A copy of a 600-year-old map found in a second-hand book shop is the key to proving that the Chinese, not Christopher Columbus, were the first to discover the New World, a controversial British historian claims. The document is purportedly an 18th century copy of a 1418 map charted by Chinese Admiral Zheng He, which appears to show the New World in some detail. This purported evidence that a Chinese sailor mapped the Western Hemisphere more than seven decades before Columbus is just one of Earth-shattering claims that author Gavin Menzies makes in his new book ‘Who Discovered America?’ - out today, just in time for the Columbus Day holiday.
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Gavin Menzies, a British historian, claims Chiense Admiral Zheng He set up colonies and sailed round South America before Columbus
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Menzies' new book, 'Who Discovered America?' also claims the Chinese have been sailing to the New World since 40,000 BC across the Pacific Ocean
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His theories are not widely accepted by academia and he has been labeled a 'pseudo-historian'
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'Who Discovered America? The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas' by Gavin Menzies, published by William Morrow, is due out today.
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Columbus features heavily in the book - insofar as Menzies has devoted the last 20 years to finding and laying out evidence that Columbus not only didn’t discover @placeholder - he was 40 millenia late.