Rating: 
Summary: What is needed is perspective
Review: Having just listened to Menzies on the radio I think that it is important to note a few things. ONe, his evidence is slim, he claims that European claims to meeting Chinese people should be taken seriously instead of wishful thinking on their part. He has produced no significant archaeological information to corroborate his contentions. THAT SAID, there is little doubt in most historians and geographers of the Americas that parts of the Old World did indeed have contact with the Americas prior to Columbus's voyages. Basque cod fisherman fished the Grand Banks for hundreds of years before Columbus ventured and indeed their guarded discussions may have inspired him to sail west. The Norse sailors almost undoubtedly travelled back and forth from the Americas five hundred years (or so) before Columbus. And, it may well be that the Chinese did indeed reach the Americas prior to Columbus. What is important to remember and consider, however, is that none of these voyages had the profound ecological and demographic significance of Spanish, Portuguese, and English forays into the Americas. The earlier voyages seem to have had little impact on native populations save for the possible transfer of some crops (and this is debatable) such as the banana and the coconut.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but...
Review: Gavin Menzie claims that the Chinese discovered the entire world decades, and some continents and islands centuries, before other civilizations ever came close. While the main theory is very intriguing, and the maps (provided they are real) do pose some questions that history as it is currently written can not answer, the author works primarily with hunches and not facts.Throughout the course of the book, Menzie manages to tie together a multitude of cultures and fragmentary anecdotes which he sites as "irrefutable evidence" that the Chinese treasure fleets he describes have been to all corners of the earth. Conveniently enough, the five treasure fleets he describes, though separated at the beginning of their voyage, all manage to discover some part of the earth that the others have not. Thus the entire world was conveniently mapped. I also noticed that whatever the Asian seafarers needed or would have wanted, the treasure ships' immense cargo hulls contained some remedy. Natives who want to trade? The cargo hulls contain Chinese porcelain. Stones that are set up as markers of conquest and distributed across the world? No problem, several hundred tons of them are stored in the cargo hull. The Chinese sailors decide to take animals from the South American continent with them. Where do they go along with a years worth of food rations? The cargo hull. One of the treasure fleets runs aground in the Caribbean. Luckily the cargo hull contains enough stone slabs to build a ramp 1,200 feet long (thus also neatly explaining the conundrum of the Bimini Road). The Chinese treasure fleet ships seemed to be luxury sedan versions of Noah's Ark. Gavin Menzie's "corroborative evidence" is often shaky because it is based on assumptions, hunches and unverified claims. I tried looking up some of the detailed evidence on his website that he so often refers to in the book, but found none (perhaps it has yet to be posted). I suspect that a lot of the 'facts' in this book may be less conclusive if more light is put on them. Never the less, the main theory that he proposes is interesting and could possibly be correct, even if some of the detail that he tacks on is not.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Stunning ...
Review: Revolutionary theories that may change history.
Beutifully written with intriguing hard evidences,
such as sunken Junks, that will soon be verified
or discreditted. A must read.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing.. and mind opening.
Review: Not to discount other reviews.. which you may have read on this site or others, but there is almost a racist, nationalistic standpoint against the information presented in Menzies' studies. I find it appalling to read that the very idea that the Chinese may have discovered the Americas is somehow morally, ethically or educationally "wrong". On reflection, after reading this book, I had to dissect why I felt so resistant and almost spiteful towards the idea that the Chinese may have arrived in America before the Europeans... and you should ask yourself the same question. What moral, ethical or perhaps.. racial... standpoint are you holding onto that makes you feel this way? I recommend this book if not only for the "fun" of reading a book that disputes what we know about the discovery of the Americas.. but also for the reflection that it may present regarding your own ideologies.
Rating:
Summary: Why would Zheng He turn back?
