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1421: The Year China Discovered America (P.S.) |  | Author: Gavin Menzies
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
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Rating:  286 reviews
Sales Rank: 8014
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Thus.
Pages: 672
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1.6
ISBN: 0061564893
Dewey Decimal Number: 909
EAN: 9780061564895
ASIN: 0061564893
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China to "proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas." When the fleet returned home 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 the 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. And they colonized America before the Europeans, transplanting the principal economic crops that have since fed and clothed the world.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 286
 Redundant...paid by the word? July 26, 2010
Doug (Wisconsin)
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.
 Comments on some comments June 26, 2010
lainworks
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.
 new look at history June 5, 2010
Glen A. Boswell
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
1421 May 9, 2010
Paul D. Watkins (Florida)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
1421 started a little slow for me, but quickly gained momentum. There is a lot of detail, but the inferences drawn (and many of the facts presented) are absolutely facinating. I believe this is a must read for anyone interested in world history. The author asks and answers the question: why have historians ignored this information up to this time when there is so much that is contrary to accepted beliefs?
 End the Columbus myth May 5, 2010
Matthew Taylor (Rockville, MD USA)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I live near the District of Columbia, where there is a large marble fountain commemorating Christopher Columbus. Columbus Day is a federal holiday. All of these things venerate a man who pioneered nothing. Columbus has had 500 years of fantastic P.R.
Menzies has done an excellent job compiling evidence that leads to the conclusion that China navigated to, landed on, charted, and possibly colonized the New World long before Europeans even knew there was a New World. This book challenges the assumptions we take for granted about our own history. Contrary to what some reviewers are saying, Menzies' theory is neither whacky nor half-baked. He seriously attempts to answer questions that have been left unanswered for too long. While some of the evidence is stronger than others, taken on the whole, the argument is compelling and worthy of serious consideration by not just the general public but also academics. The history establishment really dropped the ball on this one, leaving it to a retired submarine commander to publish the theory.
Many other reviewers have correctly criticized his methods and some of his conclusions. (I specifically find his evidence based on plants and animals to be extremely thin. The mylodon has been extinct for 10,000 years.) However, it does not undermine the fact that we are stuck in a Eurocentric view of the age of discovery. Even if only half of what Menzies documents turns out to be true, we will need to seriously reconsider the conventional historical timeline.
It is time to dispose of the myth of Christopher Columbus "discovering" America. "Brave and determined though they were," says Menzies, "Columbus,...Magellan, Cook and the rest of the European explorers set sail with maps showing the way to their destinations." Maps, Menzies cliams, drawn from information gathered by the Chinese. Real history usually turns out to be the cumulative effort of the many rather than the heroic effort of the one. And convenient as the Columbus story is, it is a fable posing as history. I for one find the idea of hundreds of ships carrying thousands of men making discoveries more believable than one man leading three little boats into the supposedly unknown.
Menzies is a navigator, so he knows maps. You have to give him credit for what he does know, rather than bash him for what he doesn't.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 286
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