a very livid way, they are much more negative to Menzies' book than Australians are.)
I am entirely unconvinced that The Mahogany Ship of Warrnambool might have been be a Chinese junk. If there is no Chinese connection at Warrnambool, what happens to other aspects of Menzies theory?
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Researching for this article, I e-mailed Menzies' website, and got a screen of silence as response. Delving deeper, I began to wonder especially about Menzies' claims that Chinese mariners had circumnavigated Papua-New Guinea, as one of his maps indicates. My 500 words on this were edited out of the article which appeared in New Dawn, as too complex for the average reader, so I have already put that version of the article on the Net on another website. I find no reason at all to believe, as Menzies suggests, that Chinese mariners ever circumnavigated New Guinea! If they did, the information never came to the attention of any European navigator at all. Since most people regard New Guinea as a trifling geographic prize, it might become very ironic, if Menzies' claims about Chinese interest in New Guinea/Australia may one day lead to the downfall of Menzies' theory (?). Which is all it is; a theory, yet unproven.
In the meantime, I became familiar with the Web material from Menzies' critics on the Net, particularly Hartz and Da Silva, who as North Americans try to comprehensively debunk Menzies' claims concerning North America – viz: Menzies' claims re the achievements or otherwise of Columbus.
My own view is that of an Australasian. As I've worked on Lost Worlds website since 1997 - eight years now - I've grown very annoyed about Northern Hemispherean writers considering their Northern Hemispherean readership, dreaming up scenarios for some theory they have, and invoking non-factual views on Australasian historical scenarios. All these writers are doing is exploiting the ignorance of their readerships. The case has arisen in the USA of a silly-minded woman writing New Age nonsense about the beliefs of Australian Aboriginals of pre-contact and post-contact times. Publicity on this ludicrous situation ended somewhat after official bodies for Australian Aboriginals made official complaints (to the USA, as best they could) about the absurd ideas publicized via this book.
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(In one major case, a New York writer went to the trouble of mailing me his latest book on matters global to Lost Worlds for review, whereupon I critted the book negatively for its views on Australasia, and this website has never heard from that writer since. An added problem, I felt, was that this writer had made remarks I thought unwise about the religion, Islam. Guess whose city was later slammed? 9/11! To quote here from an ancient-but-polite old Chinese curse, we nowadays live “in interesting times”.)
The fact of the matter is that book publishers with large budgets in the Northern Hemisphere have often been regarding Australasian situations as a last and little-known cultural frontier, a free resource, a kind of whoopee-doo tabula rasa, to be mucked-about with, misconstrued, distorted by their writers, for whatever set of reasons. It is now high time that this trend was stopped dead in its tracks. In which case, in the contexts of post-colonial history(s), a variety of South-East Asian people(s) might inevitably become meat in the sandwich of any in-fight between Hemispheres north and south, about history(?) South-East Asia was moderately well-known to navigators long before Cook discovered eastern Australia. As Louise Levathes indicates in her book, When China Ruled The Seas, The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1994), Chinese mariners were comfortably knowledgeable about South-East Asia.
This misuse of Australasian scenarios is why Lost Worlds The Website decides to become involved in the 1421 debate!
Forget the 1421 publicity machine and “North America and Columbus”, if you can. I feel, that Gavin Menzies has been trading on the ignorance of the world not just about Chinese maritime history, and about maritime history in general, world-wide - but ignorance about Australasian history and prehistory as well. It's sad, though, that this might disappoint any chauvinists who are keen on promoting any histories of a more activist Chinese world curiosity – as it pits region against region and people against people. But who is to blame here for such underlying subtleties as seen across centuries - the critic of Menzies? Or Menzies for promoting fiction? (By the way, why does Menzies' website come out of Tuvalu [domain name suffix, tv], in the Pacific? Why, domain-name-wise, does a well-bankrolled UK writer come out into cyberspace from a group of British-influenced islands in the Pacific? Cheapness? What? Why is Menzies' website not suffixed – uk/?)
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Lost Worlds The Website, then, which is quite proudly suffixed, .com.au/, feels that extra controversy about 1421 might well put publishers around the world on notice in a useful way – stop screwing around with Australasian history!! Stop exploiting it for mere financial advantage. Cease ignoring Australasia and realise – make your writers and their readers realise – what kind of a world it is that includes Australasia in the general schemes of history. The pathways to a usefully holistic view of world history are not, I think, as outlined by Gavin Menzies.
In short, behind its visible cyber-scenes, Lost Worlds The Website has considerable information resources already compiled, so far not called on, which could quickly be brought to bear on behalf of all who find Menzies' book, 1421, somewhat unconvincing. Given Menzies' public persona created so far, debate on the issues should be enjoined by Gavin Menzies in the usual ways enjoined by historians, in journal articles, and/or on the Web. As a historian of any kind, myself, I find it objectionable that Menzies has been quoted – words to effect - “There's not one chance in a million that I'm wrong” about his theory on Chinese mariners.
In fact, no proper historian would ever put his or her case in such words; this is simply how historians do NOT think about issues, or express themselves. Historians are far more cautious, because they have to methodically, patiently, compare/contrast sets of evidence about individuals of achievement, or eras of note; they compare sets of evidence from various countries in a disinterested way. Proper historians do not aspire to be absolutely correct, they merely aspire to see their views and findings becoming serviceable for the researchers and thinkers of the future. Gavin Menzies and his publishers simply do not have the humility that historians normally have. By his own words, Menzies indicates that he is NOT in fact a useful historian.
And as a webmaster myself, I personally find that I have to say that as a vehicle which can allegedly handle the issues which arise from the publication of 1421, Gavin Menzies' website is a pretence, a bad joke' intellectually the website is an entire disgrace, technically and informationally (I rechecked it on 16-10-2005.) Menzies' website is, quite frankly, a fabric of cyber-fakery and a protracted, well-deliberated exercise in sustained avoidance of the more substantive issues. As a webmaster, I would even say that in terms of the arcane technicals of website production, the technology hardly exists yet, which would easily/conveniently allow the kind of “academic” back-and-forth of discussion, which would allow Menzies' website to properly assist any of his proper [academic] defence of his claims. So if the information technology for the proper conduct of the argument doesn't exist yet, or is still primitive, ergo, Menzies' website has to be - web fakery of a kind. Q.E.D. (And I do hope that serious computer programmers interested in the technicals of IT vis-a-vis website enhancement will read this viewpoint and suggest some useful improvements for the technical situations complained of! It's about time something more useful was done!)
If Menzies and his publishers, and their amazing budgets, might prove untrustworthy on such issues, this is why this website, Lost Worlds, is stepping outside its usual editorial policy of being disinterested, and is taking the side of Geoff Wade and other critics of 1421, as above. As an issue, this is the first time in eight years on the Net, and quite entertaining years they have been, that this website, which deliberately/thoughtfully canvasses controversial issues, has decided publicly to take a side. We do so on behalf of Australasia and the integrity of its histories since the dawn of time! We do so out of a suitable respect for world history. In the interests also, in terms of our long-stated editorial policy, of emphasizing historical accuracy.
- Dan Byrnes – 16/17 October 2005
(But I still have to say, I'd love to see a movie on Zheng He and “1421”!)
Further on 1421...
In terms of literary criticism, the situation has already become alarmingly complicated. Menzies' critics by now have been reading all available editions/versions of 1421, which has deliberately been titled and marketed in the USA [ie, differently to titles seen in other countries including Australia] to capitalise on “a major challenge” to the reputation of Columbus. As a result, there is already little point in citing which remark of Menzies, on which page of which edition of which book, is being challenged by which critic from which Hemisphere of the globe – it's complicated!!
This problem will become even worse if the critics happen to contradict each other for any reasons at all – which could happen very easily. So this page is forced to deal in generalities, not pedantic and scholarly specifics. Normal courtesy to Gavin Menzies does not oblige anyone, we think, to go to the trouble to re-edit the now vast amount of material which could be reproduced, critting 1421 in the negative.
But already, it seems clear that after adventurously (and single-handedly) issuing a major challenge to world scholarship on matters of the history and historiography of world exploration, Menzies, even on his website, is unwilling to debate his critics on points of argument arising. It seems to this website that this is an untenable and inherently unreasonable position. It is also a position which leaves the critics free to natter amongst this themselves, which is exactly what our e-mail indicates is happening, from South East Asia and Australia to Florida and elsewhere in the USA.
Oddly, very oddly, people in Europe seem to be ultra-relaxed that Menzies indicates that his Chinese mariners entirely ignored Europe!
Meanwhile, I as an Australian cannot believe that Chinese mariners made their way to Antarctica, then sailing north, and with amazing luck, island-hopped the awesome expanses of the Southern Ocean to arrive about Western Australia. Nor can I believe that several large, lumbering Chinese junks actually made their way east-west through Torres Strait without grave mishap. It only makes it worse here to ask, given the Torres Strait wind patterns, at which time of year?
One wonders, what happens after 1421 loses most of the Southern Hemisphere to disbelievers? Can the remaining material in 1421 keep the Northern Hemisphere safe for – or safe from? - Menzies' book?
1421: Item: Following is part of a review of Gavin Menzies' book 1421 by Jeffrey Mellefont, a researcher at Australian National Maritime Museum in a magazine, Signals...nd. "Menzies writes well, bringing vividly to life the Ming court with all its intrigues, and what's known of actual Chinese voyaging. It's a shame that he didn't present his theory as fiction. It would have made a great tale, of airport novel size. But presenting his ideas as scholarship requires that they be judged accordingly and too often, by these standards, they fail. One is left wondering, too, at the integrity of the publisher who leaped into print with a work that is supported widely by neither Western nor Chinese scholars, yet has been promoted as though it were."
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Readers be warned – this page is going to become very extensive. By 19 October, this webpage has either read material from, or had e-mail from, or otherwise seen material originally supplied by, the following critics of 1421 (given here in no particular order):
a variety of New Zealanders, a person associated with the Mahogany Ship Committee in Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia. Bill Hartz in the US and his associate, Dr. da Silva (medical). Edward Dreyer in Florida, from the University of Miami. Geoff Wade, an Australian academic in Singapore. It is also easy to find chatroom flame-sessions about 1421 coming from a location such as Hong Kong.
Also, Captain Malhao Pereira, Portuguese Navy officer (ret.) After 38 years of duty in the Navy). Teacher of Navigation on the Portuguese Naval Academy for 7 Years. Captain of the three-masts bark Sagres, a Portuguese sail training ship, for 4 years, sailing in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Captain of the Portuguese Naval Academy's 65 ft sloop Vega (a sail training ship) for four years, cruising and racing in the Atlantic Ocean. Port Captain of Inhambane and Mozambique for four years. Masters degree on “History of Portuguese Expansion and Navigation”. Has published extensively on historical navigational matters. Lectured extensively in Portugal and abroad.
Also, Captain Philip. J. Rivers, Master Mariner and naval reservist who sailed as master and mate in the seas of south-east Asia (1954-59) and was a lecturer, School of Nautical Studies, Singapore Polytechnic (1960-66). Relevant publications: '1421' voyages: Fact & Fantasy for the Perak Academy and 'Monsoon Rhythms and Trade Patterns: Ancient Times East of Suez', Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, December 2004. Lately resident in Malaysia and often visiting Singapore.
Lost Worlds has also had e-mail (not necessarily related to 1421 issues) from an activist from the north of South America who talks, but not specifically enough, about alleged “pre-Columbus maps”.
See also: Dennis De Witt, 'Cheng Ho and the Ming Treasure Fleets', Dutch Courier, February 2003., pp. 20-29. (The author is from Malacca, of Dutch descent, and maintains interest in the Dutch influence in Malaysia. Check a Dutch Descendants website: http://www.geocities.com/dutchdescendants/ (For a non-detailed debunking of Menzies' 1421 by an Australian, see article, '1421: The Year China Didn't Discover Terribly Much', by Peter Barrett, (vice-president of Canberra Skeptics), The Skeptic, Vol. 25, No. 3, Spring 2005., pp. 48-51. - An Australian magazine)
Other critics of Menzies include: Prof. Su Ming-Yang (a Taiwanese living in the US in Torrance, California, and an associate of Wade), Prof Jin Guo-Ping (a Chinese scholar living in Portugal, Maria Cristina Marques Pedroso Malhao Pereira (who has written a report dated 29 January 2005 on interchanges between her husband and Menzies entitled, The Book by Menzies is a Grotesque Fraud). Also, Dr. Cheng Zeng-Hong of Taiwan.
Louise Levathes has confined herself to saying that Menzies has “found nothing new”. She evidently meant, nothing new that is real. It is notable that as a scholar, Levathes can read Chinese, Menzies cannot.
Also contra Menzies, see website: http://hnn.us/articles/1308.html which is from History News Network. An article by academic Timothy Furnish, "Is Gavin Menzies Right or Wrong?", dated 3 October 2003.
More detailed information on what Menzies' critics are discussing is given in a section below.
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Suffice to say, the codes that maritime historians have developed across centuries for discussing their topics, and it often amounts to world-history, seem not to suit the author of 1421 at all. Meanwhile, the histories of world exploration are not exactly hot topics that become well-known and rivet the general public. (For example, I recently read, when researching on Torres of Torres Strait, that a man named Torres had sailed earlier with Columbus. So does this indicate a century-long interest in world exploration by the Torres family? It would seem unwise to jump to any quick conclusion! But it is tantalising, no?)
I feel that Menzies has been cheerfully exploiting this widespread, worldwide ignorance. But what to do about that? To be reasonable, and obvious about it as well, anyone who imagines that they have found something new in world maritime history naturally puts themselves under the obligation of trying to abide by the conventions of such discussions. An article or two in some journal usually read by maritime historians cannot go astray – while today, a website would be handy. Menzies of course, has a website, but the problem is that it's a useless website, given the directions that discussions of 1421 are lately taking.
