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Feng Shui | Home » » 1421: The Year China Discovered America | | | | | | | Description: | | On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was "to proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. Also concealed was how the Chinese colonized America before the Europeans and transplanted in America and other countries the principal economic crops that have fed and clothed the world. Unveiling incontrovertible evidence of these astonishing voyages, 1421 rewrites our understanding of history. Our knowledge of world exploration as it has been commonly accepted for centuries must now be reconceived due to this landmark work of historical investigation. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Gavin Menzies | | Paperback:
| 656 pages | | Publisher:
| Harper Perennial | | Publication Date:
| January 01, 2004 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 006054094X | | Package Length:
| 8.8 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.1 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.5 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.65 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 288 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 What a ShamAug 23, 2010
I bought this on a whim without doing any research on the topic. After reading the first few pages, I realized that either 1) we better start rewriting all the history books, or 2) 1421 is bogus. A quick online search yielded numerous links to professional historians who believe the latter, but be sure to search for yourself. Just don't buy the book before reading up on the controversy.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 1421Aug 10, 2010
The book arrived in decent condition. Delivery was a little slow. Overall I am pleased.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Redundant...paid by the word?Jul 26, 2010
This title was intriguing to me so I began to wade through the book. Like some of the other reviewers, I also questioned Menzies' sources and methodologies. I am a retired librarian with a passion for the historically odd. Even I had a hard time swallowing the massive coincidences that all seemed to fall together. Granted, some events 'could' happen but if they do not hold up under scrutiny, corroboration, and validation then they must be discarded or revised. The scientific method works for history also.
What got to me, besides the many amazing coincidences, was the redundant restating of his assertions - to the point of pleading. I began to wonder if Menzies got paid by the word. I also began to question his methodology and scholarship when he was stumped with translating a particularly hard bit of medieval language, so he prayed to the Virgin and had a cheese sandwich. I am also a man of faith, but never in my years of scholarly writing have I ever stated that I prayed, meditated, or wore my lucky shoes while researching and stumped...which I have. That sort of thing would have put my credibility into the realm of the metaphysical. Besides not being professional it is an unnecessary statement. Likewise, his travelogues, being reminded that he was a submarine commander, and that the scholarly community hasn't been favorably inclined to him weren't very useful. It made me think that he was pleading for someone to believe him because he had some position of authority. For a supposedly scholarly book it was entirely too anecdotal...even with the 'references.'
The first third of the book was entertaining from a purely speculative history point of view. The rest was tiresome and repetitive. I would never say don't buy a book (being an advocate of reading) but I would suggest that this one be put low on your list of potential books to read.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Comments on some commentsJun 26, 2010
See a review of this book by Diogenes. This is not a review of the book, but rather a hint for folks like Diogenes who like to check the genealogy of historical claims. I admire Diogenes' review because he or she uses sound method to evaluate the historical claims in the book. Some of these claims involve carbon dates (more precisely, "radiocarbon" dates) and the interpretation thereof, and are relevant to critical readers on both sides of this or any other historical issue that invokes radiocarbon dates.
Radiocarbon dates are estimates of the date in which a substance stopped absorbing carbon (mostly atmospheric carbon) from the environment. Radiocarbon dates are incapable of telling you what specific year that may have been because radiocarbon dates are statistical measurements. The precision of the radiocarbon date varies according to the device used to measure it and the size of the sample. An accelerator mass spectrometer can measure plus or minus 30 years or so. A conventional counter can measure plus or minus 90-125 years, usually more if the sample was small or the counter wasn't particularly sensitive. It's also important that the precision is reported at 68% confidence, which means there's a 32% chance that the actual date is older or newer than the measured date. Anytime someone reports a radiocarbon date as a specific year, you can be absolutely sure they are abusing the radiocarbon dating process or they are ignorant of it. Menzies' date of 1590 and the Museum's reported date of 1681 are not likely to be statistically different since their 95% confidence intervals undoubtedly overlap a lot. So even if Menzies had cited his source correctly, he used radiocarbon ages incorrectly, and his 1590 date can only be distinguished from the Museum's 1681 date if you use radiocarbon dates in ways that invalidate them.
It's also important to know that radiocarbon dates are measured and reported in radiocarbon years, and not calendar years. It is possible to calibrate radiocarbon years to calendar years. Deviation of radiocarbon years from calendar years can be significant. This is because radiocarbon age varies significantly because the amount of C14 in the atmosphere varies significantly as a result of solar activity and absorption of "dead" carbon. "Dead" is carbon from substances that are older than about 25,000-30,000 years or so. You find dead carbon in limestone, oil, and coal. Increasing use of coal in the Industrial Revolution released increasing amounts of dead carbon into the atmosphere. Radiocarbon ages from the last 400 years or so therefore are artificially old because they have artificially high dead carbon in them. A radiocarbon date from the late 1600s to and one from 1950 will calibrate to nearly identical ranges of calendrical dates, and therefore are indistinguishable. If you were to calibrate Menzies' date, its calendrical dates will overlap the Museum's calendrical date by at least several decades, depending on whether it was measured with a spectrometer.
The bottom line of this is that not only does Mezsies' source apparently not back him up, even if it did, his claim would be unsustainable because radiocarbon dating is virtually always too imprecise to be used as evidence to support a historical claim about an event in a specific year. The only time it is useful is when the year in question does not fall within the calibrated range of the date, in which case the most you can say is that it is statistically likely that the date of the event is older than the lower limit of the range or newer than the upper limit of the range.
1 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 new look at historyJun 05, 2010
1421 is one of the best written histories I have ever read. He has the factual material to back up his thesis. It certainly provides one with a whole new perspective on New World history.
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