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ChinaScience

Did Chinese explorers from the Ming dynasty travel to the Americas decades before Columbus?

  • A book on Chinese history has posited that the Ming dynasty’s Treasure Fleet journeyed as far as the Americas
  • Author Sheng-Wei Wang has analysed the ancient Kunyu Wanguo Quantu world map from 1602 to back up her claims

Reading Time:5 minutes
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Illustration: Joe Lo
Victoria Bela

This is the first in a two-part series on the voyages of the Chinese in the pre-Columbian era. Here, Victoria Bela examines the proposition that ancient mariners from the East had set foot upon the shores of America.

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A massive Chinese fleet journeyed around the Indian Ocean during the early 15th century, undertaking seven meticulously planned voyages that took them as far as the east coast of Africa.

But what if they actually went much, much further? What if they reached the Americas decades before Christopher Columbus landed on the shores of the Bahamas in 1492?

That is the question author Sheng-Wei Wang sought to answer in her book, Chinese Global Exploration in the Pre-Columbian Era: Evidence from an Ancient World Map, published last year.

Through Wang’s retelling of the chronicle of Chinese exploration, she said she hoped to help “recover what [the Chinese] lost” in the historical record.
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During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Chinese admiral Zheng He commanded seven naval voyages around the Indian Ocean. These journeys took place between 1405 and 1433, involving tens of thousands of men and a massive number of ships known as the Treasure Fleet.

“The mustering of resources and logistical planning was truly astounding,” said J Travis Schutz, a history professor at the California State University Los Angeles, who is not affiliated with the book.

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