Also obviously, world travel/exploration is international, so if several peoples, around the world, cannot well remember visits from a particular people (in this case, the Chinese), maybe those visits never occurred? Unless seriously-convincing evidence can be advanced, of course. We have by the way just been amazed, around the world, by the supposed discovery on the Indonesian island of Flores, of evidence of “hobbits”, some new kind of species of humanity. If there can be controversy about this, why not about 1421? But it remains a problem with some publishers, that “controversy” is not part of a search for truth, it is merely a marketing tool!
If Menzies does not wish to observe the usual courtesies, there is also no reason why he should be treated with excessive-courtesy-from-a-distance. So this webpage is going to be harsh if necessary. For example, it seems to this webpage that from world history, after1600, both the Moghul Empire of India, and the Chinese government, made the grave mistake of taking Europeans so unseriously, they never bothered to express curiosity, to send diplomats to European nations, or to develop suitable defensive navies. As it happened, both India and China were later influenced excessively by Europeans, to say the least! Given this painful experience, it is hard to believe that the Chinese from 1421 once explored the entire world, but ignored Europe – and then made a similar mistake a few centuries later? Ignoring Europe? The Europe which had so long been legendarily aware of China/Cathay due to the Silk Road connection!
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These days of our new millennium, popular history is at risk of becoming a debased medium, promoted by cynical publishers. There are other books and matters of so-called "popular history" which are all-too-objectionable from the points of serious historians and other researchers. Among them are books by: von Daniken; Immanual Velikovsky (though Velikovsky might have helped to reposition the role of catastrophe in the consideration of geology?); David Irving, the professional Holocaust-denier; the story of the exposing of Margaret Mead, “anthropologist”, in her own youth gulled about free love by a humourous group of Pacific Island women who saw her coming; (See Derek Freeman, The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead. Westview Press, 1999., 279pp.)
... the embarrassing Helen Demidenko case in Australia, about a fabricated set of “truths” re Balkans matters during and after World War II; the Hitler Diaries, an hilarious hoax which embarrassed News Limited worldwide, subject of a morbidly-funny movie which happens to star two world-famous comedians, including the Australian Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage).
The author of 1421 is often accused by his critics of – wishful thinking. True, the wishful historical thinker will generally not get far with the usual kinds of tough-minded writers/researchers who manage journals which publish formal articles on topics in history. But since 2002, Gavin Menzies, manfully, lone and single-handedly, and very adventurously, like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, has taken on just about every scholar in the world, past and present, who has ever considered the entire maritime history, and/or the entire economic history of the trade patterns of China! And he wishes to succeed... ? Really? Well yes, this is actually what Gavin Menzies has done!!
It is now time to begin to examine the basic chronologies Menzies uses in 1421. And why chronologies? Because of simplicity – textual/contextual analyses will be too-complicated a design for a webpage. Major attention will be given to the years of the claimed voyages – 1421-1423. The chronology to be presented soon on this website will be derived from many sources including Menzies' own 1421. ///Re global sea levels and the beginning of a so-called Mini-Ice-Age (often dated at about 1420-1450AD)... NB: Lost Worlds is now developing a new page to handles this information – Go to: more to come ////
From Singapore, some of Dr. Geoff Wade's views are given below.
Capt. Philip Rivers has produced a monograph contra to Menzies: “1421” Voyages: Fact and Fantasy. [monograph No 11.] 2004. Malaysia, first edition. ISBN 9834 055641. Rebutting Menzies on three fronts: re documents, nautical and geographical aspects, and general lacks of evidence.
Dr. Wade and Dr. Su Ming-Yang have issued a joint criticism of 1421, first drafted 11 March 2005, and dated 16 May 2005. Part of it is given below (heavily edited for this webpage for legal reasons).
(Situation: US Library of Congress for 16 May 2005 had arranged to help present Gavin Menzies' views of his “discoveries”. Various concerned scholars organised a protest to Library of Congress about this. First draft on 11 March, 2005, see below for final draft from concerned scholars of 8 April 2005)
COMMUNIQUE:
A joint criticism on Gavin Menzies' new claims about the Zheng He Voyages
Issued: 16 May, 2005
On 15 March, 2002, in the lecture hall of the Royal Geographical Society in London, Mr. Gavin Menzies (hereafter GM for brevity) made several fantastic new claims about how the fleets of the Chinese admiral, Zheng He, circumnavigated the globe during 1421 to 1423. Not so obvious was the fact that GM had rented the hall at his own expense, without the sponsorship of the RGS. He later issued the book, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, in November, 2002. Ever since then, his book has met with extensive expert criticism and he has had to continually change the so-called “evidence” in support of his claims.
Despite his numerous claims and the hundreds of pieces of evidence he has collected from all over the world, all have been definitely and entirely discredited by historians, maritime experts and oceanographers from China, the US and Europe. Not a single shred of extant documents and artifacts has been found to support his new claims on these early Ming naval expeditions. GM has discovered that he is now no longer welcome in China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Portugal, as his outright fabrications about Zheng He’s 6th voyage going far beyond the African east coast are totally contradictory to Chinese scholars' understanding of their own history.
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Now, GM has switched his targets to Singapore and Malaysia, as can be seen in a recent article, “Riddle of a lost Chinese city on the Atlantic coast,” in Asian Pacific Post, dated 24 February, 2005. In this article, GM makes newer claims that a Canadian architect (no name given) has discovered a lost Chinese naval base about 2/3 the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing on the Atlantic coast (again no exact location given), and that he will make a public disclosure of it in a scheduled Zheng He meeting at the US Library of Congress (Asia Department) on 16 May, 2005 and that GM hopes to raise funds for research about this lost city.
Now, GM’s release of some tantalizing claims to whet newspaper readers’ curiosity and promising more disclosures three months later at the world renowned Library of Congress meeting clearly reminds us of his similar ploy in London three years ago. He hopes many world newspaper reporters will go to the LC meeting and gather lots of publicity for his next edition of 1421. What a clever publicity scheme for GM in replacing the Royal Geographical Society in London with the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. for promoting his new edition of 1421 re his inventions at the expense of China’s Ming history!
In the above article, GM further claimed that he had found that Kublai Khan (1260-1294), Emperor of the Yuan dynasty, had charted almost all of the world, including the Americas, and that Zheng He owed a huge amount to Kublai Khan. According to GM’s new claims, it was Kublai Khan, rather than Zheng He, that had discovered/charted the Americas. GM then went even further to say that he had found ancient Chinese maps of the Americas predating even Kublai Khan. So, after all, it is not Kublai Khan, but some other un-named Chinese that had charted the Americas. Who knows what Chinese dynasty and what deeds GM will give them credit for?
GM called these maps the “Kublai Kahn world maps” at a Lisbon meeting last November (2004). GM flashed them without any explanation as to their sources and other details. Two of the undersigned (Dr. Jin and Captain Pereira ) were at that meeting and their impressions were that these maps looked too precisely-drawn to have been done in the Yuan dynasty. In fact, many copies of the world maps made during the Yuan dynasty exist in China today. None of these maps have any inkling of the presence of the Americas. No official document from that dynasty ever alluded to the knowledge of the Americas either.
We wish to refresh readers’ memories that GM is playing his usual tactics... by giving a few examples:
1. At the March, 2002 Royal Geographical Society meeting, GM claimed most confidently that he had located the wrecks of nine huge Zheng He treasure ships (about 440 feet long and 180 feet wide) in the Caribbean Sea, but that he could not disclose their exact locations till his book was published (about nine months later). These wrecks turned out to be nothing more than sand mounts about several hundred feet long near the beach of Bimini Island, without one single piece of old rotten wood from the ancient wrecks.
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2. In his book, GM claims that only Zheng He’s great fleets with their advanced knowledge of determining longitude could complete a survey of the entire African coastline. His evidence is a copy ( c.1470) of the Kangnido world map, the original of which was made in 1402 by Korea, based on Chinese sources. GM shows only a portion of the map covering Africa and Arabia. The shape of Africa is indeed triangular as it should be. Readers could readily accept GM’s cartographical map as an excellent proof of his claim.
Why did he not then show the entire map if it was such an impressive piece of evidence? The simple truth is that the size of China in the Kangnido world map is about ten times larger than that of the African continent, whereas in reality Africa is twice the size of China. Had GM shown the whole map, who would have believed that Zheng He’s fleets possessed an advanced method for determining longitude, several hundred years prior to its commonly accepted availability, and were able to complete a survey of the entire African coasts? This case casts doubt on the methodology of GM’s handling of his so-called evidence. In fact, there exists an original 1389, Chinese-made “Great Ming World Map” at a Peijing national archive, very similar to the Kangnido Map. Both of these world maps had been made definitely prior to the Zheng He seven voyages ( 1405 -1433 ) and [were] surely available to Zheng He. So why did the Zheng He fleets have anything to do with the survey of the African coastline in 1421 to 1423, as claimed in GM's book?
3. About one year ago, GM lauded what he said were large docking sites, building foundations and large ship wrecks of Zheng He’s fleets that could be found along South Island of New Zealand. These so-called great discoveries, proving Zheng He had reached New Zealand, were first reported by Mr. Cedric Bell and listed on GM’s 1421.TV website. So far, the only solid artifacts supporting these claims are several dozen huge round boulders scattered on the beach near Moeraki (the largest about 1.3 m in diameter). These are the well-known Moeraki boulders ( see Figure 3), which GM suggested were blasts from the huge Zheng He ship wrecks. Some of these boulders weigh more than two tons each. There were never such heavy blasts employed in any of Chinese ancient sailing ships. In fact, these boulders are formed naturally through known geological process.
4. Mr. Zhu Chang-Qieu, Chinese Naval Survey Bureau; Captain Philip Rivers, retired Canadian Navy officer; and Captain Malhao Pereira, Portuguese Navy officer each have considerable expertise on nautical subjects of the world’s oceans. They have found many cases of impossibilities in the sailing routes of Zheng He’s fleets, as proposed in GM’s book. In the words of Mr. Zhu, all of the global sailing expeditions beyond the African east coast described in 1421 are fictitious at best.
There are many more examples we could provide to illustrate the [misunderstandings...] in 1421, but we haven’t the space to present them in this short article...
Being serious educators, researchers on Chinese history, and experts on nautical techniques and oceanography, we feel a strong obligation to speak out publicly about the mistakes we have found regarding the early Ming naval expeditions in Gavin Menzies’ 1421. We are deeply concerned about his making further errors at the Library of Congress on 16 May [2005].
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The numerous claims on early Ming maritime history presented by GM have seriously compromised many readers' understanding[s] about Chinese history, worldwide. This misuse of world history has to be stopped as soon as possible.
We sincerely plead with the international community of historians, nautical experts and media to join us in this worthy effort to spare millions of honest readers from further misinformation.
Prepared jointly and signed by the following ( names are arranged in the alphabetical order ) :
Dr. Jin Guo-Ping, a senior researcher at the Sino-Portugal Cultural Research Center, Lisbon.
Captain Malhao Pereira, Portuguese Navy officer.
Captain Philip J. Rivers, a retired Canadian Navy officer [and author of titles as noted above]
Dr. Su Ming-Yang, Senior Research Oceanographer (retired) at US Naval Research Laboratory (1976–2001); visiting professor at two Taiwan national universities (2001-2003); editor of Zheng He Research Newsletter (in Chinese) (2001 – 2003) in Taiwan; and author of: Seven Epic Voyages of Zheng He in Ming China: Fact, Fiction and Fabrication ( in English ), May, 2005
Dr. Geoff Wade, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Point of contact: Please send all responses to this joint criticism to Dr. Su Ming-Yang and Dr. Geoff Wade, simultaneously, at the following e-mail addresses (here deleted - Ed):
(Issued on 16 May, 2005)
:::::::::::: Ends :::::::::::::
Later-drafted version of 8 April 2005 of protest of scholars to US Library of Congress: - and heavily re-edited by the present webmaster/Lost Worlds
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16. The author states that the accuracy of Piri Reis map is due to the Chinese observations, but when they sailed along the east coast of South America they still could not calculate the latitude, since Canopus was not yet located. Besides only Hong Baoâ's fleet located the Canopus, and Zhou Man's fleet , which later on sailed the whole Pacific Ocean, was not qualified to determine latitudes in the southern hemisphere !
17. The author says that the ships of Yang Quing calculated longitudes using a total eclipse of the Moon, but during the [their] stay in the Indian Ocean the only [only-seen] eclipse of the Moon was not visible in the area. Besides, it looks very odd that only one fleet, which left China before the others, had [a] capacity of determining longitudes. It seems that the secret would only be justified if the latter fleets belonged to other countries.
Follows some edited versions of e-mail received by this website from 2 November 2005, a somewhat scumbled gathering of international e-mail various of recent origin. The rendition here of the e-mail may or may not have been heavily edited by this website editor – the reader may well have to make a protracted netsearch search for the interconnections being discussed here - Ed
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Subject: FW: [Maphist] Menzies Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:44:23 +0800 Message-ID: X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: [Maphist] Menzies thread-index: - &c
Original Message - From: maphist-bounces@geo.uu.nl
[mailto:maphist-bounces@geo.uu.nl]
On Behalf Of Dorothy F
Prescott Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 6:43 PM To: Discussion
group for map history Cc: Discussion group for map history Subject:
RE: [Maphist] Menzies:
Thanks, Francis for the additional reference sources for Bill's article I am sure they will be useful to others. Dorothy, As I was in Edinburgh from Friday last I have only this morning caught up with some interesting exchanges on the above subject. To enlarge - Dorothy's mention of Bill Richardson's latest published (and continuing) fine detective work - chiefly on place-name corruption in cartographic items - I subjoin the two different publications in which this work is available; these are in my previous traditional 'Imago Mundi' Bibliography style (i.e. with notes added to help explain the contents):-'Gavin Menzies' cartographic fiction : the case of the Chinese 'discovery' of Australia' / W.A.R. (Bill) Richardson. - In: Journal of the Australian Map Circle (Melbourne), 2004, 56, 1-11 : ill. - c.20, refs & notes.
