Annex 15 – Evidence of the first Panama Canal
• Some months ago we started serious research into the DNA of the native Indian peoples of North America. This quickly threw up a mystery: why were there so many clusters of Indian peoples on the borders of Panama, Ecuador and Colombia – no less than nine different peoples – who had DNA with such strong affinities to the Chinese and Japanese? Obviously Chinese and Japanese seafarers had settled in those areas – but why choose such an inhospitable country where there appeared little opportunity for trade compared with the rich Maya civilisation further north or the Incas further south? Why settle in the jungle?
• Either side of the Atrato River (which flows from Colombia into the Caribbean) have DNA which Professor Gabriel Novick and colleagues have summarised as follows: “Close similarity between the Chinese and native Americans suggests recent gene flow from Asia”. The same can be said of Professor Novick’s description of the Guambiano and Ingano peoples who live nearby where the Rio San Juan reaches the Pacific. The people who live either side of those two rivers – the Nganama/Wanana – “are clustered closer to Japanese people than to other American natives” (Fideas E Leon S and colleagues). Professor Fideas E Leon S and colleagues also found that some 200 miles further south “the Cayapa or Chichi from Ecuador [have genes] molecularly similar to those found in south east Asian and Japanese people”. Professors Tulio Arends and Galengo studied “the occurrence in transferins in 91 Yupa Indians, 69 of whom belong to the Pariri tribe and 22 to the Shaparu tribe. They inhabit the foothills of the Sierra Perija (latitude 9o to 110 north, longitude 720 40’ to 730 30’ west)…”
• “In 58 per cent of the Yupa Indians of Venezuela there is a slow moving transferin electrophoretically indistinguishable from that which to date has only been found in Chinese. This finding is additional evidence of the existence of a racial link between South American Indians and Chinese.”
• In short, between Lake Maracaibo (which can be clearly identified on maps such as the Cantino published before Europeans reached that part of America) and the estuary of the Rio San Juan there are fourteen Indian peoples who have Chinese or Japanese genes – a discovery made by seventeen dedicated geneticists.
• When the first Europeans arrived in that part of the world they found coconuts planted along the Pacific coasts and on islands off the coasts – coconuts being plants which originated in the Far East. They also found Chinese ship dogs and Chinese rice. Drake captured a Chinese junk trading between North and South America whose pilot had a chart showing the Pacific. Taking all this evidence in the round, it seems to me inescapable that the Chinese and Japanese lived in this small part of the Isthmus of Darien and created settlements there before the first Europeans arrived – for, as mentioned in earlier talks, the first Europeans found Chinese people already settled on the Pacific coasts of both North and South America. The puzzle is, why should this be?
• A clue may be obtained, as always, from medieval maps, which were published before Europeans reached the Pacific coasts of North America, notably the Waldseemueller. To my mind, the Waldseemueller accurately charts the Pacific coast of North America from 50 north right down to the approaches to the Straits of Magellan in the southern part of South America. Perhaps even more interesting, the Waldseemueller chart, which was published in 1507, does not show the Straits of Magellan – this chart was available for the public at large to purchase. However, smaller globes which Waldseemueller produced at the same time for his private client, do show the Straits of Magellan. So before Magellan set sail Waldseemueller knew the Straits of Magellan existed. As mentioned earlier in another talk, Magellan also had seen a chart of the Straits of Magellan in the King of Portugal’s library before he set sail on his circumnavigation of the world. He referred to that chart when he was passing through the Straits of Magellan.
• The Waldseemueller also showed an opening between the Atlantic and Pacific at 8 north – that is, the latitude of the southern parts of the Isthmus of Darien where there is this cluster of Indian peoples who have Chinese and Japanese DNA. Pedro Menedez de Aviles, the first Castilian viceroy of Florida, believed that there was a canal which linked Pacific and Atlantic, for he found the wrecks of Chinese junks off the coast of Florida and stated that these could not have been there unless there was a passage similar to the Straits of Magellan. His biographer, Carlos Prince reported, “Chinese . . . with Tartairs, Japanese and Koreans . . . crossed the maritime stretch into the kingdom of Quivira, populating Mexico, Panama, Peru and other eastern countries of the Indies. In short, taking these reports together with the Synopsis of Evidence on my website, www.gavinmenzies.net reveals a mountain of evidence which corroborates what Carlos Prince said – Chinese, Japanese and Koreans did indeed populate Panama, as is evidenced by the DNA of today’s people.
• The Geography of the Darien Peninsula
The Colombian-Pacific coast region (Choco) occupies a stretch between eastern Panama and northern Ecuador between latitudes 80 45’ north and 10 15’ north and longitudes 790 to 76 0 15’ west, a stretch of land between the Pacific Ocean and Cordilllera Occidentale of the Andes, from west of the mouth of the Atrato River near Panama to the border of northwest Ecuador.
