An Ancient World Map Depicts West and Central Asia in 1433

As fall approaches and the leaves change, most of us look forward to the start of the holiday season. Meanwhile, Dr Wang has been busy studying the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu 《坤輿萬國全圖/坤舆万国全图》once more to demonstrate that the part of this map that shows West and Central Asia by Matteo Ricci is not derived from European sources, but Chinese sources. This would be consistent with the other findings Dr Wang has found in her published book Chinese Global Exploration in the Pre-Columbian Era: Evidence From an Ancient World Map (2023). We invite you now to view a sneak peak at the abstract of Dr Wang’s latest findings. The full text is coming soon…

Abstract

The West and Central Asia portions of Kunyu Wanguo Quantu《坤輿萬國全圖/坤舆万国全图》(abbreviated as KWQ ), or Complete Geographical Map of All the Kingdoms of the World, are fully analysed in this chapter. These portions of the map are abbreviated as West & Central Asia-KWQ. The KWQ was the first world map written in Chinese andpublished in China by Italian missionary Matteo Ricci in 1602. The map has been generally considered as a European map.

However, after analysing the complete 93 geographical items and their histories, and the nine annotations on the West & Central Asia-KWQ, and comparing them with seven major sixteenth-century European maps, Ricci’s map is shown to be of Chinese origin.

The political era revealed directly by the West & Central Asia-KWQ is deduced step by step in Section 3 as being within the period 1192–1464. After verifying the Chinese historical records on Admiral Zheng He’s seventh (and last) voyage to the Western Oceans, such a wide period can be narrowed down to the year 1433 which falls in the range of 1192–1464.

Keywords: Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, Matteo Ricci, Ming treasure voyages, West and Central Asia, Zheng He

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