1434 Book Review

1434 The Year A Magnificent Chinese Fleet sailed to Italy and ignited the Renaissance.
By Gavin Menzies Harper Collins June 2008
Website

The Renaissance was heralded through the recovery by Italian scholars of Greek and Roman classical literature. When the movement began, the civilization of Greece and Rome had long been exerting a partial influence, not only upon Italy, but on other parts of mediaeval Europe as well. Source


What if this Greek and Roman orgin was a lie? What if the Renaissance was totally fueld by something or someone else? what if Leonardo da Vinci was NOT the scientist and inventer everyone says he was?

How will you react? With Shock? With Horror?
Will you call me a Heretic? Will you call me a Liar?

What if Leonardo never actually dreamt up and created these inventions? Yes, he drew them, noone denies that, but they were not his original ideas. He was just redrawing them, and making better drawings of someone elses inventions. Whose inventions was he redrawing, you ask? Why, the Chinese of course.

About a month ago, I read and reviewed a book written by Paul Chiasson, in which he claimed that the Chinese had discovered America before Columbus. Island of the Seven Cities. Chiasson mentioned another book - 1421 - written by Gavin Menzies, which hypothesised that the Chinese sent out huge junks (boats) in the early 1400s to map the world. Along the way they discovered the Americas.

Gavin Menzies has now written another book called 1434 - due to be published this month (June 2008). In this book, Menzies states that in 1434, the Chinese travelled to Europe and gave their knowledge of astronomy, cartography, agriculture, machines, weapons, and many other areas of knowledge to the Vatican. This was done so that Europe could reciprocate and pay tribute back to China.

However, a few years later, China cut herself off from the world and chose to isolate herself, and her people from the West. Noone knows excactly why China made this decsion, but Menzies makes a hypothesis. That China lost so many junks and crew during the great exploration of the early 1420s, that as a country, she withdrew into herself to grieve. This caused China to become isolated.

In 1513 Piri Reis of Turkey drew a map of the world. Only the Atlantic part of this world map survives to the present day. This map shows the Caribbean islands and the east coast of South America. Brazil was discovered in 1500, but not settled or explored until the 1530s.

In one of the inscriptions on the map itself, Piri Reis lists these (other) sources, and tells us how he used them: No one now living has seen a map like this. I have composed and constructed it using about twenty maps and mappaemundi; these are the maps which were composed in the time of Alexander of the Two Horns, and which show the inhabited portion of the earth. The Arabs call these maps ja'fariya.

I have used eight ja'fariya maps, an Arab map of India and four recent Portuguese maps - these maps show the sea of Sind, India and China according to mathematical principles - and also a map of the western regions drawn by Colombo. The final form was arrived at by reducing all these maps to the same scale. Therefore the present map is as accurate for the Seven Seas as the maps of our own countries used by sailors.

Another note gives the date and authorship of the map: "This map was drawn by Piri ibn Hajji Muham­mad, known as the nephew of Kemal Reis, in the month of Muharram of the year 919 [1513]."

Charles Hapgood studied the Piri Reis map for a number of years, and wrote a book about it, called the Maps of the Ancient Sea Gods. He finally decided that the older maps that Reis claims to have copied from, must have been made by aliens and UFOs from outer space. Do you beleive that?

While historians accept and beleive that Piri Reis copied his map from other sources originating at the Library of Alexandria, there is no proof of this at all. If anything from the Library of Alexandria had been discovered this would be very exciting news and known world wide. I would surely know about it, as I am an avid student of the Library of Alexandria history.

I believe that those other sources came from the Chinese. It makes logical sense. Reis even mentions that he used a map from India. How do we know that the Indians did not get their knowledge from China? We don't.

1434 is a very exciting book to read, and most definitely an eye opener about an important part of the real history of this planet. I have read about a number of finds in various places that do not fit the "official" archaeological record, and as such they are either ignored or hidden away.

There are also those who are debunking Menzies's theories. Websites such as 1421 Exposed and threads such as this one all debunk Menzies ands say that he made mistakes therefore his evidence and theories are wrong.

Lets put it this way - those debunking Menzies did not themselves go out and correct Menzies errors. No. They just say this is wrong, that is wrong, and then do nothing. They also dont show any proof that Menzies is wrong. I am free to believe whatever I choose. I choose to beleive Menzies. What he says does make logical sense.

Admittedly some of what Menzies says is hard to beleive, precisely because it goes against everything we have been taught. He makes a shocking statement about the Maori's of New Zealand. In NZ (when I was at school) the official story was that the Maoris came from a place called Hawaiki, which has been identified as Hawaii. The Maori's showed extrordinary navigational abilities to traverse thousands of miles of open ocean from Havaiki to New Zealand with no landmarks to guide them. Menzies claims that the original Maoris were actually Chinese.

According to the NZ history website this Chinese origin seems to now be correct - but it is definitely NOT what I was taught in school. Mind you, I have been out of school for 25 years.

If you are willing to be open minded, and to think logically about this book, then you too will learn new things that your teachers did not teach you in school.