Unknown Shore - Book Review

Unknown Shore
By Robert Ruby
Henry Holt 2001

Unknown Shore recounts the practically-forgotten story of the Frobisher expeditions and the first attempt to colonize the New World. Martin Frobisher (ca.1535-1594) initially set out to discover a northwest passage to Cathay, but instead stumbled across the Arctic, a place that was still a mysterious Ultima Thule to the English.


During his first stay off the coast of Baffin Island (Actually they were on Resolution Island), he managed to kidnap an Inuit to take home and display as a “curiosity,” accidentally leave five of his men behind when he left, and—most importantly, as it turned out—discover a strange kind of “black rock” which, when examined by assayers back in England, was reported to contain significant amounts of gold. Seized by gold fever, the English decided to send Frobisher back for more black rock, along with enough men and supplies to start a mining colony in the new land he’d discovered.

You don’t have to be a history major to know where this one is going: the would-be colony fails to take hold, and the black rock turns out to be worthless. And the route to Cathay? Never found—no such thing existed. The whole painful incident might have been buried by history, if Frobisher’s angry investors hadn’t made such a noise about their lost money. As it is, the voyages and their humiliating outcome remain a little-known historical footnote, despite the fact that Frobisher and his men were the first English people to set foot in the New World -1576 to 1578 . (Was this before or after John Cabot?)

Interwoven with this story is the tale of an American, Charles Francis Hall (1821-1871) an eccentric Arctic enthusiast who set out, entirely on his own, to discover the fate of the lost Franklin expedition. Along the way, he learned from the Inuit of another, much earlier group of white men who had come to their land. Investigating, Hall found the island that was to have housed the English colony, and the centuries-old trenches that marked their mining operations. He also proved once and for all that Frobisher’s Strait, the body of water Frobisher had insisted was a waterway, was actually a bay.

Ruby tells the story well. The biggest thing that stayed in my mind was the assumption of the English that the Inuit were cannibals. And how did the English arrive at that conclusion? Because the Inuit are raw fish. So if they ate raw fish, then they probably also ate raw people. This affected their relations with the Inuit - treating them like primitive and uneducated people.

The one major flaw in the book’s storytelling is the chunky “intertwining” of the parallel tales; Ruby spends a few chapters on Frobisher’s adventures. And then, just when you’re really getting into the story, he cuts away to Hall’s adventures. By the time you’re well into Hall’s story, it’s back to Frobisher again. Both stories are interesting, so interesting that you want to follow each one through right to the end—no breaks.

I read this book for the Second Canadian Book Challenge. I should have read this for the first challenge, but never got around to it. I read this because John wants to know what this book is about. He has never heard of this book and he lives on Baffin Island - or he did live on Baffin Island up until last month. I believe he has just moved to Yellowknife in NWT.

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 beleive 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 find 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 beleive 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 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.

Island of Seven Cities - Book Review

The Island of Seven Cities
By Paul Chiasson
St Martins Griffin PB 2007
Random House HC 2006
Website

This book is written by a Canadian Architect (actually he is a French-Canadian of Acadian origin) with a keen interest in history. Like most people of Acadian origin, his family comes from Cape Breton Island MAP, just off the northern end of Nova Scotia.


In 2002 Paul was taking a walk around Cape Dauphin (see Cape Breton Map - on the east coast north of Sydney) and after climbing a hill, he discovered some stone walls and a road. This led him to beleive that this used to be an old town. The question became - Who built it and when?

Paul spent the next 3 years investigating the old records and documents that cover the history of Cape Breton Island. He eventually had to rule out the Portugese, the French, the English and Spanish. The answer that he came up with - the Chinese - may surprise you. But it also makes a lot of sense with all the evidence he provides. If it is ever accepted as true, this discovery will totally flip Canadian "official" history upside down.

While Paul was writing this book, he was reading a book called 1421 The Year the Chinese discovered the World by Gavin Menzies. In this book, Menzies posited a theory that the Chinese built large boats and sailed all the oceans, before they isolated themselves. The exporation was encouraged during the Ming Dynasty.

I enjoyed this book very much. It has a lot of history, and a lot of research, but it is NOT written in an academic or scholarly style. It is easy to read and understand.

Paul presented his research at a Symposium on Chinese Naval Expeditions at the Library of Congress in Washington DC in 2005. It was received very well.

When Paul tried to inform the Nova Scotia Government and the provincial Museum about his discovery, the Nova Scotia Museum wrote back telling Paul that they were not interested because (and I quote) "There were hundreds of archaeological sites on Nova Scotia and many such claims were received each year. Sincerely etc..." Paul was stunned. If you remember your stories of treasure hunts, The Oak Island Treasure Pit is also in Nova Scotia.

I have already found several refutations (if thats the right word - to refute) of Paul's research.

The CBC reported this story in 2006 just after Paul's Book was published.
No Chinese ruins in Cape Breton (say) archeologists

The archeologists say Chiasson's wall is really a fire break from the mid-20th century. "The first part was constructed in the mid-20th century", Christianson said, "but the major portion of the road was built as late as 1989."

There are also historians out there who say that the Chinese NEVER sailed around the world, because there is no evidence, and there are no written records in Chinese archives.
The Island of Seven Cities - is not true.

It becomes obvious that Chiasson has never seen the remains of a medieval Chinese city, and a single piece of archaeological evidence is sufficient to disprove his theory: with fleets of huge junks harboured in St. Ann’s Bay and thousands of people living for years in a nearby hilltop city, the sand beaches and rocky pastures of the area should be littered with millions of shards of Asiatic crockery, yet not a single one has been reported during centuries of farming, and none were noticed in the author’s many examinations of the site.”

Its up to the reader really to decide who to beleive. Do you beleive on the evidence that Chinese did settl and live on Cape Breton Island for a while, leaving only when the Europeans started sailing west. Or do you think its all a hoax and that the stone walls are really 20th century fire breaks.

I read this book for the Canadian Challenge.