Refutes erroneous interpretations and selective data used by G. Menzies as arguments in his book 1421 : the year China discovered the world. (London, Transworld Publishers, 2002) and 1421 : the year China discovered America. (New York : W. Morrow, 2003). As reprinted in Journal of the International Map Collectors' Society, Autumn 2004, 98, 23-32 + 'Correction' note in Winter 2004, 99, 3. - ISSN 0311-3930 Cf., Gavin Menzies' cartographic fiction : the case of the Chinese 'discovery' of Australia / W.A.R. (Bill) Richardson. - In: Journal of the International Map Collectors' Society (Oakhanger, Crewe : c/o S. Gole), Autumn 2004, 98, 23-32 : ill. (some col.) + 'Correction' note in Winter 2004, 99, 3. - c.20 refs & notes. - "Reproduced from The Globe (Journal of the Australian Map Circle)' 56 (2004) with kind permission". &c- Refutes erroneous interpretations and selective data used by G. Menzies as arguments in his book 1421 : the year China discovered the world. (London: Transworld Publishers, 2002) Issues of the 'Imago Mundi Bibliography' from vol. 40 (1988) onwards will enable interested readers to excavate other examples of Bill's objective - and non-commercial - research work from, to my knowledge at least, 1986: ... Cf., 'Jave-la-Grande: the interpretation of evidence' in (significantly) The Globe: Journal of the Australian Map Circle, 1986, 26, 42-57: ill., maps, c.35 refs & notes, ISSN 0311-3930 Francis Herbert - f.herbert@rgs.org http://www.rgs.org [see 'Collections' (including some online catalogues, e.g., many maps up to ca 1940)]] http://images.rgs.org [including maps]
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Original Message - From: H-Net list for Asian History and Culture on behalf of Ryan Dunch Sent: Sat 22/10/2005 03:13 To: H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU Cc: Subject: H-ASIA: Popular History and Bunkum -- on *1421, The Year China Discovered America* H-ASIA October 21, 2005 Popular History and Bunkum -- on 1421, The Year China Discovered America.
From: Geoff Wade <arigpw@nus.edu.sg>
Dear H-Asia
members, I have just submitted the following complaint against
Transworld Publishers of Britain to the Consumer Complaints body of
the United Kingdom http://www.consumercomplaints.org.uk/index.asp The
complaint derives from Transworld publishing and advertising "1421:
The Year China Discovered the World" , authored by Gavin
Menzies, as a work of history, which I believe is a violation of the
British Trade Descriptions Act of 1968 Best wishes, Geoff Wade
######### Copy of complaint submitted: I purchased a copy of Gavin
Menzies' "1421: The Year China Discovered the World,"
published by Transworld, on the basis that it was classified as
"History" in their catalogue. A detailed reading of the
text revealed that the work is a fairtytale and fiction of the worst
kind. I detail some of the outrageous fiction perpetrated within the
volume: Claims by Mr. Menzies followed by facts 1. Claim: Four eunuch
admirals?-Hong Bao, Zhou Man, Zhou Wen and Yang Qing --led fleets to
the Americas, Australia, Greenland and the Antarctic during voyages
between 1421 and 1423.
Fact: There are no Chinese or other texts
which suggest in any way that these four eunuchs, or any other Ming
commanders, traveled anywhere at all beyond Asia, the Middle East and
the East coast of Africa. All other voyages derive solely from Mr.
Menzies' imagination. Further, the currents, winds and dates Menzies
cites in support would not have carried the ships anywhere near where
he claims. In short, there is no archaeological, textual or archival
material to support the Menzies thesis as set down in *1421*. In this
book Menzies intentionally distorts known materials and deliberately
alters known facts in order to support his thesis. 2. Claim: Sailors
and concubines from these fleets settled in the Americas, Australia,
New Zealand and islands across the Pacific.
In evidence, he cites
studies of "recent" inflow of "Chinese genes" and
"East Asian DNA" into the Americas. Fact: There is no
evidence of Ming settlement sites in, or even Ming knowledge, of
these places until the arrival of the Jesuits in China in the 16th
century. The genetic evidence on which Menzies relies is provided by
a company whose genetic tests have been labelled a "scam"
by Stephen O'Brien, the US National Cancer Institute's laboratory
chief.
3. Claim: There exists a range of wrecks of the ships from
these voyages spread around the world, and these are proof of the
voyages claimed by Menzies. Fact: Not one wreck which can be linked
with the eunuch voyages in the first 30 years of the 15th century (or
indeed any Chinese wreck) has been identified outside of the Asian
region.
4. Claim: The Ming voyagers built celestial observation platforms at 24 places across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Menzies names and provides coordinates for these platforms. (*1421*, pp. 416/17, 457) Fact: There is no textual or archaeological evidence to even begin to suggest that the Ming voyagers built observation platforms anywhere in the world. Again, their existence derives only from the fertile imagination of Mr. Menzies. 5. Claim: The Ming armadas left a range of other built structures around the world, particularly in Australasia and the Americas, including the Newport Round Tower, the Gympie pyramid and other structures and mines. They also left a ship's slipway made of stones on the Bimini islands in the Caribbean. Fact: Not one of the structures Mr. Menzies cites has been shown to have any links with China. The Bimini "slipway," which is in any case parallel to the shore, has been shown to be a completely natural formation. 6. Claim: The Chinese "were aware that the earth was a globe and had divided it into 365 and a quarter degrees (the number of days in the year) of latitude and longitude." (*1421*, p. 449) Fact: There is no evidence that during the early Ming, the Chinese had any knowledge of the earth as a globe and certainly none that they were aware of latitude and longitude. 7. Claim: The Ming voyagers surveyed South America, Antarctica, North America and the Atlantic as well as Australasia. "The whole world was accurately charted by 1428." (*1421* p. 411) Fact: There is no text or other evidence which suggests that the Ming voyagers went anywhere near these places and no Chinese maps which indicate any surveying of these places.
Further, there are no contemporary Ming artifacts found in any of these regions. 8. Claim: A range of European maps show anomalies which can only be explained by accepting the Chinese voyages proposed by Mr. Menzies as having taken place Fact: The cartographic anomalies which Mr. Menzies points to, real or imagined, can be explained through many avenues, the most likely being that Arab navigators, who had been traveling these waters for 600 years before the Chinese, had produced maps of areas they traveled to. 9.
Claim: Mr. Menzies noted that the Venetian Niccolo da Conti was
the crucial and only link between Chinese and European cartographers.
Menzies claims that he participated in the voyages over several years
and carried Chinese maps back to Europe. He notes that Da Conti "had
spent years aboard a junk of the treasure fleet" and that
"Chinese maps passed from Da Conti to Fra Mauro, and from him to
Dom Pedro of Portugal and Prince Henry the Navigator." (*1421*,
pp. 369, 84-87, 92-93) Fact: Da Conti, who left us detailed accounts
of his travels, recounts neither meeting any Ming envoy in Calicut,
nor traveling on any Chinese ship for even a day, nor seeing or
receiving any Chinese maps showing a new world. The utter and
complete contempt for truth with which Menzies depicts these events
is disheartening.
10. Claim: Mr. Menzies claims that a number of
mylodons (a type of giant sloth) had been taken from South America to
New Zealand and China by the Ming ships. Fact: All available evidence
suggests that the Mylodon has been extinct for several thousand
years, which militates somewhat against the likely veracity of Mr.
Menzies' claims in this respect. But such sloppy research is found
throughout the volume. He notes, for example, rubber trees in Malacca
450 years before they had been introduced from South America by the
British, etc., etc. ad nauseam.
##### In short, all major
claims within the work are fictional. Representing this work as
history is a flagrant violation of the Trade Descriptions Act of 1968
which makes it an offence both to apply a false description to any
goods and to supply or offer to supply any goods which have a false
trade description applied. To be an offence the Act notes that the
indication must be false to a material degree. To represent fiction
as history does indeed meet this criterion. The role of the Local
Trading Standards authorities is to enforce the provisions of this
Act and they are able to take whatever steps they consider necessary
to prevent others from being deceived. I trust that appropriate
action will be taken in this case. If you require further
information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I do not know
if similar legislation to the British Trade Descriptions Act exists
within the United States, but William Morrow, the publishers of the
US edition of the book "1421: the Year China Discovered
America", and an imprint of Harper Collins, lists the book under
Non-fiction/History/World:
http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060537639
With best wishes, Geoff Wade National University of Singapore
fix h1 re 29 October 2005 blut
-----Original Message----- From: Dorothy Prescott [mailto:dorothyp@unimelb.edu.au] Sent: 29 October 2005 04:31 To: Discussion group for map history Subject: RE: [Maphist] Menzies Here is some further reading on Menzies claims that the Chinese visited Australia. This article is by W. A. R. Richardson otherwise known as Bill. 'Gavin Menzies' cartographic fiction: the case of the Chinese 'discovery' of Australia' appearing in The Globe (Journal of the Australian Map Circle), no. 56, 2004, pp 1-11. Bill Richardson is a Spanish and Portuguese linguist from Flinders University in South Australia. He has many works to his credit and has written on this subject for several years taking on such 'notoriously unreliable, speculative works of Kenneth McIntyre [an Australian – Ed/LW], Eric Whitehouse, Rex Gilroy [an Australian – Ed/LW] and Wei Chuh-Hsien' (his quotes). For Australians, Menzies is just another in the growing list of fictions published on the cartographic knowledge of this [Australian] continent. The subject has appeared regularly for the last three centuries. The danger as I see it, is when such nonsense gets into the school curricula as it has in the case of McIntyre's work with not even a counter argument presented for [high school] students to study. It is important therefore that refutations such as [written by] Rivers and Richardson are written and should be publicized for all to read:
Dorothy Prescott At 03:39 AM 28/10/2005 -0700, you wrote: I have found the reaction to my comments about Gavin Menzies very interesting. I look forward to reading Capt. Rivers' book. As I said in my original note, I am not against constructive criticism and probing debate, and recognise the place of peer review in protecting standards in science and elsewhere. However, Gavin Menzies has probably done more to increase the general public's awareness of, and interest in, early Chinese navigation than any other single person, and that is surely a good thing. I have met Gavin a couple of times, initially in the British Library Map Room, and know that he put considerable effort into his research. This led him to formulate a hypothesis that the Chinese navigations were even more widespread than had already been established, and to try to explain some of the knowledge that seemed to be implied in European maps that predated known exploration of those areas. Several of the conclusions that he came to were not individually supportable by the evidence currently available, but in joining up so many dots, he managed to produce an overall picture that addressed lots of interesting areas. For example, how did Magellan know that there was a strait in the area that he eventually found it, and how did the Waldseemueller map show the unexplored areas of the Pacific coasts so well?
It is always a problem to decide when to end the research and publish. I have spent twenty five years researching the early European exploration of the American west coast, and have reached conclusions that I have not published because of insufficient evidence, even though I think they are soundly based. In researching one of my areas of interest, Hernan Cortes, I came across the case of Dr. Franz Scholes, a professor at the University of New Mexico, who was probably the greatest recent authority on Cortes, and who spent something like twenty years amassing what may be the best collection of Cortes material with the intention of writing a book. He died before doing so because he felt that he had not, even then, reached the very high standards of scholarship he set himself for publishing something. In contrast, Gavin Menzies published his book without proving every aspect of his conclusions, but as a result has had many thousands of e-mails and letters from around the world bringing to light possible evidence of early Chinese contact. I am away from home, so do not have access to my notes, but there seems plenty of emerging evidence to support his views on Chinese contact with Australia, for example, and I am looking forward to hearing details of the Chinese junk that has apparently been found up the Sacramento River, inland of San Francisco. I do not think that Gavin Menzies would claim to have produced the definitive work on early Chinese voyages, but I, for one, am glad that he published 1421, and wish that Dr. Scholes had written his book on Cortes without waiting for that final piece of confirmatory evidence. Bob Ward - --Original message----- From: Dorothy Prescott dorothyp@unimelb.edu.au Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 19:04:32 -0700 To: Discussion group for map history - maphist@geo.uu.nl -
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Subject: RE: [Maphist] Menzies - I suggest the debate would be enhanced if those taking part read P. J. Rivers, which I mentioned the other day. The Foreword to this work by Dr. Geoff Wade of the National University of Singapore concludes with these two sentences :"With these few words I must congratulate Phil Rivers for producing an excellent volume, one which will help people both now and in the future to assess the value or otherwise of 1421. May it see wide distribution and readership and encourage more people to engage in grounded and factual investigation of the East Asian maritime traditions." Dorothy Prescott. At 12:37 PM 27/10/2005 -0500, you wrote: I would find this much more interesting if the supporters of Menzies would defend him by supporting his (Menzies') evidence instead of attacking the skeptics. - Allen Hjelmfelt ______________
From: Gala Argent <gala@argentco.com> > > With
reference to the October 31 posting from Dr. Geoff Wade: > >
Dear H-Asia members, > > Regarding the request for complainants
with the FTC over the > non-fiction status of the book 1421: the
Year China Discovered > America, Mr. Wade notes that "freedom
of the press is of course an > essential element in any
democracy." I would simply ask how the > filing of such a
complaint furthers this goal? > > The validity of Menzies'
theory is irrelevant.
More on point is that > the academic
community suffers a grave public relations problem with > the
general public, in that we are -- for the most part -- perceived >
as intellectually conservative, immutable, and so driven by internal
> politics that dissent is quickly stifled. This type of complaint
only > furthers, in the worst way possible, those notions. > >
Give the reading public the credit they deserve.
People reading >
Menzies' book certainly do not fall into the demographic of >
bon-bon-eating romance novel readers. They have the ability to >
ascertain strength of argument, theory versus fact, and the academic
> credentials (or lack thereof) of the author. Rather than
complain, we > should be glad that Menzies book, like The Da Vinci
Code, has > fostered interest in other times and places, and
driven curious > readers to look further -- to sources perhaps
more academically > credible -- in order to come up with their own
conclusions. That is > the purpose of freedom of the press. The
"autocracy" Mr. Wade fears > is promoted precisely by
the type of legal or regulatory squabble he > is promoting, which
boils down to having the public's reading > material, or
classification thereof, monitored by an academic elite. > Shall we
now set up a censorship committee to hand down such > judgments?