Review: Academics have long accepted the notion that Zheng He's fleet reached only as far as Zanzibar on the east African coast. They just assumed that his fleet turned back from there. This new book challenges that assumption and has gotten a lot of knee-jerk mauling for it. But the question that no critic has asked is: Why would Zheng He's fleet turn back at Zanzibar on the African east coast? Zanzibar has been said to be located either in present day Tanzania or Mozambique, depending on certain perspectives. But the point is: Whether it's Mozambique or Tanzania, Zheng He would undoubtedly have seen coastlines stretching further into the distance, because neither Mozambique or Tanzania is at the tip of the African Continent. So the question is why would Zheng He fleet, massive in its capabilities and size, tasked with traveling to the "ends of the Earth" and "uniting the world in Confucian harmony," turn back at a very arbitrary point called Zanzibar on the eastern coast of Africa? Furthermore, before you jump to a conclusion in answering that question, there's something else to be known that definitely places the question into a mystery. In a BBC article on November 12, 2002, titled "Africa's Oldest Map Unveiled," the map was a Chinese map of the entire African continent dated back to the year 1389, long before the first Europeans arrived and even before Zheng He was born. The name of the map was "Da Ming Hun Yi Tu" or "Almagamated Map of the Great Ming Empire." You can read the original article at the ... BBC website... So, after you read the entire article, in light of the hitherto unknown facts, you couldn't really say that Zheng He's fleet turned back because they thought that they had reached the end of the world, could you? So finally, again, I pose the question that I have heard no knee-jerk attacker or critic ask: Why do you think that Zheng He fleet turned back at Zanzibar?
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Look At the Discovery of America
Review: Gavin Menzies has written a gripping tale that challenges history as we know it. Everybody knows that Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue and discovered America, right? Well, what if the Chinese were here 70 years earlier as part of a plan to colonize the world? Would we need to re-write all of our history books? This is what Gavin Menzies sets out to prove to the reader in an extremely engaging, lively, and convincing manner.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's fascinating and a lot of fun to read.
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Summary: 1421 FACT or FICTION
Review: clofo s review is not helpful. He attacks the book on an emotional basis and appears to be a lazy thinker.Methinks a better and more valid way would be to examine the source material listed by Menzies and to consult scholars on the subject. Mr Clofo s evaluation is hasty. Lets hear from some academics gifted with the power of rational thought and the appropriate background.
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating, thought-provoking premise
Review: Gavin Menzies' "1421: The Year China Discovered America" presents a fascinating premise: in the year 1421 a huge armada set forth from China to explore the oceans of the world, visiting not only India and East Africa, already known to the Chinese from previous expeditions, but also West Africa, the American continents, Australia, and even Antarctica decades or centuries before European explorers reached those same shores. But when the survivors of this great endeavor returned to China a profound change at the highest levels of the government had taken place, a change that ruptured contact with the outside world. China withdrew within itself, destroyed the records of the expedition, and the great adventure was forgotten. Nonetheless, critical information about their discoveries was conveyed to the West, sparking the European age of exploration. It is tempting to dismiss Menzies as being simply yet another in a long line of authors who have proposed extremely ambitious revisions to traditional history based upon much speculation and little solid evidence. We have all seen books that offer the true stories behind the Pyramids and Great Sphinx of Egypt, the Holy Grail, King Arthur, Atlantis, and a host of similar topics - books that promise much but soon fade from sight. Yet, Menzies does outline a large body of evidence in support of his theory. Perhaps most crucial are old maps dating from the 15th and early 16th Centuries which appear to show in persuasive detail coastlines of the Americas, Australia, and Antarctica long before European ships reached those shores. Menzies believes that these maps originated in the Chinese explorations, the information passed on to foreign contacts even while it was being obliterated at home. (Other amateur revisionist historians have sought to explain such maps by resorting to ancient sea-kings in a pre-Ice Age world or even to extraterrestrial visitors; Menizies' theory seems almost sedate in comparison.) In support of this idea, he quotes from contemporary accounts that European explorers finding "new" lands admitted that they were guided by existing maps. Menzies' partiality towards maps and questions of navigation is undoubtedly grounded in his background as a former commander of a Royal Navy nuclear submarine. The experience gave him, as he describes it, a "periscope's eye" view of lands seen from the sea, valuable in interpreting what might be shown on a centuries-old chart. There is a broad array of other evidence mentioned by Menzies: inscribed stones at numerous locations around the world, the supposed presence of Asiatic chickens and African coffee in the Americas before Columbus, the reported growth of American maize in southeast Asia before Europeans provided a link across the Pacific, Chinese-style structures in various places, mysterious old shipwrecks which seem to be Chinese junks (including one in a sandbar along California's Sacramento River), possible Chinese colonies in New England and Portugese colonies in Puerto Rico well before Columbus ... The list of presumed evidence appears endless.
