No, I just think you have to look at the consequences of not just the impact on Europe, but also its impact on the native population in the Americas.
I see. I thought I had, though perhaps in too Utilitarian a manner. Columbus' arrival had huge implications for the native population, good and bad, while the arrival of Chinese and Viking sailors had a now imperceptible effect, good or bad, on the native population.
It absolutely was. I am speaking more to the tendancy to romanticize natives as heroic agrarian hippies living in peace with nature while viewing the Europeans as pure, concentrated evil bent on raping and pillaging and giving the plague to people without much care in the world. Specifically, this issue is raised for me with Cortez because of a song by Neil Young called Cortez the Killer. This is a bit of an aside, but there is a website called Black Ships & Samurai that deals with Comodore Perry's "gunboat diplomacy" mission to open Japan. It is interesting because both sides view the others as barbarians and savages. These are Japanese images from the period depicting the demonic hirsute Perry: Cortez definately had some exceptionally unsavory character flaws, but from his own frame of reference there were some "virtues" which he was fiercely loyal to. Just as the Aztec weren't noble savages living in harmony with nature with no technology, the Europeans weren't out on a Viking style rape and pillage raid for loot. Often the discussion of disease is spoken of in disaproving tones that imply that Cortez planned the whole thing. One of the earliest English-language books on Cortez can be found online here. While it clearly is biased with the biases of America in the early 19th century, a reading provides a slightly more nuanced understanding than is commonly presented.
I wasn't trying to romantacize the Aztecs just pointing out that Cortez had some huge tactical advantages over the Aztecs and small pox was one even if it was unintentional. That's a great song. I don't pay much attention to the message but its a great piece of music.
An interesting read I found on The Net (was it must be TRUE!!!!) : Hawaiian and Canadian totem poles Totem poles from Hawaii and from the Canadian Pacific coast show some pretty amazing similarities. Of course, one can assume that these similarities were even greater about 1000 years ago or so, when these peoples seem to have been in contact with each other, and travelling across all those thousands of miles across the Pacific. I also remember reading that sweet potato native to South America was a stable of Polynesian peoples. Native were coastal sailors, so it is more likely that the Polynesians found America than vice versa.
Mas... Phoenicia These ancient Lebanese founded colonies wherever they went in the Mediterranean such as Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Marseilles, Cadiz, and Carthage. Furthermore, their ships circumnavigated Africa a thousand years before those of the Portuguese. Amongst other evidence, Phoenician inscriptions have been found in Brazil to suggest that the Phoenicians crossed the Atlantic thousands of years before Columbus.
Even more internet "facts" ... Ancient Contacts in the Americas The Parahyba inscription, also discovered in Brazil, was later translated from the Phoenician over 25 years ago and here is what this remarkable record has to say: "We are sons of Canaan from Sidon, the city of the king. Commerce has cast us on this distant shore, a land of mountains. We set [sacrificed] a youth for the exalted gods and goddesses in the nineteenth year of Hiram, our mighty king. We embarked from Ezion-Geber into the Red Sea and voyaged with ten ships. We were at sea together for two years around the land belonging to Ham [Africa] but were separated by a storm [lit. 'from the hand of Baal'], and we were no longer with our companions. So we have come here, twelve men and three women, on a... shore which I, the Admiral, control. But auspiciously may the gods and goddesses favor us!"
As an aside, some of this "history" as read on the Net may enter Chariots of Fire territory. All should be taken with a large grain of salt.
Considering that Chinese historians don't put much stock in this theory, I don't see why anyone would waste time on such speculations. I have read Menzies' book and although I may regret in the future for saying this, I think it is the biggest waste of my time. Too many theories and guesswork and too few tangible facts. And Sishir Chang, whether Zheng He had reached America or not, that there aren't any records on it isn't gonna tell you anything because all records were (supposedly) destroyed following Zheng He's death. In fact, there are only supposedly under a dozen original maps left, one of which can take you to South Africa if you were to navigate its routes even today. The claim that Zheng He's voyages were to exert power on neighbouring countries or build colonies is also a huge lie. Had that been the case I doubt these voyages would have negative "cashflow." Had that been the case the trips would have been continued. More money = nobody objecting to the trips = more continued trips undertaken.
New Evidence Puts Man In North America 50,000 Years Ago Radiocarbon tests of carbonized plant remains where artifacts were unearthed last May along the Savannah River in Allendale County by University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear indicate that the sediments containing these artifacts are at least 50,000 years old, meaning that humans inhabited North American long before the last ice age. The findings are significant because they suggest that humans inhabited North America well before the last ice age more than 20,000 years ago, a potentially explosive revelation in American archaeology. Goodyear, who has garnered international attention for his discoveries of tools that pre-date what is believed to be humans' arrival in North America, announced the test results, which were done by the University of California at Irvine Laboratory, Wednesday (Nov .17). "The dates could actually be older," Goodyear says. "Fifty-thousand should be a minimum age since there may be little detectable activity left." The dawn of modern homo sapiens occurred in Africa between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago. Evidence of modern man's migration out of the African continent has been documented in Australia and Central Asia at 50,000 years and in Europe at 40,000 years. The fact that humans could have been in North America at or near the same time is expected to spark debate among archaeologists worldwide, raising new questions on the origin and migration of the human species. "Topper is the oldest radiocarbon dated site in North America," Goodyear says. "However, other early sites in Brazil and Chile, as well as a site in Oklahoma also suggest that humans were in the Western Hemisphere as early as 30,000 years ago to perhaps 60,000." In 1998, Goodyear, nationally known for his research on the ice age PaleoIndian cultures dug below the 13,000-year Clovis level at the Topper site and found unusual stone tools up to a meter deeper. The Topper excavation site is on the bank of the Savannah River on property owned by Clariant Corp., a chemical corporation headquartered near Basel, Switzerland. He recovered numerous stone tool artifacts in soils that were later dated by an outside team of geologists to be 16,000 years old. For five years, Goodyear continued to add artifacts and evidence that a pre-Clovis people existed, slowly eroding the long-held theory by archaeologists that man arrived in North America around 13,000 years ago. Last May, Goodyear dug even deeper to see whether man's existence extended further back in time. Using a backhoe and hand excavations, Goodyear's team dug through the Pleistocene terrace soil, some 4 meters below the ground surface. Goodyear found a number of artifacts similar to the pre-Clovis forms he has excavated in recent years. Then on the last day of the last week of digging, Goodyear's team uncovered a black stain in the soil where artifacts lay, providing him the charcoal needed for radiocarbon dating. Dr. Tom Stafford of Stafford Laboratories in Boulder, Colo., came to Topper and collected charcoal samples for dating. "Three radiocarbon dates were obtained from deep in the terrace at Topper with two dates of 50,300 and 51,700 on burnt plant remains. One modern date related to an intrusion," Stafford says. "The two 50,000 dates indicate that they are at least 50,300 years. The absolute age is not known." The revelation of an even older date for Topper is expected to heighten speculation about when man got to the Western Hemisphere and add to the debate over other pre-Clovis sites in the Eastern United States such as Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pa., and Cactus Hill, Va. In October 2005, archaeologists will meet in Columbia for a conference on Clovis and the study of earliest Americans. The conference will include a day trip to Topper, which is sure to dominate discussions and presentations at the international gathering.