Finally, I would encourage Mr. Wade and his several colleagues to
> avail themselves of freedom of the press by taking their
concerns > with the scholarship and credibility of the book to the
people he > thinks are incapable of understanding theory versus
fact, by > countering Menzies with an intellectually accessible
book targeted to > that audience.
Intellectual discontent
should be wrangled thus, not > through legal, regulatory or
governmental oversight. That is the > point of freedom of the
press. > > Gala Argent, Ph.D. candidate > School of
Archaeology and Ancient History > University of Leicester > >
>
MapHist: E-mail discussion group on the history of cartography hosted by the Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht. The statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Utrecht. The University of Utrecht does not take any responsibility for the views of the author. List Information: http://www.maphist.info Maphist mailing list - Maphist@geo.uu.nl - http://mailman.geo.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/maphist/
Original Message From: Geoff Wade Sent: Mon 07/11/2005 10:36 –
Subject:: another 1421 critique book: Dorothy Prescott at
@unimelb.edu.au – Sent Mon 07/11/2005 10:31 - To: Geoff Wade -
Geoff, Are you aware of this work? Just posted by Brendan White the
GLOBE Secretary...
Title: "The 1421 Heresy: An Investigation
Into the Ming Chinese Maritime Survey o the World", by Anatole
Andro. Hardcover: 404 pages. Publisher: Authorhouse (September,
2005). Language: English. ISBN: 1420873490. US$31.
Available
from: Amazon as
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1420873490/102-1857606-4326545?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance
From:
Dr Brendan Whyte, Assistant Map Curator, ERC Library, University of
Melbourne, Vic 3010 AUSTRALIA at: @unimelb.edu.au – From
Andros' 1421heresy site ...
Blurb follows: “For two and a
half years Mr. Andro searched for such evidence, examining each piece
of suspected artifact and following up on every lead. Not only was he
able to uncover such evidence he found the evidence to be widespread.
Further, scholars had examined such evidence and either discarded,
ignored, or obscured it. To top it off, Mr. Andro finds the evidence
overwhelmingly suggests that not only had the Chinese circumnavigated
the world, they reached its extremities perhaps even before the Ming.
Columbus and his fellow explorers sailed on Chinese navigational
directions, and Renaissance European cartographers created their new
maps of the world based on new geographical data of Chinese origin.”
Follows a copy of email from Menzies' 1421 team of about 7
November 2005 per Geoff Wade: Mon 07/11/2005 23:51 To: Geoff Wade
Cc: Subject: 1421 November message Greetings and welcome to the
1421 November mailout. We have had a few very busy months, and are
sorry that the mailouts have not been as forthcoming as they have
been previously. As well as some (well earned!) summer holidays for
Gavin and the team, there has been a lot going on recently. The
Singapore Zheng He celebrations went ahead as scheduled. Gavin and
Cedric Bell went out to deliver a series of talks and tours around
the 1421 exhibition, down at the bustling Marina promenade.
The
exhibition was one of the largest of its kind that Singapore has
held, sprawling an incidental 1421 sq metres, a stand-alone structure
built from scratch and made to last over 3 months from June to
September 2005. The exhibition has now moved to Malacca, and is
situated in the Zheng He Cultural Museum, kindly hosted by Dr. Tan Ta
Sen. It is hoped the exhibition will remain in Malacca for six
months, and from there travel to China, the Middle East and beyond!
Gavin has been busy as always, with further trips to Hong Kong,
Shanghai, Italy and Spain. He has delivered keynote speeches at
several high profile events, as well as carrying on his research
during several trips to Europe. He travels to Shenzen, Hong Kong and
Beijing in the third week of November for continued efforts in
raising funds for further research, several book signings, and to
give a presentation at the Hong Kong International Computer
Conference 2005.
We are pleased to announce the publication of
the Finnish and Estonian editions of the book, published by Gennimap
Corp. in October 2005. Furthermore, the literary rights to the French
edition of 1421 have now been acquired by 'Editions Intervalles', who
aim to publish in spring 2006. As a result, 1421 will thence be
available in over 100 countries and 20 languages! New additions to
look for on the website are the new "Links" section, and
the option to download the short documentary film made by members of
the 1421 team at the Singapore exhibition here:
See
http://www.1421.tv/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=121
As always we look forward to hearing any comments and suggestions you may care to share with us about the 1421 project. All the best, The 1421 team”
Original Message - From: H-Net list for Asian History and Culture
on behalf of Frank Conlon
Sent: Tue 08/11/2005 05:12 To:
H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU Cc: Subject: H-ASIA: Publisher/Library
responsibility in Classification of Fiction/Non-Fiction Works (was
*1421*) H-ASIA November 7, 2005 Issues of the responsibility of
publishers and libraries in the classification of works of
non-fiction/fiction (extension of the discussion off Menzies',
Menzies's 1421: The Year China Discovered the World_
From:
Geoff Wade <arigpw@nus.edu.sg> Dear H-Asia members, At the risk
of boring my H-Asia colleagues and being seen to be perhaps as
off-the-planet as my bete-noirs, I would like to bring your attention
to a real problem which is emerging in the publishing of fiction
books masquerading as history. Those of you who have been following
the Menzies 1421 fairytale thread and my ongoing attempts to hold the
publishers to account through the respective fair trading and fair
description statutes, might be interested to know that the problem
runs even deeper than first oberved. That is to say, it is not just
the authors and publishers who are major elements in such deception
of the public, but also public institutions in their acceptance of
the publishers' descriptions of their works.
An excellent example
has come to light in the last few days. Random House Canada (which
comes under the umbrella of media giant Bertelsmann AG, as do the
publishers of the U.K. and U.S. editions of "1421") is
planning to publish a book by Paul Chiasson, entitled "Island of
Seven Cities: the discovery of a lost Chinese settlement in the
Americas."
See here for details:
<http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679314554>
This is a spin-off of the 1421 myth and, having seen the "evidence"
offered for the "Chinese settlement" on Cape Breton Island
in Nova Scotia, I can affirm that it has even less credence than most
of Menzies' claims. That is, this is again fiction masquerading as
history. And the publishers have the audacity to be marketing this
work under the twin categories of "History - Canada -
Pre-Confederation (To 1867); and History - China".
This
leaves the publishers open to charges under Section 74.01 of the
Canadian Competition Act, whereby "A person engages in
reviewable conduct who, for the purpose of promoting, directly or
indirectly, the supply or use of a product or for the purpose of
promoting, directly or indirectly, any business interest, by any
means whatever, (a) makes a representation to the public that is
false or misleading in a material respect; etc" The travesty
does not end there, however.
Even before the book is published,
the august institution of Library and Archives Canada has already
assigned (or accepted) a description of the work (under "History")
as follows: Chiasson, Paul. The island of seven cities : the
discovery of a lost Chinese settlement in the Americas / Paul
Chiasson. -- Toronto : Random House Canada, 2006. Includes index.
ISBN 0-679-31455-5 : $34.95 1. Cape Breton Island (N.S.)--Discovery
and exploration--Chinese 2. Chinese--Nova Scotia--Cape Breton
Island--Antiquities 3. Cape Breton Island (N.S.)--Antiquities
This
LAC listing can be found here:
<http://www.collectionscanada.ca/newbooks/g4-900-e.html>
I
[Geoff Wade]have sent the following letter to Library and Archives
Canada to try and achieve some reclassification of the volume. Those
interested in veracity of description and prevention of deception in
the publishing industry and library systems are urged to follow suit.
Any comments on related trends and issues in terms of publishing and
library description would be appreciated.
Thanks, Geoff Wade
National University of Singapore
Dear LAC, I note with grave sadness that you have catalogued the
upcoming book by Mr Paul Chiasson as follows: Chiasson, Paul. The
island of seven cities : the discovery of a lost Chinese settlement
in the Americas / Paul Chiasson. -- Toronto : Random House Canada,
2006. Icludes index. ISBN 0-679-31455-5 : $34.95 1. Cape Breton
Island (N.S.)--Discovery and exploration--Chinese 2. Chinese--Nova
Scotia--Cape Breton Island--Antiquities 3. Cape Breton Island
(N.S.)--Antiquities
This assigns it a respectability of which it
is completely undeserving. That is to say, you are describing this as
a work of history when the explorations of historians and
archaeologists reveal it to be nothing but fiction.
How can you
have a category for "Cape Breton Island (N.S.)--Discovery and
exploration--Chinese" when no such thing ever took place? Was
this category created simply to meet the needs of Random House? This
is indeed a sad day when Canadian government agencies are tools in a
publisher's plans to deceive the public. Please further ascertain the
nature of this work and reclassify the work accordingly as fiction.
Thanks , Geoff Wade National University of Singapore ----------- <>
Ed. note: I was curious about other publications whose factual
content has been challenged by historians; the _Journal of Historical
Review_--a publication dedicated to the work of Holocaust denial
appears in the United States Library of Congress catalogue under a D
(history) classification. D is also the classification at the
University of Minnesota Library for Ignatius P. Donnelly's _Atlantis:
The Antediluvian World_ (originally published 1882). I believe that
cataloguers may be bound to follow the information provided by
publishers, but perhaps one of our librarian members who is familiar
with library cataloging protocols may be able to clarify this issue.
FFC -
To post to H-ASIA simply send your message H-ASIA November 9, 2005
Observations on some publishing and on library classifications -
From: Frances Wood <Frances.Wood@bl.uk>
<mailto:Frances.Wood@bl.uk> The publication of rubbish as
history is very depressing and reveals quite clearly how
irresponsible many publishers have become.
David Selbourne's _The
City of Light_ was condemned as riddled with errors by several
Arabists, a handful of Sinologists, a couple of Hebraists and an
historian of Medieval Italy, all eminent and highly respected
scholars- I remember it well as I wrote a long piece on its critical
reception in the UK for publication in Shanghai to clarify the
situation for Chinese colleagues.
Despite this, I received a
query only about a year ago asking if this (travesty) was suitable
for use by undergraduates? From this perspective, Geoff Wade's
campaign is very important and deserves general support unless we
want to spend the rest of our lives explaining patiently why 1421 or
whatever it is is not just a waste of time but seriously misleading.
I am happy to say that I've never met the author but I understand
from colleagues who, to their mortification, are mentioned in his
preface that they are invariably misquoted.
The question of
subject indexing is, to me, slightly less important. Cataloguers, who
are not always subject specialists, take subject cataloguing far too
seriously. These days title-word searches will suffice for most
puposes and many of us would do well to avoid subject indexing and
classification which in specialist areas can get pretty fraught. As a
cataloguer of Chinese books, I've never been able to take the Dewey
Decimal system seriously since I discovered that it had a special
number for elastic-sided boots but nothing for eunuchs. In my youth,
I used to consider it harmless fun to classify obvious works of
exaggerated political propaganda as 'fiction' but my colleagues now
tell me that this is very bad indeed, the librarian is supposed to be
a mere filter for the classification proposed by publishers- which if
they continue to publish such rubbish seems a position of almost
equally irresponsible passivity. Frances Wood (I've probably gone too
far!)
Ed. note: Well, I don't think so! Dr Frances Wood is Head
of Chinese, Manchu & Mongolian Collections at the British
Library. A major figure in East Asian Librarianship, she is also
author of a number of important books including:
_The Silk Road:
two thousand years in the heart of Asia_ (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002) ISBN 0520237862 (orig. published London:
Folio Society, 2002) _Did Marco Polo go to China?_ (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1995) ISBN 0436201666 [and Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1996) ISBN 0813389984; 0813389992 (pbk.) _No dogs and not many
Chinese: treaty port life in China 1843-1943_ (London: John Murray,
1998) ISBN 0719557585 _Oriental gardens_ (with Norah Titley) (London:
British Library, 1991) ISBN 0712302395 _Chinese illustration_
(London: British Library, c1985)ISBN 0712300538 (and San Francisco:
Chronicle Books, 1992) ISBN 0811801322 FFC H-ASIA November 11, 2005
Publisher/Library responsibility in Classification of Books (was
*1421*) LONG ******
November 10, 2005 Further comment re:
complaining to the FTC about *1421* ****
**** From: Geoff Wade
<arigpw@nus.edu.sg> Dear List, Professor Goldin's response to
my earlier postings is encouraging in that it suggests that people
are thinking about the propositions and possible methods for dealing
with some of the problems faced. However, there seems to be some
misunderstanding between us on key aspects of this issue. I was
certainly not advocating approaches to the FTC over every history
book that offers a different take on an issue to that which one
holds.
There is no need to tell H-Asia readers about the diversity of opinions which exist in respect of historical events, the breadth of explanation possible for phenomena of the past, and the need for there to be healthy debate among the persons who hold such views. That is all taken as given. But with Menzies' *1421* and the upcoming *The Island of Seven Cities*, we are speaking of a very different phenomenon.
We can illustrate this by taking Professor Goldin's example of the history proffered by Charles and Mary Beard in *The Rise of American Civilization*. In this work, the authors proceeded from recognised historical phenomena (that there were people known as "Founding Fathers", that there was a system of slavery in place, that there was a Civil War, etc.) and interpreted these things in a way which differed from the mainstream.
Most historians will accept this as a valid manifestation of the diversity of historical explanation (surely, one of the great beauties of the discipline). But with *1421* and *The Island of Seven Cities*, we are addressing accounts which are completely fictitious. Objections to these volumes do not lie in differences in "interpreting historical evidence" or an "author's interpretations of historical evidence," suggested by Professor Goldin.
