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So, I dig ships. I mean, I really dig ships; obsessively, even. To illustrate; my entire life, my parents have sworn up one side and down the other that my first word as an infant wasn't ma-ma, or da-da, but BOAT. Think about it, a baby whose entire existence is dependent on his parents' care is incapable of acknowledging that simple state of affairs by calling out to them with his first attempts at speaking, but instead, names the most important thing in his life BOAT… …sweet Baby Jeebus, I'm nuts. Now, that isn't to say that just any watercraft turns me on equally, another fetishistic aspect of my personality is a fascination with the old, the ancient, the antique; an object from outside our time is, to me, far more worth my time than any mere new thing. After all, where's the thrill of discovery in studying something that's currently in use, and understood intimately? Not just that, but modern artifacts, more often than not, lack an expression of craftsmanship, sometimes it's just the aesthetic of form over function, but more often than not it's the element of the fantastic that draws me in. After all, in the safety of exploring disappeared artifacts from a distance of centuries, and for the sheer pleasure of it, you can dismiss the needs of efficiency and performance and concentrate on that which is simply good to look at. The natural by-product of a fascination with old ships is, of course, a fascination with history. Ships are inextricably interwoven with the endeavors of humanity, studying ships is inextricably interwoven with studying the broader aspects of history. You simply can't seek information about the Santa Maria without immersing yourself in information about late 15th century Spain. Not without any degree of thoroughness, that is. I've also got this thing for facts, versus the philosophically squirrely term "truth". As Obi-Wan teaches us, things can be "true" from a certain point of view, but a fact is incontrovertible no matter what. So, what have we got? Ships, history, appreciation of craftsmanship, design with elements of the fantastic from outside our time; what could sum that up better than the Chinese Junk? With my antennae always out and twitching for news of the fascinatin', a thread on a web board years ago introduced me to a WTF nugget that has grown over the years into a burning hatred for a particular recurring theme from the world of Complete And Utter Bullshit. In 2003, a book called 1421:The Year China Discovered The World was published. This book, credited with being written by former Royal Navy submarine commander Gavin Menzies, presents the assertion that the famous Ming Dynasty admiral Zheng He and his huge fleets not only achieved the fantastic voyages that are confirmed in historical sources, but they also travelled to North America (both east AND west coasts!), South America, New Zealand, Australia, that they circumnavigated Greenland, and, simply as a diversion to repair damaged hulls, constructed that source of unimaginable volumes of Complete And Utter Bullshit, the "Bimini Road". Now, the simple fact of the matter is that there isn't a shred, not an iota, not one jot or tittle of concrete evidence for any of this. There really isn't so much as a hint of it, not unless you're completely ignorant of World History, and willing to treat various people with contemptuous dismissal in order to ascribe non-existent Chinese influence to their achievements. But, I introduced this rant in the context of my love of ships, so let's explore a little. A book could probably be written on the circumstances and motivations for the uncritical acceptance of the dimensions for the largest of Zheng He's ships (commonly called Treasure Ships, or Baochuan in Chinese) given in the original sources, but the fact that the displacement (weight) given for the ships in those sources is for ships less than half the dimensions given. The dimensions those sources claim? Approximately 480 feet long by 180 feet wide. BULLSHIT. In the 19th century, wooden ships that only approximated that length, ships that were reinforced with a partial iron structure, suffered from structural undulation with wave action, and were failures. At 180 feet wide, with a hull shaped like an oblong, shallow bowl, these things would have been impossibly wide for their length to be practical sailing vessels, and owing to the traditionally flat-bottomed Chinese junk design they would have had so little "grip" in a longitudinal plane they wouldn't have been able to keep any kind of course in an adverse wind. Had they miraculously been able to NOT have been stressed to pieces by wave action in the first place, that is. It's possible, possible, that there were giant barges of some sort at the time of a similar size, barges built as floating palaces for travel on China's extensive canal system or lakes, but calm, serene canals aren't the Indian Ocean, and, not to mention that would be bald faced speculation, and as such worth only so much fart gas. Some loons out there in woo-woo land aren't happy with even that ridiculous size, and insist that the Treasure Ships were closer to 600 feet in length. Morons. A great source of pride for Menzies Cultists is portraying drawings to scale of their mythological 480 foot-long junk next to Columbus' 80-90 foot long Santa Maria, and with all due smugness proclaim European bass-ackwardness. While in several areas of naval architecture China was more advanced than Europe, that size comparison isn't exactly fair; Columbus' ships were recognized as being awfully small by commentators of the 1490s, not to mention the fact that, given the displacement tonnage of 1100 tons in the original Chinese sources for ships in the neighborhood of 210 feet long, in 1420 there was at least one European ship that was larger, King Henry V's monster warship Grace Dieu, a 218 foot long giant estimated to have displaced around 2100 tons, and whose remains have been examined by archeologists. Now, conversely, to be fair to the Ming dynasty shipwrights, Henry V's ship was an aberration that was so expensive to equip and man that it made only one voyage, while Zheng He's Baochuan were built by the dozens, and the core components of long distance fleets for decades. The verdict, according to every knowledgeable expert I've ever read on the subject is that 500 foot long shallow bowls sailing from China to the East Coast of Africa are the worst kind of fantasy. Period. Having got that out of the way, I've got to say it's only a fraction of the bullshittery involved here, but illustrates the dishonest…no, let's call a spade a spade, the LIES presented in this book, not to mention it's sequel. Even the way it was presented to the unsuspecting public is plastered with lying tactics that P.T. Barnum would have applauded. For instance, Menzies rented a room from the Royal Geographical Society in London prior to publication in 2003, and fraudulently claimed on that basis that he'd been invited to lecture on "1421" to the Society…you know, I'm just going to directly quote a bit of fun here from http://www.1421exposed.com/index.html, a delicious resource for debunking this shit. Most outrageous claims by Mr. Menzies in "1421" Geoff Wade 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. 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 labeled a "scam" by Stephen O'Brien, the US National Cancer Institute's laboratory chief. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Claim Mr. Menzies noted that the Venetian Niccolò 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. 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.  Aaah, I love it, despite legends perpetrated in American elementary schools since the 19th century, Europeans had been fully aware that the world was a globe since the time of the pre-Hellenistic Greeks, yet the 15th century Chinese believed it was flat, but Menzies would have you believe that the Chinese schooled the west in cartography! It's unsane, and I hate it! Hate, hate, hatety-hate hate it! |
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
