Rating: 
Summary: 1421 is refreshing,but hits and misses in more ways than one
Review: Menzies should be credited for proving and bringing to the mainstream public evidence that the Chinese during the early 1400s were the best sailors of the day and traveled to faraway places like Africa,India,Austrialia,and America before Columbus set sail toward America, and Portugal or Spain began the Age of Exploration. He proved his case with amazing evidence like Chinese junks discovered in California and highlighting the frizzle feathered fowl chicken that is native to Asia but strangly enough found in South America.The Chinese DNA evidence left me less convinced because of the simple fact that the people of early America were in fact Asians who crossed the Bering Strait, so the DNA does not come as a shock, it is like comparing DNA of people from England with the early American colonist of New York. Menzies approach is also not original. Twenty years before Menzies wrote his book an African-American scholar,Ivan Van Sertima wrote a book called They Came Before Columbus:The African Presence in America....he presented the same format as Menzies,linguistic,cartographic,artistic,botantical,and recorded evidence from conquistadors....I could be wrong but it seems like Menzies might have read the book, but fails to put the book in his bibliography which gives the impression that Menzies ideas are radical. I must say Menzies briefly mentions Van Sertimas name on his 1421 website.Another BIG mistake Menzies makes is falling into the same trap as the ethnocentrist that are Pro- Columbus,he seems to believe the Chinese were original in reaching America before Columbus.Strong evidence supports the arrival of the Vikings,Egyptian/Phoenicians,and West Africans to America before both Columbus and the Chinese...Menzies mentions none of this.Menzies also gives the laymen reader the wrong interpretation of the Piri Reis map, Chinese could not have mapped the Piri Reis map during the 1400s because Antartica on the Piri Reis map was shown when it was not covered with ice.The only time Antartica was not covered with ice was 4000 B.C, the Chinese were far removed from advanced ocean navigation until around 1400 A.D....the source of this map is Alexandria Egypt(probably mapped by Egyptians) though found in Turkey, the lay person reading for intertainment does not know this, nor is he told that the southern tip of Africa was routed before both Bartolomeu Dias and the Chinese,the first group to round the Cape were the Egyptians and Phoenicians led by the Pharoah Necho.The book is good and I support it in that it does shed light on Chinese accomplishments that predate the European age of Exploration, but if the reader wants to be more informed on the subject read Alexander von Wuthenau Unexpected Faces in Early America(rare book)Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings by Charles Hapgood(best source on Piri Reis map) and They Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima(basically 1421 before 1421)
Rating: 
Summary: This claim was debunked even before 1895.
Review: Before you buy 1421, beg, borrow or buy a copy of "Collingridge, George: The Discovery of Australia, 1895 (Outsized)". Reprinted a century later.
In this superb book Collingridge compares literally hundreds of claims to early world discovery, dating from 100 AD to 1770 AD, including the 1421 one. Some have merit, the 1421 claim is one that has least merit.
The maps are better than Menzies'. The scolarship is better. The readability is better.
Rating:
Summary: Not sure that I believe it, but .......
Review: Gavin Menzies has an interesting slant on navigation and the voyages of discovery in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The important part for me is not whether you, the reader, believe the thesis that he is putting forward, but more whether you have assumptions and ideas yourself that are unquestioned and unquestionable. Is the fact that "in fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" engrained in your thoughts, so that nothing will shift it?
Did Columbus discover America? Menzies postulates that many of the 'discoveries' by European seamen were following routes and indeed charts where others had gone before. These documents were left by, or based upon, the great Chinese treasure fleets that set sail near Tianjin in early 1421. This was after the lavish celebrations that marked the inauguration of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the new capital of the Emperor.
The author draws upon his experiences as a mariner, even the commander of a submariner in the British Navy, in the third quarter of 20th century. It is certainly true that a periscope places a different perspective on land observed. He uses his experience to interpret islands from some early charts. These can sometimes be identified as several peaks on the same land mass, indicating that the initial observations took place from some distance away. There are good descriptions of the rudiments of astronavigation, and the importance of specific lines of latitude, some held dear merely because it is the latitude of Beijing.
