Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane mcres pagans. Hey, Jane,
Speaker 1: do you remember a couple of podcasts again when we
Speaker 1: talked about Rosie the Riveter and the topic of revisionist
Speaker 1: history came up. That's right, and how people had sort
Speaker 1: of misinterpreted what Rosie was. And the great thing about
Speaker 1: revisionist history is that you have the freedom to go
Speaker 1: back and correct these misconceptions about the past, as long
Speaker 1: as you're doing it in a scholarly and authentic and
Speaker 1: well researched sort of way. And to my knowledge, one
Speaker 1: of the most constantly revised stories is the discovery, if
Speaker 1: you can even call it that, even that word has
Speaker 1: been revised, of America. And I know when I was little,
Speaker 1: I was taught the hall uh in fo two Columbus
Speaker 1: sailed the ocean blue. He wanted to prove to everyone
Speaker 1: that the world John it was not flat, and he
Speaker 1: may very well have done that, but I also learned
Speaker 1: that he found America. And then I learned later that
Speaker 1: that's not exactly the truth. That's that's right. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: jump on on that story a lot, saying, you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't discover it. There were plenty of people there obviously,
Speaker 1: so you can't use the word discover. It's a very, um,
Speaker 1: it's very egotistical thing to do to say that just
Speaker 1: because you know you're from a different civilization and you're
Speaker 1: imposing your your laws and your culture on another land
Speaker 1: that you've discovered it. It's really you've you've visited. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very Eurocentric, which which a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the past fifty years or so really jumping on their
Speaker 1: way we we should there. They want to take the
Speaker 1: emphasis away from Europe and be like, we should have
Speaker 1: a worldly perspective on things. Yeah. So Columbus, just because
Speaker 1: you had cuter breaches and some of the other explorers
Speaker 1: out there, doesn't mean you get to claim America. And
Speaker 1: we know for a very very true fact that people
Speaker 1: from Asia came over to America long before Columbus. We're
Speaker 1: talking some ten thousand years ago when they crossed the
Speaker 1: Bearing Land Bridge from Siberia into what is now modern
Speaker 1: day Alaska. Yeah, they think that's how it was originally populated, right,
Speaker 1: But there's a scholar named Gavin Menzies who wrote a
Speaker 1: book back in two thousand three, I think, called fourteen
Speaker 1: twenty one, the year China discovered America, and this caused
Speaker 1: a huge flush. First of all, it was a huge
Speaker 1: It was hugely popular. It got like the best seller
Speaker 1: list and everything like that. But um, it wasn't well
Speaker 1: received by a lot of the so called respected historians.
Speaker 1: We're talking anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and with more linguists, all
Speaker 1: these people who would be very involved and studying the
Speaker 1: way that a culture attaches itself to a land, and
Speaker 1: the way that people interact and how trade occurs, all
Speaker 1: these different pieces of evidence, tangible and non tangible, that
Speaker 1: would prove a culture had been assimilated into another. That's right,
Speaker 1: and according to Menzies theory, we should emphasize that the
Speaker 1: Chinese actually arrived in America explored it, um about seven
Speaker 1: decades before Columbus even set foot there. And it's story
Speaker 1: goes that this Chinese admiral zang He I believe it's
Speaker 1: pronounced not sure, but he It's well known that this
Speaker 1: guy went on extensive trips and he explored a lot
Speaker 1: of the world. Um, but it's not accepted that he
Speaker 1: actually went all the way to America. Menzies claims that
Speaker 1: he in fact did, and we should mention that, you know,
Speaker 1: this guy in his own he uh, he was a
Speaker 1: great explorer and he had these ships. The Chinese ships
Speaker 1: were called junks and uh, they were gargangeline, they were um,
Speaker 1: they dwarfed the ships that actually Columbus sailed on well,
Speaker 1: and he was part of the Ming dynasty, and they
Speaker 1: had what like a twenty eight thousand person fleet, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I yeah, yeah, so the ships had to
Speaker 1: be pretty big to accommodate all of those sailors. And
Speaker 1: just like sailors from the Western hemisphere had their own
Speaker 1: thoughts and theories about the sea, and they had their
Speaker 1: you know, mythical colony of Atlantis, these Chinese sailors had
Speaker 1: their own ideas about the sea and exploration too, and
Speaker 1: one of the things they believed in was Fu sang.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure if I'm getting that pronunciation quite right,
Speaker 1: but please forgive me if you're saying, was this mythological
Speaker 1: or legendary land really analogous to Atlanta's. And then a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, a Baptist missionary named Dr. Hendon,
Speaker 1: and Harris found a map of what he thinks was
Speaker 1: through saying, and he noted that it looked a whole
Speaker 1: lot like North America. And what's more, the map noted
Speaker 1: all of these geographic and topographic likenesses between North America
Speaker 1: and f You's saying. It even showed something like the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon. And people started to wonder, well, how would
Speaker 1: the Chinese have such an intricate knowledge of North America
Speaker 1: if they hadn't been there? Is right? And Harris tried
Speaker 1: to write about this and and and advertise it to
Speaker 1: people to make it known, and uh not a lot
Speaker 1: of people jumped on board with his with his ideas
Speaker 1: UM until Menzies came along, and he really loved it.