There were, by universal academic
recognition, no such 15th-century Chinese voyages in the Atlantic,
Arctic, Antarctic or Pacific Oceans, no such celestial observation
posts established, no global mapping, and no Chinese settlement on
Cape Breton Island. The claims are all fabricated, and the books were
created with intent to make money by deceiving the public. I do hope
that the majority of H-Asia members will recognise a quite marked
qualitative difference between the two examples. I initially
considered such works to be simply the products of charlatans who had
convinced publishers of the commercial merit of their fabrications.
However, the complicity of the publishers has become increasingly
apparent. Those who know the publication process of *1421* affirm
that the original text offered to the publishers was nothing like the
published work. It was half the size and had a very different focus.
Menzies himself admits that the publishers rewrote it for him,
obviously to suit their marketing needs.
In the *1421*
acknowledgements, Menzies cites 12 Transworld staff members and
"their teams" who had been instrumental in bringing the
book the market. The deception and responsibility for it is thus very
much joint. What we have therefore is not a person proposing a new
thesis, or "interpreting historical evidence". It is a
corporation manipulating a manuscript, in itself already false, and
then classifying it as history, in order to improve marketing and
maximize profits. As such, it is a false product, deceitfully
labelled and it is thereby subject to the various statues which guide
the advertising and sale of products within our respective societies.
It is thus that I took my complaints to the Consumer Complaints body in the UK and the FTC in the United States. If Professor Goldin considers this to amount to my opposition to the right of historians to "interpret historical evidence", so be it. The three books I have cited (*1421* in its British and US versions and *The Island of Seven Cities*) are all published by corporations subordinate to the Bertelsmann media group and undoubtedly these works form parts of an integrated global marketing strategy. Whether other publishers are intending to catch the same wave is moot, but the trend is worrying.
Why worrying, some may ask. The classification of fiction as history is already an obvious problem, and the chauvinism which Menzies' book has induced in East Asia on the basis that *1421* is "history" is powerful evidence of this. But more importantly (and the significance of this has only begun to sink in this week as I have learned more about library systems, classifications and cataloguing), is that publishers can basically create their own library categories for the books they publish. Thus, the repositories of public knowledge reflect not what their personnel determine a book might be, but what the publisher says that it is.
If a publisher calls their book
"history", it appears that generally a library will accept
this and catalogue it accordingly. This may have been an effective
and desirable system in times of yore, when publishers' reputations
were high, when everyone had the public interest at heart and when
the academic world was somewhat smaller.
Today, when the cynical
manipulation of the book-buying public is an essential element in
many publishers' profit-maximizing arsenals, is the system still
feasible or does public interest demand its overhaul? In the case of
these three books, I have advocated a triple-prong approach:
1)
Direct approach to the publishers, noting the disquiet among the
academic community about these books and their classification;
2)
Formal complaints to the government bodies which implement fair
trading policies and monitor infractions
Approaches to libraries or library
associations to try and ensure some veracity in the eventual
classification of the works. I do hope that H-Asia members will join
in the campaign in at least one of those areas. These are but
stop-gap measures. I think that the issues raised by the publication
and classification of these books are extremely important, not only
for historians, but also, as Ryan has noted, for how our societies
classify knowledge.
I thank Professor Goldin (and Dr Wood) for
their responses and hope that other members of H-Asia will also go
public in their thoughts on these matters.
With best wishes, Geoff Wade Asia Research Institute National University of Singapore H-ASIA November 9, 2005 Complaining to the FTC about Gavin Menzies?
From: Geoff Wade <arigpw@nus.edu.sg>
<mailto:arigpw@nus.edu.sg> Dear List, Following Gala Argent's
post of 10 November [posted by Frank Conlon under the subject head
Popular History and Bunkum -- on *1421*
(comment) -- RD], I have
been chewing the cud, and would like now to respond to her
suggestions that:
1) A complaint to the FTC offends against the principle of freedom the press.
2) Such a complaint only furthers the notion of the "academic
community" as being closed and intellectually conservative.
3) That the action I have taken and urged others to take "boils
down to having the public's reading material, or classification
thereof, monitored by an academic elite." She urges "countering
Menzies with an intellectually accessible book targeted to that
audience." The appeal solely to the marketplace of ideas may
indeed be suitable for perfect worlds, but ours aren't quite perfect
yet.
Advertisement
The suggestions ignore the basis of the problem, the amount of
money involved, the global reach of the publishers, and the social
effects, particularly in East Asia, detailed in earlier posts.
Specifically:
1) The complaints to the FTC and the equivalent
body in the UK are not aimed at suppressing any publication or
authorial opinion. They are simply intended to ensure that the
purchasing public are not duped by the description of the product
offered by the publisher. Let the publishers continue publishing
*1421* marked as *fiction* forever. 2) Such complaints and the
responses thereto reflect, I would suggest, not a closed and
conservative academic community, but precisely the opposite ?- a
vibrant academic community, with people assuming critical stances
and social responsibilities, as members of any social body are
obligated to do. 3) The suggestion that I am trying to have the
public's reading material monitored by an academic elite is
disingenuous and not worthy of response.
The comment on
classification does deserve comment. If the choice we face is having
the public's reading material classified by individual publishers
(who may just occasionally be influenced by their pecuniary
interests) or by an "academic elite" (including
librarians), I would certainly opt for the latter, as I think would
most thinking people. But the most interesting suggestion is that
someone should write an "intellectually accessible book
targeted to that audience." I don't know if Ms Argent has ever
tried writing a popular book, intellectually accessible or
otherwise, which tries to dismiss a thesis about something which
never happened.
I may be a closed-minded bigot bent on censoring
the world's publications, but I do have enough nous to know that
such a book is not going to get far in the popular market place.
Likely effect: nil!
There already exist excellent reviews and
dismissals of the Menzies thesis:
1. Robert Finlay
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jwh/15.2/finlay.html
2. Bill Hartz http://www.hallofmaat.com/1421.html
3. Phil
Rivers http://www.selectbooks.com.sg/titles/36572.htm
4. Tim
Barrett _The Independent_, November 16, 2002 And, in Chinese, all of
the news about Menzies' claims and rebuttals is detailed in the
Newsletters issued by the National Cheng-kung
University:
http://www.sname.ncku.edu.tw/ncku_chinese/teacher/personal/cjh/cheng-ho/
However,
these are mainly read by those with sufficient knowledge to know
that the book was a fraud to begin with. The converted need no more
converting.
On the other hand, we have these global publishers
funding the 1421 website, assigning staff to promotional work,
sending Menzies off on global tours, funding exhibitions and book
launches, and promoting television programs, appealing even to
people who will never read the book, but think the idea is great,
and as it is"history" must by definition be true! Taxi
drivers throughout East Asia today regale their customers with the
new history of world discovery a la Menzies. Even Hu Jintao,
the Chinese president, spoke to the Australian parliament in October
2003 and noted how links between China and Australia dated back to
the eunuch voyages of the 1420s!
See:
http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/Repository/Chamber/Hansardr/Linked/2966-4.PDF
Contra Ms Argent, this will not all be resolved by a decent academic debate and an intellectually accessible rebuttal. I think that we can affirm that we do have a problem. And with *The Island of the Seven Cities* just around the corner, that problem is just going to grow. As noted previously, the nature of these works (and particularly the _modus operandi_ of their publishers) demands a broader social response than the usual academic reaction to new works. There is, I have suggested, a need to call into play national legislations and public institutions to counter the very calculated manipulation and attempted deception of societies globally (the rights to a French edition have just been sold) by the various publishers under Bertelsmann. I stand firmly by my appeal to colleagues to pursue these options. Best wishes, Geoff Wade National University of Singapore.
:Dear people, A few more 1421 related postings geoff ----- H-ASIA November 15, 2005 Popular History and Bunkum -- TV documentary on *1421* *
From: Geoff Wade <arigpw@nus.edu.sg>
<mailto:arigpw@nus.edu.sg> Dear all, There is only one two-part
_1421_ series out there at present, that made by Paladin Invision of
Britain, which is a joint operation between William Cran of Invision
Productions and Clive Syddall of Paladin Pictures. Even before 1421
was published, Pearson Broadband had acquired the rights to the book
(which again underlines that this is no ordinary academic
discussion). They then subcontracted Paladin Invision to make the
series, but for PBS in the United States. That is the version now
doing the rounds of national television stations, including
Australia.
Paladin Invision's site is/was here: http://www.pitv.com/ The PBS
press release is here:
http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/news/20030110_china.html Those who wish
to know more about the production of the two-part series can contact
the producer, Ms Lucy Van Beek: Lucy van Beek Producer Paladin
Invision 8 Barb Mews London W6 7PA Tel: +44 (0) 207 348 1958 Fax: +44
(0) 207 371 2160 Email: lucy@pitv.com
Best wishes, Geoff Wade
National University of Singapore
H-ASIA November 15, 2005 Popular History and Bunkum -- on *1421* and appropriate responses to it *****
H-ASIA November 15, 2005 Popular
History and Bunkum -- on *1421* and appropriate responses to it
From:
Ryan Dunch <ryan.dunch@ualberta.ca>
<mailto:ryan.dunch@ualberta.ca> Jumping in on my own account
again: I am moderately encouraged to see that of the top eight Google
hits today for "Menzies 1421," four are for sites critical
of the book. One is actually a blog re-posting of Geoff Wade's H-ASIA
post that kicked off this thread on October 21, by H-ASIA member
Michael Turton -- suitably credited (thanks Michael -- see
http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/2005/10/gavin-menzies-and-ming-voyages.html).
Also I see that a good proportion of the 170-plus reviews on Amazon.com are critical of the book, though it still gets a cumulative reader rating of over 3 stars out of 5. The top one, by "Smallchief," begins "If you believe that little green men from outer space built Stonehenge or the Nazca lines in Peru, this is the book you want to read.
Don't get me wrong. I like books that
shake and rattle the academic establishment -- but you gotta be at
least moderately credible and get most of your facts right. Menzies
fails on both counts ..."
(see
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/006054094X/002-1425814-3984046?v=glance).
Moreover, since I mentioned the History News Network as a venue in my
post of November 11, I am glad to see that it ran a critical review
of Menzies' book by Timothy Furnish way back in March of 2003 (see
http://hnn.us/articles/1308.html).
Also worth noting is the Wikipedia entry under "1421 hypothesis" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1421_hypothesis). This thread has overlapped with an interesting thread on H-World about Wikipedia, mostly lamenting student reliance on it, but some posts have also noted the potential that exists for people with academic credentials to contribute to it (for those who are not familiar with it, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia with a text which any reader can modify).
I mention these examples because I imagine that the set of people who have bought the Menzies book will overlap considerably with the set of people who will do web searches or read the Wiki entry or Amazon reviews on its subject matter. And employing the worldwide web to reach an audience with a reasoned critique of the book is more likely to be feasible for academics than producing our own TV documentary or publishing a refutation that will have a hope of reaching a mass audience. Amazon reviews and Wikipedia entries are particularly worth considering.
As a case in point, one of the top few Amazon reviews cites Robert Finlay's very thorough review essay in the Journal of World History, which Geoff Wade's post today also mentioned (http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jwh/15.2/finlay.html). So much for the hopeful side.
More salutary is the reader response to Furnish's History News Network piece (linked from the article at http://hnn.us/articles/1308.html). The good news is that people read his critique who would never open an academic history journal. The bad news is that he got flamed, repeatedly: accused of being "a debunker with an agenda," "unprofessional," "condescending," to quote a few.
Anyway, I have more than enough with H-ASIA to keep me busy(!), but the potential for academics to reach new audiences on "hot issues" like this through avenues already existing on the web certainly exists, with promise and attendant pitfalls. Ryan Dunch University of Alberta
From: Ryan Dunch <ryan.dunch@ualberta.ca> A couple more
issues occur to me out of our discussion of _1421_, particularly the
points raised by Dr. Goldin in response to Geoff Wade. We all know
that the claims of the discipline to provide reliable knowledge about
the past have been seriously contested on philosophical/literary
grounds since at least the 1970s. For instance, recently Keith
Jenkins in "Refiguring History" has argued that histories
do not have reference to a thing called "the past" or
"history" that exists outside the text, and they should
never have been thought to have done so. History's implicit or
explicit claim to provide "knowledge" about "the past"
is spurious, he argues, and so therefore are the standards of
"appropriate" argument and use of evidence sustained by the
collectivity of professional historians. For Jenkins, these are
nothing more than tools of self-validation that historians employ to
restrict access to their "guild" (p. 31).
In my view, Jenkins overstates his case massively (I am drawing
above from my review of his book, which spells out my criticism more
fully ? citation below). He is partly right, though, in observing
that historians collectively maintain the parameters of the
discipline (however imperfectly) through the institutions of
manuscript refereeing and peer review of publications, and that we do
so with reference to implicitly shared but seldom articulated
standards about what constitutes historical evidence and appropriate
argument based on evidence.
However, as _1421_ illustrates, there is a broader public
discourse about "history" with popular, even mass, appeal
that falls outside the oversight structures of professional
historians. The books of Simon Winchester are one example ?
biographies written with journalistic verve that are (in his case)
academically sound and very popular (my father is a dedicated reader
of popular history of this sort, and probably many of us know similar
people). Few professional historians write effectively for this
readership, or aspire to, since such work does not rank high within
the reward structures of academe. Of another type is _1421_, which
through marketing and the sheer audacity of its claims has done an
end run around the historical discipline to a mass market.
More marginal, but still illustrating the limits of professional
oversight of the invocation of "history" are the Russian
mathematicians who argue based on mathematical correlations in
ancient records that the accepted dating for historical events is
wrong and the "recorded history of mankind started not earlier
than the year 900 AD" (see
<http://www.revisedhistory.org/investigation-historical-dating.htm>http://www.revisedhistory.org/investigation-historical-dating.htm).
Jenkins goes on to argue that rejecting all the suppositions upon
which the discipline of history has rested is not only logically
necessary but also liberating, for loosing the shackles which bind
historical accounts to their supposed "pasts" opens up
space for completely new imaginings, and indeed for "radical,
open-ended democracy" (p. 5). I don't know how he would react to
_1421_, but for most practising historians it probably exemplifies
the danger in taking the postmodern argument to the conclusion
Jenkins articulates.
