China Discovered America First?

DiscoLad

New member
I was watching this thing on history channel this morning at breakfast and it was on how the Chinese discovered America before anyone else. I was tuning in and out but they said they found some metal in South Carolina and stone anchors with chinese writing on them...
They found the dates on these to be 4,000 years ago.
I changed the channel before getting the answer to this...

I figured this might be some kind of archeology and was wondering if it was possible that the Chinese could have come years ago to North America before the next explorer?:confused:

(I know it is out there, but im just curious.)
 

The Drifter

New member
Wasn't the first native-americans Asians? They came across the ice-bridge that was formed over the Bering Straight. Any information on which area they were from before their migration?
 

DiscoLad

New member
I was taught it was nomadic hunters who followed the hunt over the land bridge and into North America but the Asian on this show thinks differently because of these findings.

And no they didn't say.
 

The Drifter

New member
I like stuff like this.
But, it's hard to tell who all has walked these lands.

I don't know how reliable the site is I found this one. But, this is an interesting quote.

These impressive similarities add fuel to theories that Chinese arrived in the Americas before the end of the Shang dynasty in 221 BC. Shang legends state that a king led his people on a journey to the east, with some historians believing that he took them across the Bering Strait to North America.

The Chinese classic, the Shan Hai King of about 2250 BC, contains what seems to be an accurate description of the Grand Canyon. Peanuts and maize have been found at ancient Chinese sites dating back to 3000BC. The orthodox view is that neither of these plants left their native America before their export by European colonists in 16th century AD.

In AD 499, a Chinese monk, Hui Shen, returned to China claiming to have spent 40 years in the land of “Fu Sang”. He left a record of the country he visited, which has been recorded in official histories – a land thought by some modern scholars to be ancient Mexico.

Then there is the 3,000-year-old pottery found on the Valdivian coast of Ecuador, decorated and incised in exactly the same way as pottery from the Jomon area of Japan, and not preceded in Ecuador by plainer and simpler bowls and urns.


Source

EDIT: Also this belongs in the Archaeology table. ;)
 
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Le Saboteur

Active member
PBS did a rather excellent documentary on this several years ago. Like a lot of things, you can get a glimpse of it on Youtube.

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sgWzahvhPKw?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sgWzahvhPKw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

Once you're finished with that, take a moment to pick up these three books and do some extra reading. It'll be worth your time and effort.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

1421: The Year China Discovered America

http://www.amazon.com/Island-Seven-Cities-Chinese-Discovered/dp/0312362056/ref=pd_sim_b_5
 

Captain Craig

New member
I've always held to the idea that obviously Christopher Columbus wasn't the first person to the Americas. When you arrive somewhere and there are already people there you didn't really discover it. What Columbus did was to 'market' the Americas. The Vikings didn't(who also got here before him) nor did the indigineous Americans.

The didn't just spontaneously arrive so I also subscribe to the lore of Native Americans being a hybrid of ancient Chinese and Indian ethnicities who came here across the frozen land bridge of the Bering Strait hunting game.
 

DiscoLad

New member
Captain Craig said:
I've always held to the idea that obviously Christopher Columbus wasn't the first person to the Americas. When you arrive somewhere and there are already people there you didn't really discover it. What Columbus did was to 'market' the Americas. The Vikings didn't(who also got here before him) nor did the indigineous Americans.

The didn't just spontaneously arrive so I also subscribe to the lore of Native Americans being a hybrid of ancient Chinese and Indian ethnicities who came here across the frozen land bridge of the Bering Strait hunting game.

I mean, I doubt no one else had set eyes on America before Columbus, I think he just so happen to be the first to claim finding it.

I personally would consider the natives the first to discover it but they got taken over by other people so they probably didn't get discovery credit. :)
 

InexorableTash

Active member
Le Saboteur said:

I just want to second this recommendation. While most of the other theories and works cited in this thread are based on thin evidence and/or handily discredited, this book is a very rigorously researched effort and paints a well-supported picture of the Pre-Columbian Americas.

