1421: The Year China Discovered America

[IA_Seth]

I just picked this book up the other day (I am a notorious bibliophile) but haven't read much more than the cover & introduction ,although it appears to be very interesting.

Anyone read it or read anything on the subject that would like to comment?

I guess I personally have always felt that our notion of Columbus being the first "other-continenter" (for lack of better words) to step foot on North American soil is the kind of Euro-centric crap that needs debunking.

Link to website: http://www.1421.tv/evidence.asp

[bleedingheart]

1. I find it hard to believe that Columbus was the first to find the Americas

What book did you get...the link isn't working as I expected or I can't find a book reference..

[IA_Seth]

2. Reference

I am not sure why the link isnt working for you...works for me. Sorry bout that...

Anyway here is the book:

1421 The Year China Discovered the World
Gavin Menzies
Published by Bantam Press, London

[bleedingheart]

3. I think it was my computer

when I was posting here the cable connection did it's "out to lunch" thing...

I will have to check this out.

[Tweed]

4. Yeah, I tottally believe everything that 1421 says!

That book is great.

[Shredr]

5. Actually, Leif Eriksson beat them all...

In 986, Norwegian-born Erik the Red explored and colonized the southwestern part of Greenland. It was his son, Leif Eriksson, who became the first European to set foot on the shores of North America.  

There are two schools of thought as to how this happened. One of these is that Eiriksson, en route for Greenland, came off course, and quite by chance came to the shores of northwestern America in the year 1000, thus preceding Columbus by nearly 500 years. However, according to the Greenland Saga, generally believed to be trustworthy, Eiriksson's discovery was no mere chance. The saga tells that he fitted out an expedition and sailed west, in an attempt to gather proof of the claims made by the Icelandic trader Bjarni Herjulfsson. In 986 Herjulfsson, driven far off course by a fierce storm between Iceland and Greenland, had reported sighting hilly, heavily forested land far to the west. Herjulfsson, though believably the first European to see the continent of North America, never set foot on its shores. Leif Eirksson, encouraged by the current talk of potential discoveries, and the constant need of land to farm, bought Bjarni's ship and set off on his quest of discovery.  

He appears to have followed Bjarni's route in reverse, making three landfalls. The first of these he named Helluland, or Flat-Stone Land, now generally regarded as having been Labrador. The second was Markland, or Wood Land, possibly Newfoundland. The exact location of the third, which was named Vinland, is a matter of scholastic controversy, but it could have been as far north as northern Newfoundland or as far south as Cape Cod or even beyond this.  

Eiriksson and his men spent the winter in Vinland, at a place they named Leifsbud-ir, returning to Greenland the following year, 1001.  

Though many still regard Christopher Columbus (or, as you're saying here, the Chinese) as the discoverer of the New World, Eriksson's right to this title received the stamp of official approval in the USA when in 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson, backed by a unanimous Congress, proclaimed October 9th "Leif Ericson Day" in commemoration of the first arrival of a European on North American soil.