Doctoral Academic Reviews of Dr Wang’s Publication: Chinese Global Exploration in Pre-Columbian Era: Evidence from an Ancient World Map

A Great Book to Read

I am very delighted and proud to recommend Dr. Sheng-Wei Wang’s new book ‒ Chinese Global Exploration in Pre-Columbian Era: Evidence from an Ancient World Map ‒ which lays out Chinese contributions in the world maritime exploration.

In the book, Dr. Wang thoroughly and rigorously investigates over 500 geographical items and dozens of annotations depicted on a rare and precious ancient Chinese world map named Kunyu Wanguo Quantu《坤舆万国全图》or Complete Geographical Map of All the Kingdoms of the World. The map is also known as Map of the Ten Thousand Countries of the Earth, or Great Universal Geographic Map. The map was published in 1602 in China by Italian missionary Matteo Ricci.

The US Library of Congress has produced a digitised edition of this map based on the map at the University of Minnesota’s James Ford Bell Library. Today there are five more copies of this map in the world: the Vatican owns one of the maps, and the other four are in private collections in Japan and France. Later copies of the 1602 edition of the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu can be found in China, Korea, London, and Vienna; one copy of the map recently was discovered in the storeroom of the Shenyang Museum in China.

Dr. Wang’s research covers not only the geographical information of over 500 items on this map, but also their histories. The latter were totally missing or not adequately researched by other researchers in the past. From analysing the geographical and historical content of the map, she was able to derive the political landscapes of the different regions and deduce the dates/eras when they were explored before these geographical items were drawn into a map. These dates/eras overlap separately with Admiral Zheng He’s sixth and seventh voyages to the Western Oceans in the early fifteenth century, the Southern Song Dynasty (twelfth century) and even far earlier to around 5,000 years ago.

She then compares these geographical items on Kunyu Wanguo Quantu with those on the major sixteenth-century European maps and the state-of-the-art archaeological evidence. Through this extensive, thorough, and in-depth research, she concludes that Kunyu Wanguo Quantu is of Chinese origin, and the political landscapes of these regions reveal Chinese worldwide maritime exploration in the Pre-Columbian era.

While some map aficionados nicknamed Kunyu Wanguo Quantu “the Impossible Black Tulip” and consider this map to be a mix of “science and fantasy”, Dr. Wang provides concrete evidence at multiple levels to show that the map contains “science and historical facts”. What a tremendous progress she has accomplished in this book!

Living in today’s complex world bombarded constantly by information and misinformation from all sources, we must bear in mind that to know the world, we need to first know the map of the world, or simply put, the history of the world. When you dig deeper, a map can tell you not only “where” a place is, but “when” that place began to exist or became extinct, and “what” event has happened or not.

History is a barometer for measuring humanity and human wisdom. From a map, we learn the kind of knowledge and process which enable us to shape our destiny. It is that extraordinary snapshot of Chinese civilization at the dawn of globalization discussed in her book that Dr. Wang aims to project into the reader’s mind.

Hwa-Wei Lee, Ph.D. (Univ. of Pittsburgh); Hon. Dr. Of S.S. (Ohio Univ.)

Dean of Libraries Emeritus, Ohio University

Retired Chief of the Asian Division, Library of Congress

American Library Association Melvil Dewey Medal Awardee (2015)

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A valuable addition to your personal library

In her book, Chinese Global Exploration in the Pre-Columbian Era, published by World Scientific, Sheng-Wei Wang presents the reader with multiple demonstrations that Chinese sailors, including the 15^th century admiral Zheng-He, explored and mapped the continents of the world prior to the Europeans. On these pages she presents documentary evidence detailing the curious equivalents that scholars have noted on some of the earliest maps of the world. From this data, she concludes that the most rational explanation for these graphic similarities is that medieval European cartographers incorporated into their maps knowledge of geographic features gleaned from earlier detailed surveys of the world that were made by the Chinese.

This well-documented treatise provides the reader with an abundance of tributary evidence supporting Wang’s conclusions; thereby, extending the depth of the study.

It would be worthwhile to also apply her methodology in the future to the analysis of cartographic implications of recently documented earliest visits (ca. 26000 – 3000 YBP) of Asiatic people to North America, to resolve the remaining historical puzzle.

In summary, this text is chock-full of supporting citations and insightful theories on the topic of Pre-Columbian Chinese global exploration and the influence of the maps they made. Anyone desiring to learn more about ancient maps, along with the facts and folklore surrounding the adventures of Zheng-He, will find it to be a valuable addition to their personal library.

John A. Ruskamp, Jr., Ed.D., M.B.A.

Senior Research Analyst for Epigraphic Research

Author of: Asiatic Echoes – The Identification of Ancient Chinese Pictograms

in pre-Columbian North American Rock Writing

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A rigorous and scientific research approach to deal with a topic in social science

The book reveals an amazing effort of research. The author studied all available documents, information, and publications, and carried out in-depth analyses. With her strong background in natural science research, she adopts a scientific research approach to this topic in social science. All her conclusions are substantiated by rigorous analyses. This is no doubt an extremely valuable book for readers who are interested in history and geography, and for scholars who are engaged in teaching or research in this field.

Lynne Chow, PhD in Accounting

Associate professor, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Strand Leader, School of Business, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

Dr Wang and worlddiscovery.net appreciates and thanks Dr Hwa-Wei Lee, Ph.D. (Univ. of Pittsburgh); Hon. Dr. Of S.S. (Ohio Univ.), Dean of Libraries Emeritus, Ohio University, Retired Chief of the Asian Division, Library of Congress, American Library Association Melvil Dewey Medal Awardee (2015), Dr John A. Ruskamp, Jr., Senior Research Analyst for Epigraphic Research, M.Ed., M.B.A, and Ed.D., Author of Asiatic Echoes – The Identification of Ancient Chinese Pictograms in pre-Columbian North American Rock Writing and Dr Lynne Chow, Associate professor, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Strand Leader, School of Business, Hong Kong Metropolitan University for their insights, opinions and reviews.

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