Annex 12 – Evidence of the Voyages of Zheng He’s Fleets to Peru and Bolivia
To read a memo Gavin wrote on his travels in Peru, where there is a deluge of evidence suggesting a pre-Columbian Chinese presence for hundreds of years, please click here
1. Maps and star charts
· Liu Gang 1418 map, Waldseemueller (1507) and Piri Reis (1513) show Peru before Europeans got there.
· Diego Ribeiro map, 1529, shows the coast of Peru in great detail with an inscription which describes Peru as “Province and Cities of Chinese silk.”
2. Chinese Records and Claims
· Chinese book Illustrated Record of Strange Countries (1430) shows animals unique to S. America.
3. Accounts of contemporary European historians and Explorers
· Pictures of Chinese horsemen at Trujillo (Friar Antonio de la Calancha) and
Ayacucho (G. Squier). Lances and swords are similar to early Ming in the National History Museum, Beijing. To see a copy of these pictures please click on this link to the 1421 Gallery
· The work of Fernando Llosa Porras, Sechin, Monumento Mito.
· “… We may reasonably conclude that there existed in the country a race advanced in civilisation before the time of the Incas…” W H Prescott
· Ranking finds in “highly probable that the first Inca of Peru was a son of the Grand Khan Kublai” (W H Prescott, History of the conquest of Peru, p.5)
· Pizarro encountered the Inca wearing “silk robes”.
4. Accounts of Local People
· “Giants came by sea to settle amongst them” (Garcilaso de la Vega /Pedro de Cieza de Leon).
· Inca legends – white bearded Inca Emperor “200 years before Spanish Conquest”.
· Sir Francis Drake captures ship “with Chinese pilots” aboard who had charts and sailing directions to cross Pacific from Peru, bound for Philippines
· There is also an ancient Peruvian legend about Japanese people arriving on their coast many years ago. (José Luis Coz Matusaki)
5. Linguistics and languages common to China and New World
· Names of 95 villages, which are Chinese and have no significance in Quechua
or Aymara (Loayza) – listed in para 14.
· Villages of Eten and Monsefu (3 miles apart) understand Chinese but not each
other’s patois.
· The name Inca = Yinca (people from Yin) (Martin Tai).
· Chile was named before Spanish (Molina); Chi-le = dependent colony in China.
· Joseph Campbell in his book “The Masks of God” refers to Indians of the High Andes speaking ancient Chinese dialects.
· A Peruvian reader was talking to a Brazilian friend who informed him that the villagers along the Amazon use the word “NEKO” for cat; NEKO is also apparently the world for cat in Japanese. He also read a book by Jaques Cousteau “Voyage in the Amazon river” which mentions some inscriptions in a rock in ancient Japanese. There is also an ancient Peruvian legend about Japanese people arriving on their coast many years ago. Further corroborative evidence would be greatly appreciated. (José Luis Coz Matusaki)
American Indian names which are Chinese (Martin Tai)
Columbus’ arrival: met Indians = Yin dian (people from Yin [China])
Pizarro: Inca = Yin ka (people who live in Yin)
Vancouver: Inuit = Yin uit (people originating in Yin)
Linguistic groups – A French reader states : “…The Basque language is similar to no other in Europe. Both Basque people and people from the Bigouden Country (South West of Brittany) have Asian features in their faces. They have slant eyes, dark eyes and hair. Some of them might even be mistaken for Asian people or strikingly look Asian as children. It is said that the Bigoudens have Asian blood in their veins from the time when Genghis Khan’s hordes stormed across Europe. Why would we then see Asian features only in people living by the sea? It would make sense that the Asian invaders or explorers were coming from the sea and visited the Basque Country and Brittany coming from Spain, on their way north (Pascal Defaisse). Let us know if you agree or disagree with this opinion.
The work of Nancy Yaw Davis
Zuni people understand Japanese (Jim Tanner; Nancy Yaw Davis; Barbara Vibbert) E.g. the Zuni word for deer is ‘shohita’ which is similar to the Japanese word shika The linguistic parallels between the Zuni and Japanese are quite startling and many more examples can be found. Here are just a few: English = to be inside, Zuni = uchi, Japanese = uchi. English = leaf, Zuni = ha, Japanese = ha. English = yes, Zuni = hai, Japanese = hai. English = to wake up, Zuni = okwi, Japanese = oki (ru)
The Zuni for Flute mountain is Shohko yalana whereas the Japanese shakuhachi yama means “flute” and “mountain”.