However - there is always a "however" in these things - can we be confident that Menzies has properly evaluated and presented this seemingly overwhelming body of information? Footnotes are rather sparse, something which must make the careful reader cautious. By Menzies' own acknowledgement, the validity of some pieces of his evidence has already been strongly challenged in the past: the stone tower of Newport in Narragansett Bay, the controversial Vinland Map, and the mysterious underwater "roads" of Bimini. Menzies has stated that additional detailed supporting material will appear on his Internet website, but as yet I have seen little there of this promised data. Given the bold nature of Menzies' proposal and the broad scope of information presented, it seems inevitable that at least some of Menzies' evidence will be shown to be in error. But might enough of it eventually be proven correct to validate his ideas? There are a number of paths of research suggested by Menzies for further pursuit, including archaeological excavation of the Sacramento River wreck and of mounds on the beaches of Bimini, DNA analysis of plants, animals, and peoples in many places ordinarily presumed isolated from one another, caron-14 dating of artifacts sitting on museum shelves, and so forth. Perhaps, the thesis of the great expedition of 1421 will be found to be too narrowly phrased, while the broader matter of pre-Columbian contact with the Americas will be buttressed. Quite possibly some of the more ambitious Chinese exploits described by Menzies, such as a voyage around the north of Greenland and the exploration of the north coast of Siberia, will be pruned away, leaving a more solid central core intact. Or maybe in the end the whole thesis will be discarded. But before that happens, I would hope that a serious look be given to Menzies' ideas and the underlying evidence. The Chinese of the 15th Century, we now understand, certainly did have vessels capable of long ocean voyages, and we should not be so Eurocentric to preclude the notion that East Asian explorers could have made their own wide-ranging explorations. And that detailed information on those old maps had to come from somewhere, after all. Was it more than only imagination and luck? "1421: The Year China Discovered America" makes for a fascinating reading experience with much in it worthy of further thought, but I would also recommend to the prospective reader that caution be exercised against taking everything at face value. At the same time, the reader would be well-advised to keep an open mind to the possibility that the ancient Chinese at least briefly knew far more of the external world than we had ever realized and that this information helped kindle the flames of European exploration.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: The author makes an interesting case for his premise, and though the passage of time and the lack of written records has made his thesis lack the rigour and certainty we have come to expect from modern scholarship, he still constructs a compelling narrative. The evidence of travel all over the seas by everyone from the Vikings to the Irish monks who set up monasteries thoughout Europe as far as Moscow and down through the Holy Land by the end of the 12th century is irrefutable. In one Irish bishop's grave in Norway archaelogists have uncovered his crozier, and a jade Buddha. We know for a fact that Viking Longships from the Shetlands and Orkneys sailed all the way down to Rome to visit with the Pope in the early 11th century, that settlements in Greenland existed in the 9th. Therefore, the debate will rage on as to who ever 'discovered' America for a long time to come. This book is vastly entertaining, though, and provides much food for thought, and provides us with a wealth of fascinating information on a culture with which we should seek to be more familiar.
Rating:
Summary: An open mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Review: One of the problems I see in the attacks on Gavin Menzies work is that they are full of accusations and easy labels (e.g. "pop history"), without any refutation of the facts and reasoning made in the book. To the "reader" who wrote the first review: It's easy to level accusations at someone when you just don't like the way he turned long-held views upside down, but can you provide specific examples in any reasonable refutation? I can be a skeptic also, but the attacks that you have made seem shrill and cynical even to me. If you are going to criticize, at least read the book first! In your "review", you wrote that the fleets were "disassembled in 1421". What?!? If you had even read the excerpt or any other history book, you would not have made that mistake. So read the book with an open mind instead of focusing on that chip on your shoulder. Instead of calling the book "pop history," there is plenty of evidence that such attacks and accusations are pop accusations.
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