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Determining the Origin and Era of Asia as Depicted to the North of China on the First Chinese World Map

While the rest of us are now in the full swing of fall with school, work and anticipation of the holiday season, Dr Wang has new findings on the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu《坤輿萬國全圖/坤舆万国全图》, specifically, the region just north of China in Siberia and in today’s Eastern Europe in the era of the Ming Treasure Fleets. This conclusion was reached after Dr Wang studied 102 geographical items and fourteen annotations on the relevent area of the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu《坤輿萬國全圖/坤舆万国全图》to determine the map is of Chinese origin and is consistent with the information and politcal landscape of the Ming dynasty. We invite you to view a sneak peak of her abstract of her new findings.

The full text is going to be included in a forthcoming book entitled Chinese explored Asia long before the Europeans, An Ancient World Map Tells All (World Scientific, 2025).

Abstract

This chapter reports that a Chinese-based world map ‒ the 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 published by Matteo Ricci in 1602 in China ‒ depicts the region of Asia to the north of China (abbreviated as ANC-KWQ) in the era 1419‒1438 and that the map is of Chinese origin.

Since the entire KWQ has been deduced ‒ from an annotation written on the KWQ near the location of Spain ‒ in my previous book as a map drawn in the era from 1428 to 1433, the era of the ANC-KWQ must logically also be narrowed down to the era from 1428 to 1433, which falls nicely in the range of 1419 to 1438. The year 1433 was when the Ming Treasure Fleets returned to China after they completed their seventh (and last) voyage to the Western Ocean, and the year 1428 was when Jiaozhi changed its name into Annan and became independent.

The above conclusions are based on analysing the locations and histories of the complete 102 geographical items and the fourteen annotations depicted on the ANC-KWQ and on comparing them as best as possible with major sixteenth-century European maps discussed in this chapter.


Keywords: Asia to the North of China, China, Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, Ming Dynasty, Oirats, Siberia, Tartary

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