{"id":5918,"date":"2006-01-13T18:48:26","date_gmt":"2006-01-14T01:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2006\/01\/13\/china-beat-columbus-to-it-perhaps-economist\/"},"modified":"2006-01-13T18:48:26","modified_gmt":"2006-01-14T01:48:26","slug":"china-beat-columbus-to-it-perhaps-economist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2006\/01\/china-beat-columbus-to-it-perhaps-economist\/","title":{"rendered":"China beat Columbus to it, perhaps &#8211; Economist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/books\/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5381851\" target=\"_blank\" id=\"5381851\">From The Economist<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/mt-old\/0206BK1.jpg\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/0206BK1.jpg','popup','width=400,height=284,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0');return false\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/mt-old\/0206BK1-tm.jpg\" height=\"100\" width=\"140\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"0206Bk1\" \/><\/a>THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.<\/p>\n<p>It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zheng_He\" target=\"_blank\">Zheng He<\/a>, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called &#8220;The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Next week, in Beijing and London, fresh and dramatic evidence is to be revealed to bolster Zheng He&#8217;s case.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/article\/0,,11069-1984437,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">More on this topic<\/a>, via Google News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From The Economist: THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[976,1006],"class_list":["post-5918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society","tag-history","tag-zheng-he","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.1 (Yoast SEO v24.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>China beat Columbus to it, perhaps - Economist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2006\/01\/china-beat-columbus-to-it-perhaps-economist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China beat Columbus to it, perhaps - Economist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From The Economist: THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. 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