Matsaki is the name of a Zuni village and it is also a common place name in Japanese which refers to pine trees.
The Japanese kangi (written symbol) for rice field is found in petroglyphs near Zuni.
Zuni = bitsu (meaning an important deity) is similar to the Japanese butsu meaning Buddha.
Peaches – Prunus persica. The origin of the peach is China, where it has been cultivated since the early days of this ancient culture. The peach is generally believed to have been brought to America via the Spanish conquest. Nancy Yaw Davis, in her book “The Zuni Enigma”, however contends that the Spanish invaders, on coming into contact with the Zuni tribe of the Southwest found that peaches had been long cultivated there. This hypothesis is supported by archaeological excavations discovering peach pits that were believed to predate the arrival of the Europeans to America. The Zuni word for peach is mo:chiqa (“mo” = round object, “chiqa” = sweet). This cannot be seen to correspond with the Spanish word for peach “duranzo” or “melocoton” but it does with the Japanese word for peach “momo”.
The work of entomologist Julio Lopez-Maldonado, University of California Davis
he is proposing a new way to read the hieroglyphic Mayan writing system, proving that this is totally phonetic and astonishingly rich in literary terms. The relevance of the preliminary results points out that is totally contrary to what we have been previously told that the Mayan writing system was not but a child language or a telegraphic language as it is has been proposed by the Mayanist epigraphers in the last 160 years. Preliminary results actually suggest a strong connection culturally and linguistically with the Chinese writing system and culture. This ties in with the work of Mr. Lam Yee Din – Relationship between Korean characters and petroglyphs found on an island off Mexico. The characters look similar in shape, and a similarity in the phonemic system may also be found in Korean character and Maya characters. Korean characters, or the Korean alphabet (which is called Hangul,) was invented in 1446, just within 30 years after Zheng He’s discovery of America in 1421, but more than 40 years before Columbus’ exploration of America. So it is quite possible that Koreans visited Mexico and introduced the phonemic idea to Korea.
6. Shipwrecks, Chinese anchors and fishing gear found in the wake of the treasure fleet
· First Spanish to Chile found wrecked Chinese junks (Grotius).
7. Chinese porcelain and ceramics found in the wake of the treasure fleet
· Pottery decorated with Chinese calligraphy – Las Trancas, Nazca and Ica (Pablo Patron) and Cajamarca (Zerallos Palmer).
· A terracotta Inca figure (pre-European) of an Oriental man that appeared to be a prisoner. Possible ship-wrecked sailor. Item held at Museo Larco Herrera, Lima, Peru. (Jose Lopez)
· Clay or terracotta figurine of a medieval Chinese official housed in the Tiawanako Museum in Bolivia. Found during excavations at the site and was dated to around 900 AD – Cormac Ginty
8. Pre-Columbian Chinese jade found in the wake of the treasure fleet
· Mummy with Chinese inscriptions and jade headdress (Loayza, Cultural College Lima).
9. Artefacts, gems, votive offerings, coins and funerary urns
· A variety of talismans, amulets etc featuring Chinese Tai-Ki inscriptions and Bi and Tri-Grams.
· In Museo Arqueologico de Larco Herrera: a silver idol, a statue of a man with plaited hair in the Chinese style, sitting on a tortoise (the Asiatic symbol of longevity,) with Chinese inscriptions.
· Statues with Chinese inscriptions in Chan Chan.
· Reader claims that in the National Collection in Bogotá, Colombia, and in the National Collection in Lima, Peru there are pre-Columbian clay statues that clearly represent Chinese people. ( Klaus Jaffe)
· Lonely Planet comment on the Museo Litico Pucara: “…displaying a surprisingly good little selection of anthropomorphic monoliths from the town’s pre-Inca site, which was connected to the ancient Tianhuanco culture”. In this museum, there are sculptures with what they describe as ‘Mongolian Heads’. In the garden the monoliths are also of oriental design depicting a tortoise with a monolith on its back, similar albeit smaller than an item visited on travels to China in the Ming Tombs near the Great Wall. (Greg Guilford)
· The Isla Del Sol Museum displays an item of ceramincs entitled ‘Del Oriente’, which looks totally out of place in this museum with Pre-Incan culture and the birth of Manco Paca everywhere. Does anyone have any further information on this piece?
