Five years ago, a Chinese lawyer bought an old map from a dealer in Shanghai. Today, that map is at the center of the debate over who came to America and when.
The Chinese map, dated 1763, shows North and South America in a fair amount of detail. No surprise there. However, an inscription on the map says it is a copy of an earlier map, from 1418. If correct, that means the Chinese visited America more than 70 years before Columbus.
Historians have long known that Chinese Admiral Zheng He sailed all over Asia in the 1400s, and even got as far as the east cost of Africa. However, most doubt he ever reached the Americas—let alone explored them in the amount of detail this map suggests.
The map is currently being tested to see if it really is as old as it says it is. But even if the tests come back positive, the debate will not be settled. Even if the map is authentic, it is still only a copy—drawn in 1763, and supposedly based on an older map which no one has ever seen. It could just as easily be based on a map from, oh, 1762.
(One interesting feature the article does not dwell on is the fact that the map also shows Australia—small and not in the right place, but it's there. Australia was not visited by outsiders until 1770. If the map really does date from 1763, then it may have a lot more to say about the history of Australia than the history of America.)