Pre-Cabot Chinese settlement in NA

Heads up, from a publishing website -

Paul Chiasson's THE ISLAND OF SEVEN CITIES: The Discovery of a Lost Chinese Settlement in North America, chronicling the author's discovery of a settlement on Cape Breton pre-dating John Cabot's discovery of the island in 1497, to Michael Flamini at St. Martin's, for publication in May 2006, at auction, in a very good deal, by Ron Eckel at Random House Canada.

Cape Breton? That's awfully far from China. I guess I should read it. There's archaelogical evidence that the Chinese were on the West Coast and the remains of a junk have been found in the Sacramento Delta (and no, it wasn't left over from the railroad days). I'm wondering if the items found in Cape Breton are trade goods that made it over there or an actual Chinese settlement.

Go to Google and punch in paul chiasson's island of seven cities.There are several sites and the bottom line is that it is fantasy fiction.

You really cant say that its fiction/fantasy. So called "historians/archeologists" still say that the 5 masted, 150 foot longs junks of China were fictional stories even after remains of 130 foot junks were found in a chinese harbour dating from the disputed decade.

[Did Chinese beat out Columbus? (Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop - The International Herald Tribune) June 27, 2005]Architect believes Chinese found Cape Breton
Associated Press

HALIFAX ”” A nine-kilometre road winds its way up an isolated mountain where a stone wall sits amid fields of wild blueberries and mayflowers. A closer look reveals a series of stone platforms.
At first glance, the scene is not an unfamiliar one in Cape Breton's sprawling wilderness. But this one, nestled along the island's east coast, has become the latest battleground for archeologists with the startling claim it was discovered by the Chinese, long before the arrival of any European explorers.

"This is probably the most important archeological site in the world right now and it's going to change world history," Paul Chiasson, who found the site, said from his home in Toronto. "Well before Christopher Columbus, well before the European age of discovery in the 15th century, China controlled the seas and had a major settlement on the eastern coast of North America."
Chiasson, an architect originally from Cape Breton, set off a heated debate in historical circles last month when he presented a paper in Washington outlining his belief that an armada of Chinese ships, carrying thousands of sailors, landed in Cape Breton as early as the 1300s.
Canadian and U.S. archeologists and historians have dismissed the assertion, arguing there is no evidence to support what they say is just another wild theory about North America's first foreign visitors.
"The evidence here was absolutely missing," Kirsten Seaver, an historian with a specialty in early Norse mapping, said from her home in Palo Alto, Calif. "It just looks very strange to me that this would have anything to do with the Chinese - medieval Chinese sitting there like an island thousands of miles away from home. How would they get there? Why would they get there and why haven't we found any other traces anywhere else?... Notoriety is a very strong motivator."

Chiasson insists the settlement is Chinese because of very distinct features he says only the Chinese would construct:
- The lengthy stone wall is similar to the ones the Chinese built around their encampments.
- The road leading to the site is the same, standard width of old Chinese roads.
- The stone platforms are similar to ones found in the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Chiasson, 50, discovered the mysterious site more than a year ago while hiking in the area, which he is keeping a secret until it receives protected status by the province. He says he came across a wider-than-average road that led him up the side of a steep, rocky cape, some 300 metres high. Surrounded by ocean on three sides, the cape is topped by a field and a stone wall.

Inside the three-kilometre-long wall, Chiasson found 15 rectangular platforms he believes were once the foundations for houses. At first, he thought he had stumbled upon an old European site. But after reviewing aerial photos and sifting through stacks of history books in a Toronto library, he became convinced it was Chinese. "There were moments when I had to leave the library because I was dumbfounded because the facts would simply pop out of the books," he said. "This will turn history on its head . . . and every day I realize how major a discovery it is."

But the find has elicited little enthusiasm among archeologists in the region, who say it is almost certainly an old farm. "There are these kind of stone ruins all over Nova Scotia . . . and by and large, they're all just abandoned Loyalist farm sites," said Rob Ferguson, an archeologist with Parks Canada in Halifax. "There are people who seem to take a hypothesis . . . and before you know it you have Phoenicians sailing across and Egyptians, and suddenly everyone is on your shore."

Provincial officials have said they won't explore the site because it seems unlikely it is Chinese. David Christianson, curator of archeology at the Nova Scotia Museum, has seen the aerial photos and doubts there is anything to the claim. "I cannot find any evidence there that would in any way support the assertion," he said. "I think he'll be disappointed. It's certainly speculative."

Chiasson scoffs at the skepticism. "I understand the reticence on the part of the government and the museum because it is world changing and they missed it."

