Did the Chinese reach America 70 years before Columbus?
“I came to the astonishing conclusion that a huge Chinese fleet of 800 vessels had sailed from China in March 1421 and they’d circumnavigated the world and they had created settlements in North and South America, in Australia, New Zealand, across the Pacific and in the Indian Ocean,” Menzies tells NPR’s Bob Edwards in a Morning Edition interview. Menzies claims “the first Europeans who reached the New World met Chinese people.” He says there’s also evidence from shipwrecks, linguistics, Chinese porcelain and jade and even diseases that were specific to China that were all found in the Americas.