If the Chinese fleets (for there were many ships) did circum-navigate the world in the period 1421 - 1423, some difficult questions can be answered. Why are there hens in both North and South America that bear a strong resemblance to Chinese hens? These livestock pre-dated the first western settlers. There are other unusual items found out of their geographical distribution; maize in Indonesia when it is indigenous to South America. However, not all of the questions are answered, and some hard questions using the author's hypothesis are answered by the `conventional' view.
Menzies notes where there is a need for further investigation to corroborate his central hypothesis. This includes asking the Governor of the Falkland Islands for help in discovering a monument stone that may have been erected , and the genetic finger-printing of peoples who may be descendents of some Chinese settlers left behind. There is a great deal of assumptions and calculations (current flow, speed through the water), and whilst any one individual part is no great quantum leap, taken together, the inferences drawn are very significant. At the end I am left thinking that it is an answer, but it is almost a BACKWARD answer, with the hypothesis having been raised, and the book as a justification for the hypothesis. Some with a wide knowledge of cartography have questioned the selectivity of the author, as maps and charts all support his central idea, but there exists other items that do not do this.
Be all that as it may; it is still worth daring to ask the question.
Peter Morgan, Bath, UK (morganp@supanet.com)
Rating: 
Summary: If only this could be true
Review: Gavin Menzies has hit upon a mystery no less intriguing than the pyramids, alien visitation, and the origin of Native Americans. Could the Chinese have discovered virtually every continent decades or centuries before the europeans? Are early Chinese explorers the compilers of so many early maps; maps that aided the european explorers that followed them? The list of questions goes on and on. According to Mr. Menzies in 1421: The Year China Discovered America, the Chinese did all of this and much, much more. But Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims call for extraordinary proof. And that's the problem with this book. The proof in most cases isn't scientific but rather based on hunches.
1421: The Year China Discovered America certainly isn't short on research. Menzies takes his time spinning his theory, a dab of evidence here and a dab of evidence there. But in the end the whole idea is based on a house of cards. One nagging thought I kept having while I was reading this is why the Chinese didn't sail up the Thames? They went everywhere else/
One thing is apparently clear from reading this book. The history we've been taught in school and have come to believe as true can't be complete. While I don't accept all that Menzies has to sell, I do believe that he is correct in that the Chinese had more contact with civilizations around the world than we have thought true. Is everything he says true. Hardly. But I believe he has hit upon some tantalizing ideas. Better research from better sources in the future may make what is dim and blurry as clear as truth.
Rating:
Summary: Too much time underwater
Review: I began with an open mind, but after about the middle of the book - when I could find a new whopper being sold on almost every page - I read it only for laughs. The huge number of historical mistakes have been listed elsewhere and can easily be found in a websearch. However, as a traveler and ocean sailor I would like to point out some of the maritime errors, since Menzies makes the claim to have a special advantage in this area over university-trained historians. For example, he writes that the Chinese fleet sailed southeast from the Orinoco around the easternmost point of Brasil, near Recife. I recently was windsurfing this coast and can state that the winds howl from ESE at 15-30 knots year-round, making such a feat impossible for the bulky chinese square riggers which could not effectively go to weather. Menzies also writes that the fleet passed through the Tuamotus in what is now French Polynesia. Until the advent of GPS, this huge string of low coral atolls was known as the Dangerous Archipelago. The reefs are impossible to see at night, currents are wild and unpredictable, seas can be very heavy, the winds and geography offer many a lee shore, and without charts very few vessels have survived a passage there. Even cruising sailors with a good ability to go upwind usually avoided it. I sailed there a few years ago with GPS, accurate charts, and radar to pick up the palm trees at night - and it was still hairy.