Speaker 1: And actually Menzies is a kind of amateur historian. He
Speaker 1: really has naval experience. He was in the British Royal Navy,
Speaker 1: and that's really the experience that he calls upon to
Speaker 1: UM to claim that he can that he can make
Speaker 1: these interpretations, because he claims that he can read these
Speaker 1: maps better than like normal historians can. He can read
Speaker 1: the maps and the charts. And there was actually another
Speaker 1: map called the fourteen eight Tea map I believe that
Speaker 1: shows oceans and seven continents accurately, and they believe that this,
Speaker 1: you know, proves beyond a doubt that like the Chinese
Speaker 1: knew much more than we thought they did. And I
Speaker 1: think that this fourteen eighteen map even shows formations like
Speaker 1: the Potomac River exactly where they're supposed to be, shocking,
Speaker 1: and the continents are the right size and they're in
Speaker 1: the right locations. And Menzies is claiming that not only
Speaker 1: did the Chinese explore the world first, but also the
Speaker 1: Europeans use Chinese maps to guide them to the New World.
Speaker 1: Figure that is, it's really bothering a lot of historians
Speaker 1: that he's making these claims too, because you know, they've
Speaker 1: based their their lives studying things that that Menzies is
Speaker 1: calling all falsehoods, and so um Mensies is pointing this
Speaker 1: in and saying, hey, hey, I know I'm getting a
Speaker 1: lot of critics, but like, look at look at what
Speaker 1: they're staking. It is. One of the problems with the
Speaker 1: fourteen eighteen map that the critics have pointed out is
Speaker 1: that China, as far as it's depicted on the map,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a mass, like it has a blabbih shape.
Speaker 1: It's not really true to form, and it's not emphasized
Speaker 1: and um delineated as clearly as it should be. If
Speaker 1: the Chinese in fact due this map of the world,
Speaker 1: you would think that if they had made this discovery,
Speaker 1: they would have really put a lot of emphasis on
Speaker 1: their own land. I think if they knew anything, they
Speaker 1: would know that, but very well. And also another another
Speaker 1: point that critics point to is that the map is
Speaker 1: based on the fact that the world is around and UH,
Speaker 1: historians are pretty confident that the Chinese did not know
Speaker 1: this at that time. So, with all of these glaring
Speaker 1: loopholes and the theory, while Northwood minsies continue to pursue
Speaker 1: his studies, and the answer is that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of really strange coincidences going on. UH. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of Native American folk stories that support the
Speaker 1: fact that the Chinese were there. I think that even
Speaker 1: one of the Incan rulers had a legend that he
Speaker 1: communicated with the Chinese admiral who taught him how to
Speaker 1: govern his land. We know that the Native Americans had horses,
Speaker 1: and while for a while historians presumed that the horses
Speaker 1: came from Europeans, some people presumed that they came from
Speaker 1: the Chinese. Now, because we know that Chinese soldiers used
Speaker 1: horses very very religiously in their cavalry. That's the story
Speaker 1: is that the Spaniards brought horses over to the first
Speaker 1: time to America. I mean giving us a side that
Speaker 1: that his horses were actually brought over originally, but when extinct,
Speaker 1: like thousands and thousands of years ago. Uh, Now they think,
Speaker 1: or at least menzies think that China. China was actually
Speaker 1: the first one to bring it over after that. And
Speaker 1: what's more, and the Pacific Northwest archaeologists have found Chinese
Speaker 1: coins in eight different places. And then somewhere else than
Speaker 1: the Midwest, they found a Native American garment that has
Speaker 1: it's about three years old as far as they can
Speaker 1: date at but it has Chinese beads on it. So
Speaker 1: people are wondering, well, where do these things come from
Speaker 1: if the Chinese weren't here working with these people. One
Speaker 1: of the stories that I find really interesting is a
Speaker 1: different take on the story I was told in history class,
Speaker 1: which was had to do with the Aztec emperor Montezuma.
Speaker 1: And the story was everyone knows is that Ortez went
Speaker 1: to meet Montezuma, and uh, the emperor mistook him for
Speaker 1: a god, and uh, that's how Cortez was able to
Speaker 1: sort of infiltrate um. But Mensies actually postulates that the
Speaker 1: Montezuma actually mistook Cortes for his grandfather returning from the east,
Speaker 1: as if he were familiar with Eastern people at that time.
Speaker 1: And so Mensi's interpretations they certainly seemed to hold water.
