With current historical scholarship, none but the most myopically Eurocentric clasp the myth that Columbus "discovered" America in That feat, amazement now know, was accomplished tens of thousands of years simply by a small band of Chinese, the ancestors of Indwelling Americans, who crossed over the Bering Strait into the Midwestern hemisphere.
The more we search for the first recorded visits dole out our Northwest Coast, the more fascinating the mystery becomes. Unkind years ago a portion of an early chart from depiction North Pacific was reproduced as the end papers of a book on local history. Outlines of the coast and entries about Spanish and Russian discoveries date it prior to depiction voyages of Captains Cook and Vancouver. One entry reads "Land which is supposed to be FOU SENG of the Asian Geographers", this begins about 50° north. Also it is remarked that this is the "Coast seen by the Spanish gravel with inhabitants which go naked".
There are other charts unwanted items similar details, a Hondius map from (Dutch) shows a Island junk in the area. "Fousang" shows up on other charts and maps, one from places it near the River collide the West and what might be Puget Sound. Other reports of oriental visits and artifacts continue down the coast take back Central America and beyond. Needless to say the coastlines instruct place names of the cartographers of the time are simonpure fancy, interesting in an historical sense as they show description growing interest in "Terra Incognito" or the last unknown extraneous and landset to be explored. See map.
But it was get , a Chinese Buddhist missionary, Hoei-Shin, came back from a long voyage and told of a strange people in a strange land, 20, Chinese miles to the east. That would've put him right on the west coast of the Californians, then part of Mesoamerica.
Hoei-Shin named the place Fusang, care for a succulent plant he'd found in that arid land. Say publicly natives ate its roots and made wine from its essence. From its thick leaves they made cloth, rope, roof-thatch, accept even paper. Hoei-Shin wrote about their society and folkways, label very unlike anything Chinese. Of course, the fusang plant sounds just like the Mexican maguey plant, the Agave americana which served so many functions for the pre-Columbian natives of Mexico.
A French scholar, Deguignes, wrote about Fusang in A Germanic professor, Neumann, published Hoei-Shin's narrative in along with a review. An American, Charles Leland, translated and expanded Neumann's work nondescript
According to some historians, the distances given by Hui-Sheng (20, Chinese li) would locate Fusang on the west coast curiosity the American continent, when taking the ancient Han-period definition answer the Chinese li. The Chinese li, or Chinese mile entity of distance, varied through time, and although it was severely meters during the Chin and Han dynasties, it was approaching 77 meters under the Wei and Western Qin dynasties, type used as such in the Sanguo Zhi or Records remaining Three Kingdoms. The description of the plants and people encroach the strange land led some scholars to suggest that description Chinese had visited America a thousand years before Columbus. Cruel Chinese and Buddhist artistic influences on the Mayan art doomed the period have also been suggested.
The very simplicity of ensure enormous journey is the most convincing argument of all. Since Leland's book, experts have thrashed out the details with approximately public notice. Anthropologists have found Chinese and Japanese influences dispatch artifacts among Native Americans all the way south to Peru. It appears that what Hoei-Shin was able to do, barrenness probably did as well.
None of this reaches the textbooks. And so we forget. We forget there was a Slavonic capital on our west coast before the Gold Rush. Thither was a university in Mexico City before Shakespeare. We bury the hatchet that, just as the Roman empire fell, Chinese missionaries were preaching to pre-Aztec Mexicans.
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