Menzies makes much of maps being distorted because the sailors were caught in ocean currents. Yet any sailor within sight of land can discern if he is in a current, and in fact a good sailor will also know such a thing far from land because of the behavior of his boat. If the fleet had been sailing due north off the coast of Africa, for example, they would have run aground on the westerly bulge of the continent long before the current carried them clear.
One could list many more such obvious errors, but it would only waste your time, just as Menzies wasted mine. The point here is not that his thesis is impossible, or that his mistakes deny everything in Menzies' book. The point is rather that the author is unable to distinguish between what is true, what is possible, what is unlikely, and what is impossible. And because of this lack of distinction, the book is garbage.
Rating:
Summary: 1421?
Review: I found "1421" by Gavin Menzies to be just a fascinating read, well worth the purchase and time, and the hypothesis put forth in the book very novel and if true, very enlightening. Of course, the proof or not for the hypothesis, although there is quite a lot of evidence cited in the book (and at the related web-site, www.1421.tv ), remains to be seen. As with any theory the proof is in further examination and further exploration for supporting evidence. It will be interesting to see, for example, how the DNA evidence ultimately comes out. And the archeology of ancient wood wrecks probably has to develop just a bit more before it can identify definitively post-rot where the wreck came from.
But still, Gavin has done in many ways a service to American (and world) history by advocating that America was found in 1421 (-3?) by Chinese explorers from the Zheng He Treasure Fleets. He does so based mainly on maps that pre-date explorer journeys that should have in theory been the first discovery, something that does argue pretty well for "somebody" having been there ahead of Columbus, Magellen, et al. The jump from there to Chinese Treasure Fleets is a bit tenuous, complicated of course by China having gone through one of its cultural purges, not unique to the country, but I'm sure aggravating for Chinese historians. Could the data on the maps come from some other source? Is Gavin Menzies' jump to the conclusion that it must have been the Chinese on solid ground? That's a tough one. Obviously there is a lot of evidence arguing that a number of cultures came to America before Columbus. Aside from the pretty much accepted Vikings, there's also some conjecture that any number of further cultures came over earlier. For example:
Basques: See "The Basque History of the World" by Mark Kurlansky. This is a very well written, fascinating read, that spends some time putting forth the theory that the Basques went to North America, and kind of kept things "secret" to preserve essentially a trade advantage. This is the best written book in this review. It is perhaps a smaller jump to have the hypothesis that some of the early map details could have come from the Basques, who while secretive, may have let a map or two slip into Italian or Spanish hands.
And of course there are other books and other theories. Africans, Celts, Irish monks, Arab traders, etc., etc. There seems to at least be a theory for many ancient civilizations as to how they may have gotten to America. Could some of these have provided the information on the early maps? Perhaps.
But I do think that Gavin Menzies in his book does provide a lot of evidence that the Chinese in some form or other were in the Americas. Was it in 1421? That one is tough to conclude, although I am not saying Gavin Menzies is wrong in his hypothesis. Even though an amateur, his practical experience at sea is such that he may put together things that classically trained historians and archeologists, mostly land-based, might miss initially.
One book that is worthwhile reading for the discussion is "When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433" which explores much of the same territory as "1421", but is probably on less conjectural ground. The history here is more directly supportable. But still, there are gaps. It would be very nice if some of the Chinese scholars or others could find much more solid information on the ships in the Treasure Fleet. There remain a lot of questions. How were Wood ships constructed to be so large? How sea-worthy were they for long voyages? And so on.
In the end, I think "1421" is the better read, well worth the effort. I would suggest also wading through the footnotes, which while not quite up to classical historical text standards, at least do give some scope and context for the regular part of the book. I doubt very much that the Chinese/American early contact references will be entirely disproved. It does seem rather Euro-centric to conclude that the only post-land bridge discoverers of America came from there Is Gavin Menzies correct that among those were the Chinese in 1421? Read the book yourself and decide for yourself..