Dr. Wade's suggestions involve trying to expand the scope of
disciplinary oversight of the label "history" through
approaches to cataloguers and through using consumer watch
legislation to try to influence publishers. Vincent Pollard suggests
trying to "fight fire with fire" through the popular media,
and Gala Argent suggests that historians' need to counter Menzies
"with an intellectually accessible book targeted to [the same]
audience." All these approaches have merit, clearly, if one can
invest the time and energy needed. On a more limited scale, perhaps
H-ASIA can play a role through posting summary statements about
historically problematic works on the website, or by publishing a
formal book review of _1421_ that will then a) get cross-posted and
b) be preserved and accessible through the H-Reviews website. Another
suggestion is to write an op-ed piece for the History News Network
(<http://www.historynewsnetwork.org/>http://www.historynewsnetwork.org/).
Most of its stories are US-focused, but it has established a record of success in getting accessible informed pieces by real historians into the mass print media. For what it's worth ? Ryan Dunch University of Alberta Works cited: Keith Jenkins, *Refiguring History: New Thoughts on an Old Discipline*, (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). Ryan Dunch, review of Jenkins, *Refiguring History*, in *Canadian Journal of History* 40:1 (Apr 2005), 190-191. Simon Winchester, *The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology* (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). Idem., *The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)
SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/ H-ASIA > November 10, 2005 > > Comment on discussion re: Popular History and Bunkum > ****** > Mail List's Ed. note: This item was received Nov. 1, but was one of the posts that > got stalled in our editorial mills. Apologies for the delay. FFC > ------
To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
This is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the US ABC.
geoff -----Original Message----- From: Geoff Wade Sent: Wed
16/11/2005 15:16 To: 'abcac@your.abc.net.au';
'abc.enterprises@abc.net.au'; 'legal@your.abc.net.au';
'progsales@your.abc.net.au' Cc: 'Kevin.Rudd.MP@aph.gov.au';
'fair.trading@act.gov.au' Subject: Violation of TRADE PRACTICES ACT
by ABC: *1421: the Year China Discovered the World*
Dear ABC, I
note that you have for sale in the ABC shop, the book *1421: the Year
China Discovered the World* by Gavin Menzies, classified under the
category History. I would like to bring to your notice that all major
claims within the work are fictitious (as detailed below) and as such
the work does not qualify to be classified as History, which requires
that the account be based on historical sources. *1421* fails in this
respect.
Stating that something relates to the past does not
qualify it as History. As such, you are in obvious violation of the
TRADE PRACTICES ACT 1974 - SECT 53, which states that: False or
misleading representations A
corporation
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#corporation>
shall not, in trade or commerce
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#trade_or_commerce>
, in connexion with the
supply
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s75at.html#supply>
or possible supply
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s75at.html#supply>
of goods
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#goods>
or
services
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#services>
or in connexion with the promotion by any means of the supply
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s75at.html#supply>
or use of
goods
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#goods>
or
services
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#services>
: (a) falsely represent that
goods
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#goods>
are of a particular standard, quality, value, grade, composition, style or model or have had a particular history or particular previous use; (aa) falsely represent that services <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#services> are of a particular standard, quality, value or grade; Your attention is also drawn to SECT 65AN of the same Act, which notes that the onus is on you to prove your description of the product. Proceedings relating to false, misleading or deceptive conduct or representations...
If:
(a) proceedings are brought
against a person
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s152ac.html#person>
in respect of section 52, paragraph 53(a) or (eb) or paragraph
75AZC(1)(a) or (i); and (b) the person
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s152ac.html#person>
seeks to rely on a provision
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#provision>
of this Division, or of a regulation made under this Division, in
the proceedings; the person
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s152ac.html#person>
bears an evidential burden
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s65an.html#evidential_burden>
in relation to the matters set out in the provision
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s4.html#provision>
on which the person
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s152ac.html#person>
seeks to rely.
(2) In this section: "evidential burden",
in relation to a matter, means the burden of adducing or pointing to
evidence that suggests a reasonable possibility that the matter
exists or does not exist
This is the work Chinese President Hu
Jintao was citing when he claimed in the Australian parliament in
October 2003 that the Chinese had visited Australia in the early
15th
century.
http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/Repository/Chamber/Hansardr/Linked/2966-4.PDF
Its contribution to misinformation and dangerous chauvinism is thus
demonstrated, and its classification as History can only exacerbate
this problem. I urge you to reclassify the work in your bookshops
clearly as fiction Thanking you, Geoff Wade National University of
Singapore
To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to:
<H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post
to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL
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Original Message - From: H-Net
list for Asian History and Culture on behalf of Ryan Dunch Sent: Sun
20/11/2005 03:52 To: H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU Cc: Subject: H-ASIA:
Classification of books (subset of *1421*) H-ASIA November 19, 2005
Classification of books (subset of *1421*)
From: Geoff Wade <arigpw@nus.edu.sg> Dear List, A few
persons have responded off-list on issues related to those we have
been discussing in terms of publisher classification and eventual
library classification of books. I have obtained the permission of
the following, who are all engaged in some aspect of the
classification process, to distribute their comments to the List.
Best, Geoff Wade National University of Singapore **
1. From:
David Murrell-Wright, Manager, Monograph Cataloguing, Library and
Archives Canada Subject: "Island of the seven cities" Geoff
Wade: Thank you for the information you sent to us on the proposed
Random House publication, "Island of the seven cities". The
record you have seen in the Library and Archives Canada website is a
pre-publicaton "Cataloguing in Publication" record based on
information from the publisher. With the information you have sent to
us we will be in a better position to assign appropriate subject
headings to the book when it arrives next year.
2. From Peter
Davison of Cambridge University Press As part of the production
process we pass either a substantial pack of stuff (prelims, TOC,
sample chapter) or a whole e-file both to the LOC and to the BL.
Their cataloguers evaluate this and prepare a draft catalogue record
(=CIP) for printing in the book, which contains their class numbers,
author-authority, Dewey etc. Entirely up to them; we give them no
guidance or lead. LOC does it themselves; BL has privatised this bit
to BDS in Dundee, who provide a joint service for BL and Nielsen
BookData. Both libraries issue their CIP in digital form very widely.
When the final book in hand reaches the library, they recatalogue
(adding page extent, making any corrections etc.) and they then issue
a final accession record. This can be months/years after we publish.
Squillions of other national libraries process books in exactly the
same way.
It's certainly not unusual for a book to have several
<different> Deweys (ours, LOC, BL, OCLC, Blackwell); several
different BIC codes (ours, NBD's, Waterstones); several different
BISAC codes (ours, Barnes/Noble, Amazon, Borders). Many of them
hopeless Of course, everyone is right. 1421 is clearly not creative
fiction as traditionally defined. It's in a strong tradition (Kon
Tiki, Ra Expedition, and any UFO book ever). 3. From: Dr Annabel
Gallop, British Library Good on yer!
I am enjoying your diatribes
- and I really do appreciate your *detailed* rebuttal of specific
points; I have heard a lot of general comments about these books, but
very few point to specific problems. But ... let me just reach for my
horn-rimmed Librarian's glasses in an attempt to impart sufficient
po-faced sternness to my defence of my Canadian colleagues, or,
indeed, librarians anywhere ...
The publisher's blurb is one
thing. But in classifying a book as history, where would librarians
draw the line between 'genuine' history and somebody's crackpot
ideas? There is a very grey area in between, which, at its murkiest,
could simply encompass an area of disagreement between two
historians; in less grey areas, there might be radical theories not
accepted at the time of writing which are later proved correct; in
others, there are certainly skewed or distorted (for nationalistic or
other reasons) writings which nonetheless have enough of a germ of
history to be called such.
One book that comes to mind is Muhammad
Yamin's '6000 tahun sang merah putih', tracing [sic!] through 6000
years the significance of red-white to the Indonesian people. But I
do see it as the task of historians - i.e. you - to take the lead in
debunking specific works, rather than librarians, who could, however,
later reflect a scholarly consensus on the status of such works when
classifying them.
Trouble is, I don't know if the Library of
Congress Subject Headings has a category for 'spoof' or spurious
histories. 4. From: Dr Frances Wood, British Library Dear Geoff Wade,
Congratulations- what you are doing is very important indeed. It's
frightening how irresponsible publishers have become. A similar case
was David Selbourne's City of Light, an entire fiction, based on
nothing and full of errors. These were pointed out by sinologists,
Hebraists, historians of Italy, North African taxation systems etc
etc etc. I put my tinier oar in where I could. About a year ago an
American academic wrote and asked me whether the book was suitable
for undergraduate use - so it has retained a completely undeserved
respectability. Some say that Menzies is very litigious although the
threatened law-suits have never actually materialised.
When I was
in SOAS library in the Chinese section I used to amuse myself by
doing the opposite of the Canadians and classifying particularly mad
works of Chinese propaganda (both mainland and Taiwanese) as
'fiction'. with very best wishes, Frances Wood, Chinese section
Menzies and 1421 continued ... From: Geoff Wade
<arigpw@nus.edu.sg> Dear H-ASIA For those interested, it can be
reported that the Menzies 1421 bandwagon is now in Shenzhen, China (a
city just over the border from Hong Kong). Thanks to the good offices
of Dr Jin Guo-ping in Portugal, I obtained a copy of today's Shenzhen
Economic Daily which provides us with all the details no-one wanted
to know about Mr Menzies, his claims and his activities.
I have done a quick translation to illustrate some of the usual snake-oil seller tricks at which Mr Menzies has become so adept. The modus operandi ("I have this great discovery but you can't know about it until x months in the future"), the obvious speciousness of the claim, the use of "tamed" reporters (some even claim that reporters of illustrious British news organisations were so tamed), the citing of the involvement of illustrious people or institutions, and the attempt to drum up support for future events and publications, are all now so familiar that they are becoming a tad boring. However, this is provided for those who have not had the pleasure of reading how the man operates or observed his "mode de duperie"
Best wishes, Geoff Wade National University of Singapore
From: Shenzhen Economic Daily_ 19 November 2005 (original here:
http://www.sznews.com/szsb/20051119/ca1994120.htm) "He has
obtained the 'Zheng He global map' (Headline) "By Li Ning
[translation by Geoff Wade] "On this, his fifth visit to
Shenzhen, Gavin Menzies, the author of *1421, the Year China
Discovered the World*, has revealed his newest startling evidence: He
has obtained the *Zheng He global map*. "Drawn in 1418, it is
the earliest and most complete world map discovered to date. "On
17 November, I visited Menzies in his hotel. Mr Gavin Menzies , who
is a former British naval commander and author of *1421, the Year
China Discovered the World* has come to Shenzhen to participate in
the Reading Forum during Shenzhen's Reading Month.
On 28 May this
year, Menzies came to Shenzhen's Material Life Book Bar to promote
his book and his newest discoveries, and I interviewed him then. The
Shenzhen Economic Daily produced a large report in the *Forward
Position* column of its *Cultural Square* page on 29 May. When I
visited him on this occasion, I discovered that he was even more
confident and lively. The interview, which was scheduled for only
half and hour extended to more than two hours. Menzies is scheduled
to make a presentation on his new discoveries on the afternoon of 19
November in the Shenzhen Cultural Building as a guest of the Shenzhen
Reading Forum. "After we had exchanged a few words of greeting,
I pulled out a copy of the *Cultural Square* page of the Shenzhen
Economic Daily of 29 May.
When Menzies saw his face figuring prominently on the page, he was
extremely pleased and happily signed the piece, dedicating it to the
Shenzhen Economic Daily readers. "He obtained the Zheng He map
just two weeks ago (subhead) "The most stunning material which
Menzies brought to Shenzhen on this occasion was a map. Mr Menzies
gingerly showed a photocopy of it to me, and repeatedly warned us not
to photograph it. He said that this "Zheng he Global Map"
was drawn in 1418.
I observed on it that in one corner there were the characters
"Tian-xia quan-yu zong-tu" (Overall map of all territories
under Heaven) and also the five characters Cai-hui-zhai shou-cang
(Collection of the Cai-hui Studio). On the map the five major
continents and the major oceans were fully depicted and the major
rivers and mountain ranges were very clearly depicted. However, the
outlines of the continents were not very accurate.
The small designs on the map were done in much the same manner as
the ancient fresco technique, and there were few characters. Menzies
said, that seen from the map, we can observe that at that time the
North Pole region was passable and we can thus state that at that
time the global weather was warmer than it is at present. The
Atlantic Coast of North America is drawn very accurately. Menzies
noted that this shows that the people who drew the map had been to
the Americas at this time and carried out a careful investigation.
"The Earliest and Most Complete World Map (subhead) "Menzies
has collected over world 60 maps of all sorts predating 1421.
But, he notes that these maps which he has collected are all
incomplete. In 1990, Menzies came to Beijing to celebrate his silver
anniversary and visited the Forbidden City. His guide told him of the
history of the Yongle emperor and the navigator Zheng He, and thus he
began to gather materials to prove Zheng He's discovery of the
American continent. In the 15 years since then, he has visited 120
countries and examined materials in over 900 museums, libraries and
archives.
This year (2005), Menzies has gone abroad 15 times and come to
Shenzhen four times. This year he has also started his 1421 website
at www.1421.tv, and 13,000 supporters have provided him with all
sorts of evidence through the website, which now runs to 2,000 pages.
He also has a contingent of volunteers, numbering more than 10, and
some have been with him for 2 to 3 years.