• The region is lowland with elevations rarely exceeding 600 metres. It has a complex of vast river basins, the most important being the Atrato and San Juan. Alluvial plains extend along these valleys and empty respectively into the Caribbean Sea (Gulf of Uraba – which appears on the Cantino) and the Pacific Ocean. And since these two rivers parallel the Cordillera Occidentale and receive numerous Andean subsidiaries, for much of the year they are swollen torrents. The San Juan River discharges more water into the Pacific than any other American river and the Atrato is the second-largest river in South America in terms of the volume of water discharged into the Atlantic.
• The lower part of the Atrato basin is characterised by swamps and shallow lakes in contrast to much of the San Juan River. Bordering both the Atrato and San Juan rivers are wide belts of hills. Because of this geography the Choco area is probably the wettest sizeable region on earth with various parts receiving annual precipitation of 4 to over 9 metres. The Atrato which runs north into the Caribbean, and the Rio San Juan which runs south into the Pacific, both rise at the Bocca de Raspadura less than five miles apart. About 100 years before the Panama Canal was opened to ship traffic, cartographers showed a canal here, which they called the Atrato Canal on their maps of the world. The canal supposedly had been in existence since 1788. It was then called the Raspadura Canal and linked the San Juan and Atrato Rivers. The claim to have told the outside world of the existence of this Raspadura Canal came from the famous German scientist and geographer, Baron Alexander von Humboldt. Here is his note:
• The interior of the Province of Choco, the small ravine Raspadura unites the neighbouring sources of the Rio San Juan and the small river Quito (a tributary of the Atrato). A monk of great activity, a curé of the village of Narita, employed his parishioners to dig a small canal in the ravine de la Raspadura, by means of which, when the rains are abundant, canoes loaded with cacao pass from sea to sea. This interior communication has existed since 1788, unknown in Europe.
• When Humboldt recommended the Atrato River as a canal possibility, that part of the Darien region had lain dormant for more than 200 years. The famous explorers, notably Bastide and de la Cosa and Christopher Columbus, did not get as far as the Gulf of Uraba, so it is a mystery how it appeared in the Cantino.
• When Philip II ascended the Spanish throne in 1555, he immediately reversed the policy on transit rights across the isthmus. Since the Atrato was a very good canal channel, being more than 1000 feet wide and 50 feet deep as far as 60 miles upstream, navigation on the river was forbidden under penalty of death, thus effectively sealing both river, the route to the Pacific, and the knowledge of both, to the outside world for many hundred of years.
• Digging deeper into the accounts of the curé of the village of Novita, reveals that the monk, assiduous and shrewd as he was, did not build a new canal but dug out an existing one. Evidence for this comes from a fascinating book The Golden Isthmus by David Howarth, who actually discovered the Raspadura Canal. As Howarth points out, possibly the canal was very much more ancient and had only been reopened by the cure. As David Howarth wrote:
• On the whole, it seems likely there was a canal, or had been. Possibly it was built by the Indians in an earlier epoch: they had been quite capable of it. Or possibly it was a Spanish smuggling route: not only cocoa but gold and silver might have been taken that way to avoid the duty – and perhaps the awkward questions – of officials at Panama. . . . The problem awaits an explorer.
• At the time of the 1421-23 voyages, the Chinese had had centuries of experience in building canals. And to build one to link the Atlantic to the Pacific across the whole of the Darien peninsula would have been no problem at all, let alone the five miles or so to connect the Atrato with the San Juan river. The Grand Canal of China was begun under the Wu dynasty and was one of the wonders of the ancient world.
• From 584 AD onwards it was extended and the individual sections linked together to form a system stretching for 1800 kilometres, to this day the longest man-made waterway in the world. It was the main artery of commerce between north and south China. In 1411 the Emperor Zhu Di decided to dredge and reconstruct the northern section to clear 130 miles of channel. Thirty-six new locks were built for Beijing was over 100 feet higher than the Yellow River. Three hundred thousand labourers were employed on the task. The completed canal stretched from Beijing in the north to Hang Zhu on the coast south of Shanghai. By 1416, 300 million kilograms of grain were being ferried along the canal from south to north to feed the workers in Beijing.
• The Chinese had a great deal to gain from a canal which linked Atlantic and Pacific, and perhaps even more important, North America to South America – to this day there is no road which connects the two continents. Apart from connecting the oceans and continents, it would enable the Chinese to export the extraordinary wealth of plants, especially medicinal ones, found in the Darien peninsula. The Darien peninsula is a pantry for the world of medicinal raw materials, providing the world’s pharmacology industry with natural medicine. So much wood is being carried down the Atrato today that thousands of indigenous people living in communities along the banks of the river are working together in a desperate bid to save their forest.