Speaker 1: But when you look at some of the common factors
Speaker 1: that are just missing from the Chinese coming to America
Speaker 1: first story, you have to stop and say now that
Speaker 1: that can't possibly be. Like we know that when the
Speaker 1: Norse came, the Vikings came, they were there about a
Speaker 1: thousand years before Columbus came, seventy years before the Chinese
Speaker 1: would have been there, and we can still see today
Speaker 1: even though they are in ruins, the stone outposts that
Speaker 1: they built. So if the Chinese came where the you
Speaker 1: know that the standing artifacts, you know, the ruins, the
Speaker 1: structors that they would have shown the people how to build,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. And why did the Chinese take back
Speaker 1: things like gold and corn and tomatoes like the European
Speaker 1: the European fleet stead when they came back to Europe
Speaker 1: from the New Worlds where there's no smoking gun that
Speaker 1: really mens mensies can point to. And another thing is that, uh,
Speaker 1: some historians, notably Robert finlay Um has pointed out that, uh,
Speaker 1: the Chinese could not have nourished the horses that they
Speaker 1: supposedly brought over on their ships. Apparently horses need a
Speaker 1: certain amount of water, obviously, and they were surrounded by
Speaker 1: by saltwater, and they didn't have the the decel and
Speaker 1: theization uh processes that would have been appropriate to uh
Speaker 1: feed all these sources water water everywhere of it and
Speaker 1: dropped to drink. How about that? And actually, one historian
Speaker 1: in particular, doctor Jeff White, he's so riled up about
Speaker 1: the glaring and accuracies and an authenticity of Mensi's account
Speaker 1: that he has filed a complaint against the UK publishers
Speaker 1: who published Menzi's book. And um, I'm using air quotes
Speaker 1: even though you can't see them. He called it Mensi's
Speaker 1: history book, and you can just you can feel the
Speaker 1: division just rolling off of that description. He's very upset
Speaker 1: about it, and he makes some some start claims. He's
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, look at this map. He even claims
Speaker 1: that one of the maps that Menzies uses evidence is
Speaker 1: a fake, that it was made for Menzies. Isn't that wild?
Speaker 1: And we all know how to do that, you sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, roll it and ground coffee and then you
Speaker 1: so it looks really authentic and all. And he and
Speaker 1: he actually points the evidence that like this map was
Speaker 1: drawn based on Jesuit maps of the seventeenth century because
Speaker 1: it makes the same mistakes and the mistakes that California
Speaker 1: was an island, etcetera, etcetera, That China is at the
Speaker 1: center of the world, and the text was translated into
Speaker 1: Chinese from Jesuit. Right, so there you go. But if
Speaker 1: you want to talk about another smoking gun, I guess
Speaker 1: you could say to borrow Jane's phrase again. When the
Speaker 1: Ming dynasty eventually collapsed, the dynasty that overcame it wanted
Speaker 1: to bury all evidence that had ever existed from the
Speaker 1: Ming dynasty, wanted to cover up out their accomplishments, everything
Speaker 1: that they had done, because they were establishing a new
Speaker 1: rule in order. Yeah, and you can never prove that
Speaker 1: Menzies is wrong because all this evidence is destroyed. Um
Speaker 1: and critics actually point to uh Mensie's arrogance in this
Speaker 1: area saying he's MENSI is quoted as a saying there's
Speaker 1: not one chance in a million that I'm wrong, And
Speaker 1: so he's sort of sticking in the face of these
Speaker 1: respected historians that you can understand how how upset they
Speaker 1: can get over this. You know, Wow, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: amazing hue restaurant there. But whether or not it is true,
Speaker 1: we may never know. But it is testament to the
Speaker 1: fact that history isn't a stale and uh finalized topic
Speaker 1: of study. It's constantly changing and the revisious history really
Speaker 1: points to that. And that's what's so exciting about it.
Speaker 1: Not that not that you can be an amateur historian
Speaker 1: and go out there and fabricate maps and make up
Speaker 1: your own theories about who found what first, but that
Speaker 1: this is the field of study that's open to, you know,
Speaker 1: the new and rising, and it's the people in the
Speaker 1: And it's still popular too, because one thing about Mensie's
Speaker 1: fame is that he was able to create a website
Speaker 1: around it and people would respond with their own evidence.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, there there's a junk buried uh off
Speaker 1: the coast of where I live, and you know, I
Speaker 1: know and like people just coming in and um as
Speaker 1: he is actually writing a sequel or he did write
Speaker 1: a sequel um based on like evidence that he got
Speaker 1: submitted from fans. How about that well, and speaking of
Speaker 1: submitting evidence from fans, If you ever have an idea
Speaker 1: for one of our history podcasts or how to history
Speaker 1: question that you want to know, go ahead an email
Speaker 1: me and Jane at podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Just put history in the subject line and we'll be
Speaker 1: happy to tackle some of your queries and then the
Speaker 1: interim to satisfy your desire to learn more about China
Speaker 1: and some famous Chinese rulers out there. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out how stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff
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