It's also incredibly humbling. The indiginous societies found by Euopean explorers were the struggling refugees trying to recover from waves of nearly 90% population loss from disease racing across the continents ahead of the invaders, taking barely a century to hit the Northern, Southern and Western extremes.

Also, the ancestry of the native American populations is now well established by genetic analysis. No need to speculate - just check Wikipedia or nationalgeographic.com
 

WilliamBoyd8

Active member
Christopher Columbus didn't "discover" America.

But he got the paperwork done.

Others were able to find there way to America.

:)
 

WillKill4Food

New member
WilliamBoyd8 said:
Christopher Columbus didn't "discover" America.
But he got the paperwork done.
And that's really all that matters for a "discovery," isn't it? The Chinese treasure ships and the Viking raiders may have found America, but Columbus was the one who opened it up, so to speak, so I really think it's weird to claim that the Chinese or Vikings "discovered" it, especially considering, like Lonsome said, the Native-Americans were here first.

On that note, when we speak of the "discovery" of King Tut's tomb, we talk about Carter (wh found the tomb like Columbus found America), not the priests who interned the Egyptian king (which would correlate to the early natives of America) or the grave-robbers who found him first (analogous to the Vikings in our analogy).
 

Stoo

Well-known member
DiscoLad said:
I was watching this thing on history channel this morning at breakfast and it was on how the Chinese discovered America before anyone else. I was tuning in and out but they said...
...*snip*...
I changed the channel before getting the answer to this...
If this interests you enough to start a thread about the subject, why did you switch channels?:confused:
DiscoLad said:
I figured this might be some kind of archeology...
Ya think?:rolleyes:
DiscoLad said:
I see, so it would seem (As much as I hate it) that they have some good points to this theory, no?
This theory is entirely plausible. Why do you "hate it"?:confused:
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Stoo said:
This theory is entirely plausible. Why do you "hate it"?:confused:

This theory needs more aliens in it. Then we could hate it more and make this topic a hot one.

In other news, let's give this image another go:

1247507978777.jpg
 

DiscoLad

New member
Stoo said:
If this interests you enough to start a thread about the subject, why did you switch channels?:confused:

Ya think?:rolleyes:

This theory is entirely plausible. Why do you "hate it"?:confused:

-I didn't think it would be stuck in my mind the whole day?

-What, do you consider this totally archeology because they found two bits of junk?

-Just because it is plausible does not mean I have to like it, Stoo.

Done?
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Disco said:
I see, so it would seem (As much as I hate it) that they have some good points to this theory, no?
Once again, why do you "hate" this theory?:confused:
 

DiscoLad

New member
Stoo said:
Once again, why do you "hate" this theory?:confused:

Being American,

Which one sounds better to me.
"Christopher Coumbus, respectable explorer, discovers today's North America"
or
"Random china man and his crew lost an achor, dropped scrap metal, and scurried back to Asia after stumbling upon today's North America"

Bias but what the hell, What are you going to do? :cool:

Personal opinion, Stooie boy.
 

Indy's brother

New member
Vikings, Chinese, Columbus got the credit. It's silly to describe any of them as "discovering" america, or "the americas", considering that they were already inhabited for quite some time. By that logic I "discovered" Gatlinburg, Tn 5 years ago, ya know? What's interesting to me is how conventional wisdom dictates that there is NO WAY any seafaring explorer happened upon these shores before him. I think there is enough evidence to the contrary at this point that other explorers should be given credit by now in modern textbooks, if even only a nod. But that's me. I'm a rebel. A loner. G'head folks, blast me into oblivion.........:gun:
 

Montana Smith

Active member
DiscoLad said:
Being American,

Which one sounds better to me.
"Christopher Coumbus, respectable explorer, discovers today's North America"
or
"Random china man and his crew lost an achor, dropped scrap metal, and scurried back to Asia after stumbling upon today's North America"

Bias but what the hell, What are you going to do? :cool:

Personal opinion, Stooie boy.

I think you just insulted the most populated nation on earth, and they probably already know where you live! :eek:
 

DiscoLad

New member
No I am comfortable.
Carry on, Indys B.

No one is going to blow you away for a little personal opinion. :)
 
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