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Summary: Give This Book a Prize for Fantasy
Review: If you believe that little green men from outer space built Stonehenge or the Nazca lines in Peru, this is the book you want to read. Don't get me wrong. I like books that shake and rattle the academic establishment -- but you gotta be at least moderately credible and get most of your facts right. Menzies fails on both counts, although he's pretty good at covering up his astounding claims with a patina of scientific language.
Menzies thesis is that the Chinese sailed around the world in 1421 and on side jaunts discovered Antarctica, the North Pole, circumnavigated Greenland (!!), and left colonies all over the Americas including building stone towers near Boston. Moreover, the Chinese sailed around the world in only a couple of years. Oddly, the Chinese seem to have missed Europe where their visit would surely have been remembered and recorded.
As in all good cons, there's a grain of truth in Menzies. The Chinese undertook some serious sea expeditions in the 1400s, exploring the East African coast as far south as Mozambique and probably touching on the northern coast of Australia. It's conceivable that at some point in their long history the Chinese -- purposely or by accident -- may have reached the northwest Coast of North America -- as it is equally plausible that American Indians may have reached out toward Asia. Read "Kon Tiki."
Despite a kernel of fact, most of Menzies' book is a mountain of nonsense. To take just one claim, Menzies has the Chinese circumnavigating ice-bound Greenland, explaining that this was possible because of a warmer climate in those days. Au contraire, Gavin. As every geographer knows, the period from about 1400 to 1700 is known as the "Little Ice Age" and temperatures were significantly colder than they are today. Greenland was not circumnavigatable by sea in 1421; rather the Norse colonies in Greenland were dying out because of the miserable weather. The first non-motorized circumnavigation of Greenland took place in 2001, and it was accomplished by dogsled and kayak, not a 15th century Chinese junk.
Many, many other examples of silliness are found in the book. Suffice it to say that this book should be marketed in the fantasy section of your local book store.
Smallchief
Rating: 
Summary: I HOPE it's true!
Review: If you read this lively and entertaining book, you'll hope Gavin Menzies is right and will offer further evidence of his notions. This book is certainly a bit fanciful, but just too fun to ignore.The idea that Europeans were nothing more than "also rans" shakes the bedrock of our historical foundation, but the snippets of miscellaneous 'discoveries' (such as the strange descriptions of kangaroos, the flora and fauna transplants, and the suspicious wreckages located off far-flung coasts) tempt me towards investigating the 'new' frontiers of speculation. I don't doubt Menzies' sailing expertise, but he needs a battery of other experts to back up some of his tangential theories. I certainly hope he finds them. I look forward to reading the further research that is sure to follow. It would certainly be fun to imagine that the Chinese managed to get an ancient ship lodged in San Francisco, located the North Pole, mined in Australia, and swapped goods with the early Central Americans. With style and enthusiasm, Gavin Menzies opened up a big 'can-o-worms' that will provide several decades of exciting study and further speculation. This book is a great place to begin that intellectual journey that awaits. (paperback version)
Rating:
Summary: Spencer Wells's DNA studies dsprove Chinese settlement...
Review: in the new world. In his book The Journey of Man Wells talks about DNA strains of Y-Chromosomes in Native Americans all throughout the Americas. None of them have Chinese Y Chromosomes. Menzies's application about Chinese settlers in the Americas over 500 years ago is wrong. And get a load of the obviously frigged up way he tries to make early 15th century Europe out to be twice as primitive as it really was.
Rating:
Summary: About DNA problems with modern native americans + chinese
Review: The studies of native american indians from all over North and South America, done by such scientists as Spencer Wells, does NOT show these peoples to have DNA in common with the modern Chinese that would thus be showing a common ancestor of the two peoples that lived just around 580 to 600 years ago (or 29 to 30 generations ago). The DNA sequeances the two groups share show common ancestors more like 12,000 years ago (or 600 generations ago). Therefore, theories in this book of any 15th century Chinese settling in the americas and becoming the direct ancestors of some modern day native North Americans or native South Americans is obviously all wrong.
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