Menzies said that up till now the map which the Beijing lawyer
showed him is the most complete map which he has seen, and has
greatly excited him "Showing Australia and New Zealand for the
First Time (subhead) "Menzies said that the map which the
Beijing lawyer had given him is the first to clearly show Australia
and New Zealand. This further shows that the Chinese were the first
to reach Oceania and also shows that that the aboriginal and Maori
people of Oceania have Chinese blood. "A Copy of the Map
Appeared in Europe in 1419 (subhead) "In order to prove the
veracity of this map, Menzies conducted verification from three
angles. He said that the first proof was that a world map appeared in
Europe in 1419, within two years after the "Zheng He Global Map"
was completed.
Thus, the European map was a copy of the Zheng He map. The
European map has already been acknowledged as being genuine. Another
proof is that an ancient map drawn in Venice in 1428 has, like the
"Zheng He Global Map", an island in the Bering Straits.
This island actually does not exist. This shows that the Venice map
copied the Zheng He map. Further, the mountains and rivers found on
this map can all be found on the Zheng He map. The third proof is
that at that time, there was no map as complete as the "Zheng He
Global Map".
They were all partial. It has to be said that the "Zheng He
Global Map" is the consummate expression of all these maps. From
this, Menzies infers that the fleets of Zheng He met up with the
Italian Toscanelli and gave the map to him. This Italian later gave
the map to Columbus. Historical documents show that Columbus himself
conceded that he had obtained maps from others. "The Beijing
Lawyer Bought the Map Four Years Ago in Beijing (subhead) "How
then did Menzies obtain this "Zheng He Global Map"?
Initially Menzies would not reveal the details. However, after
repeated probing by this reporter, Menzies said that a Beijing lawyer
surnamed Liu had shown it to him two weeks ago. The lawyer Mr Liu had
contacted Mr Menzies through email and advised that he had a very
valuable map in his hands. Menzies said that initially he was not
particularly excited, as he had all sorts of maps himself. The lawyer
was also astonished to know that Menzies had over 60 ancient maps.
The lawyer still urged Menzies to have a look at his map before passing comment. In the end, Menzies decided to have a look. Menzies repeatedly asked me not to photograph this map, as it would be made public along with the results of the study being made of it in January next year. Menzies said that the Mr Liu the lawyer would be publishing an article on the map in a magazine on 28 November. Mr Liu bought the map in Beijing four years ago. "The Map is Awaiting Isotopic Dating (subhead) "Menzies noted that this map is awaiting isotopic dating by Cambridge University in England and Waikato University in New Zealand, and that the results would be made public on 17 January. I asked him: "Given the growing proofs being discovered, I expect you are increasingly confident." On hearing this, Menzies gave me a very self-assured smile. I continued: "If the results of the testing are not what you expect, will you feel regret about the last 15 years you have spent on your research?"
Menzies seriously responded: "I am convinced that it is
genuine. The Europeans had a copy. How could they have made a fake
then? However, I am going to wait for the results of the testing. If
it truly is a fake, it will not negate the 15 years of hard work and
will not negate what I have said in the past. Even if this is a fake,
I have a large number of other maps which can be verified." "He
is also going to Canada to the Zheng He Naval Base (subhead) "Menzies
also noted his trip in May this year to the Zheng He naval base in
Canada--located on a peninsula on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia,
eastern Canada. Menzies notes that next year in May, when the snows
melt he will be going to the island again to conduct a 3-month
investigation. Last time they went they experienced many twists and
turns, because the island is so closed and it is very difficult to
get there. They took a helicopter to Sydney (Canada) and then took a
car which bumped its way across to the island. They arranged food and
tents to allow them to stay there for two weeks. Now they are raising
funds for the next investigation. Chiasson, the Canadian who
discovered this site, is an architect, and specialises in the study
of East Asia architecture Soon, he will be publishing his book
"Island of Seven Cities" In this book he claims that the
platforms on the island are arranged in a way which characterises
Asian Buddhist layouts.
He also says in the book that according to the local Indian folklore, a long time ago large ships came here and built a base. The local Micmac people say that these "foreigners" taught them how to write. Their writing is similar to the script of the Yi people of Yunnan, and their clothing is also similar to the Yi people, with the top garment hung with pearls. The Micmac people and the Yi people both believe that there is a rabbit in the moon. "Gavin Menzies' most startling evidence is: "1. The "Zheng He Global Map" was drawn in 1418. "2. It is the first map to show Australia and New Zealand "3. Two years later, Europe also had such a world map" (end)
Re: Menzies and 1421 continued -
From: Geoff Wade
<arigpw@nus.edu.sg>
Dear H-Asia members,For those who missed yesterday's gripping
account of the Menzies publicity machine (a.k.a. Gavin) as it rolled
into Southern China, herewith the report on his Shenzhen talk
yesterday, with even more unfounded claims being made (graves with
Chinese characters indeed!). Mercifully it is short. Again it is from
the Shenzhen Economic Daily and again thanks to Jin Guo-ping for
providing it. The translation is mine.
Am I alone in sensing a
little Menzies-Bertelsmann publicity collaboration in the lead-up to
the launch of Chiasson's "Island of Seven Cities"?Best,Geoff
WadeNational University of Singapore**
Shenzhen Economic Daily 20 November 2005
Menzies: *Zheng He
Discovered the American Continent* (Headline) Menzies, the author of
*1421: the Year China Discovered the World* astonishes all with his
brilliant thesis
*Zheng He Discovered the American Continent*
(subhead)
Our reporter Li Ke-xin reports:
*It was not Columbus but Zheng He who discovered the American
continent!* Yesterday afternoon, at the Shenzhen Reading Month forum,
the British writer Gavin Menzies, author of *1421: the Year China
Discovered the World*, again put forward to the Shenzhen audience his
earth-shaking views.
Menzies also showed the audience his newest
evidence: a world map he has just obtained and which is considered to
have been drawn by Zheng He!First part of evidence: Columbus obtained
Zheng He's navigational map at yesterday's forum, Menzies claimed
that through 14 years of research, he has discovered that the Chinese
person Zheng He discovered the American continent 70 years prior to
Columbus, and reached the Magellan Straits many years before
Magellan.
Further Zheng He also travelled to North and South
America, the Antarctic, the North Pole and so on. Menzies revealed
that during the course of his investigations, he discovered that an
Italian had had contact with Zheng He's fleet, and had taken the
navigation map from China and passed it on to Columbus.
Several
later navigators had also relied on this navigation map which Zheng
He had drawn to find the so-called *New World*.Second part of
evidence: Carefully ascertaining that the ancient map was drawn by
Zheng He.Menzies also showed to the Shenzhen audience his newest
evidence - a world map considered to have been drawn by Zheng He.
When he showed the map, I saw that it extended from north to
south, from Ecuador down to the peninsula in the Antarctic. In
appearance it was not hugely different from modern maps. Menzies said
that the drawing of such a map could only have been achieved by a
huge fleet, and at that time, the only country in the world with such
a fleet was China. Further, the navigation map which Zheng He left us
also has such a statement on it. He is thus firmly convinced that
this map was drawn by Zheng He.Third part of evidence:
There is a Zheng He naval base in Canada.Menzies also revealed that on a peninsula on the northern Atlantic coast of Canada, they had discovered a naval base where Zheng He's fleet was once stationed. The ancient architecture and the Chinese characters on the remnant graves show that 600 years ago Chinese persons had come to this place. Menzies held that these Chinese people were from Zheng He's fleets and that they had come here in order to make this a base for the global voyages.
Date: 20 November 2005 from Ian Welch at anu.ed.au to H-Asia List, “Ok already! This is becoming very personal. Menzies has the same freedom of speech and publication as any other capitalist entrepreneur. Who cares? Brown is doing exactly the same thing with the Da Vinci Code, and we are not seeing endless notes about that.. Let's move on to other things. I am much more concerned, frankly, that a young Australian is to be hung in Singapore shortly. The issue of capital punishment in Singapore seems a much more significant issue”. ---------
Captain Phil Rivers in November 2005 conveys:
“Nothing about 1421, but some of Menzies' past here: -
Error 4040 - not found - http://www.ussendurance.org/Rorqurl
incident.htm - Menzies commanded Rorqual at this time. [There are] a
lot more classified documents now on the site, giving further
background to the accident”
On a recent Menzies' visit to China, and prior to yet more revelation, see (November 2005), http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/2242/2005-11-22/159@283459.htm
From: Ryan Dunch <@ualberta.ca>
A couple more issues
occur to me out of our discussion of _1421_, particularly the points
raised by Dr. Goldin in response to Geoff Wade. We all know that the
claims of the discipline to provide reliable knowledge about the past
have been seriously contested on philosophical/literary grounds since
at least the 1970s. For instance, recently Keith Jenkins in
"Refiguring History" has argued that histories do not have
reference to a thing called "the past" or "history"
that exists outside the text, and they should never have been thought
to have done so. History's implicit or explicit claim to provide
"knowledge" about "the past" is spurious, he
argues, and so therefore are the standards of "appropriate"
argument and use of evidence sustained by the collectivity of
professional historians. For Jenkins, these are nothing more than
tools of self-validation that historians employ to restrict access to
their "guild" (p. 31). In my view Jenkins overstates his
case massively (I am drawing above from my review of his book, which
spells out my criticism more fully ? citation below).
He is
partly right, though, in observing that historians collectively
maintain the parameters of the discipline (however imperfectly)
through the institutions of manuscript refereeing and peer review of
publications, and that we do so with reference to implicitly shared
but seldom articulated standards about what constitutes historical
evidence and appropriate argument based on evidence. However, as
_1421_ illustrates, there is a broader public discourse about
"history" with popular, even mass, appeal that falls
outside the oversight structures of professional historians.
The
books of Simon Winchester are one example ? biographies written with
journalistic verve that are (in his case) academically sound and very
popular (my father is a dedicated reader of popular history of this
sort, and probably many of us know similar people). Few professional
historians write effectively for this readership, or aspire to, since
such work does not rank high within the reward structures of academe.
Of another type is _1421_, which through marketing and the sheer
audacity of its claims has done an end run around the historical
discipline to a mass market.
More marginal, but still illustrating the limits of professional
oversight of the invocation of "history" are the Russian
mathematicians who argue based on mathematical correlations in
ancient records that the accepted dating for historical events is
wrong and the "recorded history of mankind started not earlier
than the year 900 AD"
(see
<http://www.revisedhistory.org/investigation-historical-dating.htm
Jenkins goes on to argue that rejecting all the suppositions upon
which the discipline of history has rested is not only logically
necessary but also liberating, for loosing the shackles which bind
historical accounts to their supposed "pasts" opens up
space for completely new imaginings, and indeed for "radical,
open-ended democracy" (p. 5). I don't know how he would react to
_1421_, but for most practising historians it probably exemplifies
the danger in taking the postmodern argument to the conclusion
Jenkins articulates.
Dr. Wade's suggestions involve trying to expand the scope of
disciplinary oversight of the label "history" through
approaches to cataloguers and through using consumer watch
legislation to try to influence publishers. Vincent Pollard suggests
trying to "fight fire with fire" through the popular media,
and Gala Argent suggests that historians need to counter Menzies
"with an intellectually accessible book targeted to [the same]
audience."
All these approaches have merit, clearly, if one
can invest the time and energy needed. On a more limited scale,
perhaps H-ASIA can play a role through posting summary statements
about historically problematic works on the website, or by publishing
a formal book review of _1421_ that will then a) get cross-posted and
b) be preserved and accessible through the H-Reviews website. Another
suggestion is to write an op-ed piece for the History News Network
(<http://www.historynewsnetwork.org/
Most of its stories are US-focused, but it has established a
record of success in getting accessible informed pieces by real
historians into the mass print media.
For what it's worth ? Ryan Dunch University of Alberta Works
cited:
Keith Jenkins, *Refiguring History: New Thoughts on an
Old Discipline*, (London and New York: Routledge, 2003).
Ryan
Dunch, review of Jenkins, 'Refiguring History', in Canadian
Journal of History, 40:1 (Apr 2005), 190-191.
Simon
Winchester, *The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the
Birth of Modern Geology* (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
Idem.,
*The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English
Dictionary* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
From: Paul R. Goldin <prg@sas.upenn.edu> Dear List, I've
been re-reading the whole discussion about Gavin Menzies' book, 1421:
The Year China Discovered the World [ed. note: see the logs under
the thread "Popular History and Bunkum" -- RD], because the
posts appeared over a couple of weeks and I was out of town for part
of that time--so I apologize if this comment seems belated.
Although
I am no fan of Menzies, I hope I am also not the only person who is
disturbed by the idea of lodging a complaint with the Federal Trade
Commission because his publisher classifies the book as "history"
instead of "fiction" (as Dr. Wade claims to have done).
Historiography necessarily involves interpreting historical evidence,
and there is no single statement about history that everyone in the
world will accept.
If someone who happens to disagree with an
author's interpretations of historical evidence can freely bring a
complaint against a publisher for classifying that book as "history,"
it would no longer be possible to have open debates about history in
this country. (Just imagine the way this process could be abused by a
malign corporation or political agency.) In the case of an execrable
book like 1421, few people may be inclined to defend the
defendant; but it's a slippery slope, and if Menzies' publisher is
forced by the FTC to market the book as "fiction" instead
of "history," it won't be very long before someone brings
action forcing publishers of, say, the Beards' Rise of American
Civilization to market such books as "fiction" as well.
Paul R. Goldin University of Pennsylvania **
NB: * Dr.
Goldin's reference is to Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The
Rise of American Civilization, originally published by Macmillan
in four volumes from 1927. A one-volume reprint of the 1933 edition
is listed on Amazon from Reprint Services Corp., ISBN 0781248485. The
publisher's description from that listing explains: "One of the
most influential American historians of his time, Beard is most
remembered for his studies into the motives of the Founding Fathers.
He was also blacklisted during the Red Scare of 1919 and was unable
to secure an academic position after that and was forced to live off
of his writings.