He has written a manuscript about the discovery and has teamed up with Gavin Menzies, who wrote the controversial book, 1421: The Year China Discovered America.

Meanwhile, they're hoping private partners will step forward with funding for an archeological dig.

The two visited the site a couple of weeks ago with an engineer and discovered more roads and a canal system, findings that bolstered their belief in its Chinese origins.

"It's either a grand hoax or a great discovery because it's nothing in between," Chiasson says.

Thanks Story. So, there's archaelogical evidence but it's inconclusive as to who built them. Before there's a dig, it should not be ruled out that it could well be an indigenous population that went extinct or migrated elsewhere. While the Chinese were certainly capable of circumventing the globe, there's no Chinese record apart from them describing tall red trees (Redwoods) in a new land. That may establish a brief Chinese visit to the West Coast, but it's a far cry from Cape Breton. As an old hystery professor says, every now and then the archaelogist prove themselves useful. So, let's see if they can dig out and show us the porcelain, jade or a Ming dynasty coin. Then I'll believe it's Chinese but I won't hold my breath waiting.

I have to wonder if there's any buried treasure hidden by Chinese pirates. Maybe Ghenghis or Kublai Khan sent some over through the Northwest Passage.Something to ponder about eh?
Tom Patton

I have to agree with you in your dubiosityhoodshipness [?] If low stone walls are all the proof he needs of Chinese architecture, then by Golly them Chinese are responsible for half the ruined buildings in Eastern Ontario and Quebec, not to mention New Brunswick and Maine...
We have at least ten such structures tucked into the corners of our teeny 1200 acre homefarm in Ontario, and I know of at least another 20 within a ten minute walk. Our friends, the Nelsons, have a foundation at least 50' x 120' that you drive past on the way to the cow-shed, looks like it could be Chinese to me - well, it's made of stone, and we all know the Chinese used stone.
Could also be Carthaginian, Phoenecian.

Babylonian or even Egyptian too, mind. Or even Neolithic Irish.

Let's see a WHOLE lot more evidence, like we already have at L'Ainse aux Meadows, f'rinstance.

tac

Not an unbeliever, but right now, a disbeliever.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4609074.stm

A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418.

The problem with chinese copies of maps and books (look at the ones about gunpowder) is the editors kept the same title and author, but then updated the contents to reflect the knowledge at the time the book was republished. There is nothing wrong with that in the chinese scholarly tradition, but in the West its a big no-no.
the other thing that pisses me off is the assumption that Native Americans couldn't put one stone on top of another :shake:

The winners rewrite history!The Indians are given less credit as normal for the conquered(history repeats as usual).On a lighter note,site may exhibit signs of Ancient Astronauts(UFO encampment)? :rotf:

The Chinese had the technology but not the inclination. Chinese admiral Cheng Ho (Zheng He) made a series of voyages to India and Africa between 1405 and 1435 and may have reached Australia. But maritime exploration came to a halt after his death and subsequent emporers put a halt to exploration and the fleet was dismantled.

The possibility that he reached North America is remote and the idea that he established a colony so far north is preposterous. Accounts of his voyages do not indicate anything like this happening.
Stone walls, platforms and squares have been built by many civilizations. There a wall in the Andes about the size of Hadrians wall in Britain. But that doesn't mean that the Romans built it.

This all stems from Gavin Menzies' book, and looks like someone else trying to ride the bandwagon. Menzies' hypothesis is broadly plausible, at least as far as one or several Chinese expeditions reaching the southern Atlantic goes, but plummets into Von Daniken territory when he tries to find archaeological evidence in the Americas.

The biggest problem with all these kinds of theories is the assumption that there will be recognisable archaeological evidence. The European voyages of exploration of the Age of Discovery, for example, are almost impossible to chart archaeologically - only the Portuguese routinely left stone markers, and most of the great voyages and early settlements would be unknown without documentary accounts.

L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, the only definite Norse settlement site in the Americas, is instructive too. It was a settlement probably able to accommodate several hundred people, used intensively over several years at least, and yet hardly anything was found over almost a decade of excavation - a Viking pin, a piece of soapstone, ironworking slag, and the remains of turf longhouses. Contrary to some belief, the Vikings were perfectly able to build in stone, and did so in Greenland early on. But it would be astonishing to find stone walls and stone buildings at an expeditionary outpost, whether Norse or Chinese!

However, this character, his agent and his publishers will all make money out of this - Gavin Menzies was NYT No 1 bestseller, and people lap up this kind of controversy (here we are on this thread!). So you have to admire the entrepreneurial skills ... and maybe it is all true ...

Chinese historians don't believe Cheng Ho went any further south along the African coast the Mogadishu.