Rewriting history with a grand theory - 1421: The Year China Discovered America - Book Review

1421." The Year China Discovered America. By Gavin Menzies. William Morrow, New York, 2003. ISBN 0-06-053763-9. 552 pp. Hardcover, $27.95.

Gavin Menzies, the author of 1421: The Year that China Discovered America, is a retired Royal Navy sub commander, and perhaps only a seaman could have written this book. The book has the feel of a traveler's tale, a seaman's yarn, all 500-plus pages of it. Sailors are great readers--what else to do on long night watches?--and Menzies appears to be very broadly read in a wide variety of subjects related to his thesis--among them history, cartography, archaeology, art history, and travel books.

The book can be entertaining viewed as a sort of roller coaster ride through a wide variety of scholarly areas. For those who enjoy going around the world in a book, Menzies will take the reader through an interesting variety of scenes, all thanks to what I would refer to as his Grand Theory: that the European age of discovery was based on an earlier (and "still unrecognized by the stuffy academic thinkers protecting their turf") Chinese age of global discovery.

Menzies's Grand Theory could be summarized as containing two separate yet closely articulated internal claims. The primary claim is that the several voyages of the great Chinese admiral Zheng He during the sixteenth century, well-known to scholarship, actually completed the first circumnavigation of the globe, supported by a massive logistic effort that included the construction of astronomical observation platforms all over the world. The subsidiary claim is that the maps and navigational data on which the later European explorers such as Magellan, Columbus, and Cook depended were based on original Chinese maps--which have since disappeared.

To the reader interested in the latest in "alternative" world history, this is fun stuff. But there will be other readers, professionals and skeptics among them, who may find the book to be less entertaining and more an exasperating example of the wealthy amateur run amok.

Possibly the weakest aspect of the book is the specious logic that underpins the author's entire enterprise in asserting the validity of his Grand Theory. Like so many authors in the "alternative history" genre, Menzies places his theory in front of the data. The logical basis for the theory could be summarized in the following proposition: "The Grand Theory requires this evidence to be valid; therefore here is the evidence that supports the Grand Theory."

And there is certainly a long list of data-sets in the many Appendices that are presented as evidence. It is only that the "internal facts" of the evidence are often ignored, because these facts may in fact have no support for the Grand Theory.

Out of the many examples of physical evidence offered his Grand Theory, I will focus on the ones I know best: the stone structures and archeological sites of the Pacific--specifically the part known as Micronesia. As Menzies presents his theory, the fifteenth-century Chinese had to have built large stone structures in their circumnavigational voyages in order to take sun and star readings for their maps. And, as his particular brand of circular logic seems to demand, since this theory is correct, then every important archaeological complex, such as Nan Modal in the present day state (and island) of Ponape in Micronesia, was built by the Chinese.

There is one serious problem with this claim. There is not single shred of internal evidence from Nan Madol that connects it with fifteenth-century China. On the contrary, every bit of evidence we have on Nan Madol supports the orthodox scholarly theory that well-organized Micronesians had planned, built, and occupied Nan Madol approximately 200 years prior to the fifteenth century, without the help of any known outside group--European or Asian.

While it is not possible to say that all of the existing evidence is explained by the current theory, certainly there is no data from Nan Madol itself that requires the presence of fifteenth-century Chinese, and no one who studies the data would need such a presence, with the sole exception of Gavin Menzies.

A book such as this one has an understandable appeal to many readers, and it contains the kernels of some ideas that are probably valid, such as the notion that the medieval world was more interconnected than we tend to recognize. But its weaknesses are significant, and the danger is that the book, and so many others in its genre, promotes wishful thinking and circular reasoning as a replacement for sound conclusions based on the scientific method. In today's world, we can ill afford to allow such practices to emerge unchallenged and dominate public discourse, and must continue to support informed thinking and critical review through periodicals such as SKEPTICAL INQUIRER.

Dan Koch has been working in the area of Pacific studies since 1969, including a stint as a linguist at the University of Hawaii. Today he owns and manages a manufacturing business in Chicago but continues his interests in Pacific language, culture, and history E-mail: dankoch.enteract@rcn.com.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group