Mary Beard, an American historian and feminist,
shared her husband Charles's economic view of history and
collaborated with him on The Rise of American Civilization, in
which they characterized the Civil War as the second American
Revolution, perpetrated by Northern capitalists over Southern
plantation owners for economic gain." RD
Original Message-----
From: H-Net list for Asian History and
Culture on behalf of Ryan Dunch Sent: Tue 22/11/2005 01:32
To:
H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU Cc: Subject: H-ASIA: Menzies and 1421 continued
- H-ASIA November 21, 2005
Menzies and 1421 continued
From: Wolfgang Hoeschele <whoesch@truman.edu> From Geoff
Wade's post [on Nov 20 of a translation from the Shenzhen Economic
Daily], it seems that Menzies must be in trouble without knowing it:
a 1418 map is supposed to show the Americas, which Zheng He's fleet
supposedly discovered only three years later.
So who were the people who did the detailed surveying (while
simultaneously establishing a speed record across the seven seas) for
that map? Isn't there a wide open field here?
Where's the great
Indian or Arab or (God forbid) the European or perhaps the North
African mariner with his astrolabe who constructed this map? Or
should we bring in a great woman for a change to debunk the male
chauvinism of history?
Or perhaps somebody got started from
Australia or America to discover the world, and then passed on the
secret information to Zheng He? Now where's the creative history
writer for this? Anybody from H-Asia ready to make a contribution?
Wolfgang Hoeschele Associate Professor of Geography Truman State
University Kirksville, Missouri, USA
Original Message----- From: H-Net list for Asian History and Culture on behalf of Ryan Dunch Sent: Tue 22/11/2005 00:45 To: H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU Cc: Subject: H-ASIA: Menzies and 1421 continued H-ASIA November 21, 2005 Menzies and 1421 continued
From: Geoff Wade <arigpw@nus.edu.sg> Dear List, Dr Welch in
his recent post [Nov 20 -- ed.] makes several points, suggesting: 1.
That the subject of Menzies and 1421 is past its use-by date
2.
That the criticisms of Menzies have become *very personal*
3.
That the 1421 phenomenon is *exactly the same thing* as that of the
Da Vinci code
4. We should be more engaged with the
question of capital punishment in Singapore While appreciating Dr
Welch's reply, perhaps the following points might be made in
response:
1. As I intended to show by my posts, the Menzies
phenomenon is in the ascendant, is increasingly influential and
increasingly involves global publishers trying to deceive the public.
I still consider it a very topical issue, particularly for
historians.
Given that, there is then the question of how one
should respond to this -- or as Bertolt Brecht rhetorically asked at
the end of his poem The Doubter, "Above all: How does one
act". To this, one can of course respond loudly with another
rhetorical question "Who cares?", or else one can care.
2.
item deleted - Ed.
3. The claim that *1421* and the *Da
Vinci Code* are similar phenomena suggests that Dr Welch has not
been reading the posts on this topic. The whole point of the issue is
that these are opposite phenomena. Dan Brown has categorically stated
that the *Da Vinci Code* is fiction and his publishers
Doubleday have responsibly classified the work as such. Menzies and
his publishers claim that *1421* and the upcoming *Island
of Seven Cities* are History. A responsible classification of
1421 and Island of Seven Cities as fiction, by both the
publishers and by public institutions, would obviate most of the
problems.
4. Writing critically on Menzies does not preclude one
from having thoughts about capital punishment in Singapore or
elsewhere. There are, however, a huge number of lists and concern
groups dedicated to the issue of capital punishment. There is but one
H-Asia and it remains a valuable forum for discussing history-writing
in and on Asia.
With best wishes, Geoff Wade, National University of Singapore
(Ends discussion of 1421 to-date, 28 November 2005 – Ed)
Nature or Nurture? Is a sense of fairness an evolutionary thing or not? Humanity expends vast numbers of words on claims that views on justice are a large part of civilization, and also reside near the seat of the human soul, does it not? These philosophical views are now being monkeyed around with by researchers in Baltimore, US, checking some behaviour from Brown Capuchin Monkeys, especially their females. The monkeys have been trained to exchange plastic tokens for treats of a slice of cucumber, but if another monkey got a better deal for a token, say a grape, they become rather peeved. Monkeys feeling shortchanged might even throw away their token, or their cucumber, rather devaluing things. The peeves of the cucumber-recipients increased as the experiment went on. "Now debate is raging over whether this sense of fairness is an evolutionary thing or an example of behaviour learned in captivity." (Lost Worlds rather idly wonders if it might be more useful to ask a child rather than an adult?) (Reported from a recent issue of journal Nature in Editor section, Weekend Australian, 20-21 September 2003)
Lost Worlds' new e-mail
Points to Ponder from a Lost Worlds e-mailer in the eastern USA on 2-10-2003
Be a good citizen and use your freedom to vote.
At about the
time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution in 1787, a
Scottish history professor by the name of Professor Alexander Tyler
had this to say about "The Fall of the Athenian Republic"
over 2,000 years previous to that date.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship." "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence. From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St.Paul, Minnesota, wrote this about the 2000 election:
Population of counties won by Gore 127 million, won by Bush 143 million.
Sq.miles of country won by Gore 580,000, won by Bush 2,427,000.
States won by Gore 19, by Bush 29.
Murder per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore 13.2, by Bush 2.1 (not a typo).
Professor Olson adds, "The map of the territory Bush won was (mostly) the land owned by the people of this great country. Not the citizens living in cities in tenements owned by the government and living off the government....
Professor Olson thinks the US is now between the apathy and complacency phase of democracy although he believes that 40 percent of the nation's population has already reached the dependency phase. (Both items above were verified by the sender through a Google Internet Search)
(Received 25 February 2002 at Lost Worlds)
IF we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south, 8 Africans, 52 would be female, 48 would be male, 70 would be non-white, 30 would be white, 70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian, 89 would be heterosexual,11 would be homosexual, 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
Some 80 would live in substandard housing, 70 would be unable to read, 50 would suffer from malnutrition, 1 would be near death, 1 would be near birth, 1 (yes, only I) would have a university education, 1 would own a computer,
When you consider our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent. The following is also something to ponder... If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death... you are more blessed than three billion people in the world. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep... you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy. If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very rare. If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
Someone once said, (other people have said it twice or more):
What goes around comes around. Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like no-one's watching. Sing like no-one's listening. Live like it's Heaven on Earth.
From Lost Worlds - 23 September, 2001:
REMARKS following the
11 September 2001 New York World Trade Centre bombing:
In the town in which Lost Worlds is produced lives an old man, who as an Australian soldier was stationed in Japan after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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On day ten after the 9/11 attack, I asked him his reaction to the situation following the New York bombings. All he would say is this: "Terrorism is a weapon for poor people."
Coming from post-atomic Japan, this remark threw many things into a perspective. Especially, that a major factor in world affairs, too-little-mentioned in the world news coverage of the 11 September bombings, and related matters, is world poverty.
However, to mention local or regional poverty, or world poverty, or, in some countries, "poverty in an Islamic world", is also to refer to a great many other matters (where Islam or its critics are influential); including attitudes to various sorts of modernity, the institutions of liberal democracies, and tolerance in religious life - matters affecting all people involved including non-Moslems.
While any sort of war ensues, including any sort of jihad, or Holy War, comment and concern about world poverty is likely to be sidelined even further as a serious issue. This will be doubly unfortunate.
It also seems safe to say, that to speak too strongly about
alleviating world poverty will be counter-productive, as to speak too
strongly would disturb the balance of human virtues which need to be
applied to the relevant work, including suitable education.
(So
there will be no strong words spoken here by this website, which is
anyway mostly concerned with the human past.)
However, I have since 11 September received a great deal of e-mail which is equivocal, uncertain, possibly misleading, about the current world situation. Also, some e-mail which is highly sceptical or cynical about the financial machinations used, or not, by the planners of the New York attack, and the suicidal hijackers involved. None of that e-mail makes for comfortable thoughts about anything.
Deep within all religions abide timeless ideas about how to live a well-rounded human life that leaves a respectable mark when a person dies. These ideas can relate also to some alleviation of world poverty.
World-wide, these ideas need much closer attention from the world media, from economists and financiers, from governments and from religious leaders.
For one new reason: because as so many people after the New York attack, from around the world, remarked quite accurately; the world has changed.
So is there any connection - should there be any connection? - between the current aim of the US, the rooting out of terrorism, and the rooting out of world poverty?
If any such connections exist, matters need further exploration, particularly by the wealthy of the entire world.
This website carries various information about the bloody and unfortunate Crusades which preceded the Renaissance of Western Europe. Which information it is hoped will be of interest about any current risks faced by adherents of religion today.
The world does not need any new Crusades, or conflict between Islam and adherents of any other religions. What the world needs now, more than anger with damage to wealth or pride, is less poverty.
And so, the wealthy and the poor need to sit down, and talk, and to share.
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In fact, as an unpleasant truth, poverty is much more easily-shared-out than wealth. This may be an essential problem that the world is now asking itself to face more realistically.
If this is the case, what is now most important is to ask the right questions. The world seems to be in such a state that many of the better questions will be deflected.
One of Lost Worlds' conclusions from studying the world's first wave of Crusades is that the questions asked by those Crusades were not the best questions, nor the most realistic.
A second, Crusading visitation of non-realistic questions will be disastrous, and will not help alleviate problems in places of poverty. It will merely prolong our evident problems.
Meetings of financiers and the leaders of the world's religions - all religions - almost never happen. So they can never be reported in the world press.
In the interests of realism, we now need to ask: why is this so? Why do financiers and religious leaders have so many motives to avoid each other's company so continually?
It is about time some such meetings were scheduled, regularly, and media-reported, until some decent ideals about future human life can be spoken about seriously, and believably, in the world's media, and by ordinary people.
For if there was one word over-used in the world's media concerning the New York attack, it was the world "unbelievable". Did the over-use of that word speak for itself, or not?
Now, the challenge for the world media is to draw back enough curtains, so that the word "believable" can be used much more often, with much more confidence, by ordinary people, and especially by presently poorer people.
Otherwise, we may all oblige ourselves to continue to live with things "unbelievable". Which will remain painful.
New York World Trade Centre, 11 September, 2001: The chilling
picture below came to Lost Worlds via e-mail between photolabs
from New York to Australia. Unfortunately, the identity and fate of
the tourist shown are unknown. It is amazing that a camera's film
survived the drop to the streets below, where the film was retrieved
and developed.
Or, has the picture been digitally-enhanced, or
faked? If so, what does this say about the capacity of the Internet
for mischief-making?
(Below is a petition received by Lost Worlds in early March 2001)
We, the undersigned, plead for an immediate end to the Taliban edict to demolish Afghanistan's cultural heritage.
We further urge the Taliban spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, to enter into dialogue with the international community -including the Arab and Islamic governments that overwhelmingly have condemned these actions - in order to explore proposals to safeguard this irreplaceable cultural heritage from further, senseless destruction.
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The edict of the 26th of February 2001 to destroy pre-Islamic and Buddhist objects-including the world's largest standing Buddha statues at Bamiyan-runs counter to all the basic principles of respect, tolerance and the wisdom upon which Islam is based, and is a breach of the Taliban pledge made in 1999.
We plead with Taliban authorities to stop this irreversible assault on two millennia of Afghanistan's artistic and cultural achievements, treasured not only as the spiritual birthright of Buddhists everywhere but also as a universal cultural heritage for people of all faiths and nationalities.
-Please sign and also forward this e-mail to friends, family, news groups, mailing lists etc.
-To avoid ... please preferably cut & paste the entire petition and list of names into a new message prior to re-sending. -The 100th, 200th, 300th etc. name to sign is requested to also forward the updated list of signatures back to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization at...
November, 1999, Report on Z'ev Herzog, Israeli archaeologist, with major new findings tending to overturn orthodox views on Old Testament History. More to come when Lost Worlds researches the issues further.
A few facts...
The Nepalese calendar has been 57 years ahead of
the Gregorian calendar and so had a new millennium by 1943. Julius
Caesar fixed a solar year, not a lunar one, in 46BC. Gregorian
calendar reforms took place in 1582. The AD system of reference (Anno
Domini, The Year of Our Lord). was established in the 6th Century
by Dionysius Exiguus (who was three years out in estimating the year
Jesus was born). His system of dating was adopted by The Synod of
Whitby in 664AD.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII saw that the calendar
in use was 10 days in advance of the measured solar year, so putting
out calculations for the fall of Easter. He restored New Year's Day
as a holiday, but shaved the extra 10 days from October. These
changes were not adopted by England until 1752 and Russia adopted
them as late as 1918.
According to Jewish lore, the world began
on 3761BC (BCE), a figure based on rumination about life spans of the
earlier Biblical figures (whose life spans some say should be
measured in terms of lunar months, not solar years). Meanwhile, the
first year of the Islamic lunar calendar begins from 16 July, 622AD.
Some one billion people follow the Chinese calendar. Buddhists,
Sikhs and Hindus all use their own calendars.
There are, of
course, those who feel the real turn of the New Millennium occurs on
January 1, 2001. In any case, Happy New Year!
Editors' Note : Between Lost Worlds' issues 3-5, (we are now "continual issue") we expanded our lists of historical dates for items of interest in antiquity. The results are seen with the present site renovation. From Issue Two we have considered that Lost Worlds can help with the media handling of archaeological stories...
Because of the slowness of archaeological work, newspapers generally handle archaeological research stories as one-offs. Journalistically, there is little hope of a quick follow-up, and quite properly, scholars of course will be slow to make decisive remarks about the significance of their discoveries.
The result for newspaper readers is that stories on major archaeological advances, such as the recent discovery of Cleopatra's ship in Alexandria's harbour, tend to become detached in mental space, at least until a book is published. TV, meanwhile, tends to take even longer to produce documentaries on recent archaeology, and the best productions tend to be accompanied with a book publication.
The result are gaps in information where Lost Worlds perhaps can step in, providing updates on discoveries, contexts and, maybe, extra information whih can be followed up on personnel and institutions involved in discoveries.
Our idea then, where possible, is to keep following up these storylines. Readers' reactions will be welcomed.
Now return to the Index
Stop Press: For late entries
