Did Zheng He mariners explore the Americas before Columbus? A Chinese-based map reveals the truth

As children, we all learn about who discovered America. However, all those figures are Europeans. In this paper, Dr Wang analysis the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu《坤輿萬國全圖》or Complete Geographical Map of All the Kingdoms of the World published by Matteo Ricci in 1602. What she found is that contrary to popular belief, the Americas shown are not the result of European information, but Chinese sourced from Pre-Columbian times. Moreover, it shows the political landscape of the Americas in the 1420’s and evidence for much earlier Chinese voyages.

Abstract

Did Ming mariners explore the Americas?

This paper analyses the Americas as drawn on the world map Kunyu Wanguo Quantu《坤輿萬國全圖》or Complete Geographical Map of All the Kingdoms of the World published by Matteo Ricci in 1602 in China. The results support the claim that the Ming Treasure Fleets led by Admiral Zheng He (郑和) to the Western Ocean have explored the Americas.

This paper thoroughly examines the Americas portion of Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, including the seventeen original annotations, and the history and coordinates of 241 geographical terms (one unnamed river, which I conclude to be the Mississippi River, seventeen named rivers, three named lakes and 220 place names of chiefdoms/kingdoms, regions, cities/towns/villages, mountains, islands, bays, gulfs, seas, and oceans), and compares them with their counterparts on the three major sixteenth-century European maps and today’s map. The comparison involves identify over a thousand geographical coordinates based on different Primary Meridians used by these maps. The results show that the Americas of Kunyu Wanguo Quantu is of Chinese origin; it is not a copy of the three major sixteenth-century European maps. Matteo Ricci merely edited this Chinese map to make it look more European.

Additional findings are: 1) the Americas of Kunyu Wanguo Quantu reflects the political landscape of the Americas between 1400 and 1428, decades before Christopher Columbus set foot in the Bahamas in 1492; 2) after taking into account other Chinese historical records, the date of that political landscape can be narrowed to between the 1420s and 1428, a period which overlaps with the sixth voyage of Zheng He’s Treasure Fleets but precedes their seventh (and last) voyage; 3) the map shows correctly and uniquely the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, the south-western tip of Alaska ‒ Cape Peirce ‒ and the Arctic Ocean; 4) the map shows correctly that Cape Breton Island in Canada was separated into two islands by a Chinese-built ancient canal; and 5) this paper lends support to the claim that Chinese might have migrated to the Americas more than 4000 years ago as written in Shan Hai Jing (《山海經》or Classic of Mountains and Seas).

Keywords: Americas, Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, Matteo Ricci, Shan Hai Jing, Treasure Fleets, Zheng He

Full text will be included in a forthcoming book, entitled “Chinese Global Exploration in the Pre-Columbian Era: Evidence from an Ancient World Map (World Scientific, Summer 2023).

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