(Greg Guilford)
10. Stone buildings, artefacts, canals and aqueducts
· “Great Wall of Chimu”, 40 miles long, in shape and size resembling Great Wall of China, and Great Wall of Vietnam (built by Zheng He)
· Tomb with Chinese statues, Chan Chan (Gustavo de la Torre).
· Inca cement/road building (Humboldt and Ondegardo – W H Prescott).
· “… A judicious system of canals and subterraneous aqueducts…” (W H Prescott’s History of the conquest of Peru)
· At the ruins of Kunturwasi, San Pablo (Cajamarca) is a monolith engraved with an image that represents the Great Yu (Fernando Llosa Porras)
· A Peruvian reader was talking to a Brazilian friend who informed him that the villagers along the Amazon use the word “NEKO” for cat; NEKO is also apparently the world for cat in Japanese. He also read a book by Jaques Cousteau “Voyage in the Amazon river” which mentions some inscriptions in a rock in ancient Japanese. There is also an ancient Peruvian legend about Japanese people arriving on their coast many years ago. Further corroborative evidence would be greatly appreciated. (José Luis Coz Matusaki)
11. Mining operations found by first Europeans when they reached the New World
· Sophisticated Inca mining technologies
12. Advanced technologies found by first Europeans on arrival in New World
· Inca cotton technology – crib of Chinese methods
· Peruvian mortar (Humboldt)
· Peruvian cement (Ondegardo).
· Metallic tools/knowledge of smelter technology tin/copper (Humboldt).
· 300 year old aquaculture system covering 500 square kilometers in the Amazon – A Chinese system? (Richard St. George)
A vast, 300-year-old system of fish farms has been discovered in the Bolivian Amazon by an American team. The weirs and pools stretch over 500 square kilometres, and would have supported many more people than can survive on the land today. “This is out of all proportion to anything we’ve known before. The technology is straightforward but the scale is extraordinary,” comments Warwick Bray of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. Native inhabitants of the Baures region built weirs in zigzag patterns across the savannah. The weirs channelled fish into traps and ponds during the annual flooding of the land.
These pools then acted as dry season stores, providing long term sources of protein to support a complex society, says Clark Erickson of the University of Pennsylvania, who led the research. The conventional view is that seasonally flooded savannahs are suitable only for cattle grazing, not for cultivation. But Erickson hopes intensive aquaculture, providing high levels of protein, could be reintroduced, and help repopulate the area.
“Archaeology can provide models for sustainable development based
on past uses of the land,” he says.
Tonnes of snails
Archaeologists have known about the earthworks in the Baures region since the late 1950s. But Erickson is the first to identify them as the remnants of a giant fishery. He says the fish weir system is similar to ones used by people in Bolivia today – but on a far grander scale. The weirs are 1 to 2 metres wide and 20 to 50 centimetres tall. They change direction abruptly every 10 to 30 metres. At each kink in the weir there is a funnel-like opening leading to circular ponds up to 2 metres deep and 10 to 30 metres in diameter. The Baures savannahs are still covered with a thin sheet of water every rainy season, says Erikcson. And the low earthworks would have controlled the movement of fish, across the land.
Erickson estimates that 1,000 kilograms of fish could have been produced per hectare of pond each year. The ponds would also have provided hundreds of tonnes of Pomacea gigas edible snails. Erickson’s team found vast numbers of snail shells beside the abandoned ponds.
Early reports from travellers in the region describe a densely populated area.
“Today this region doesn’t have much of a population. But the
earliest accounts by European travellers suggest the people had worked
out a way of feeding bigger populations than they can today,” says Bray.
The populations would have been devastated by disease brought by
the Old World explorers, Erickson thinks. But he hopes that fish farming
based on the ancient approach could support a large population again.
Source: Nature (vol. 408, p190) Emma Young
13. Plants indigenous to one continent, found on another
· Sweet potatoes (more than 20 varieties) exported from S America found by first Europeans in New Zealand and across Pacific. Same methods, freeze drying/soaking used in Ancash province (Peru) and New Zealand.
· 74 separate plants exported from S America to Australia found by early Europeans.
· Datura is native to China where the combination of Datura seeds with wine was used. Mam t’o-lo is the Chinese name for Datura and a Taoist legend refers to the plant as the flower of one of the pole stars. In China it was customary to mix Datura with Cannabis and wine The Chinese valued Datura as an aphrodisiac. In the Andes, Datura is taken as tea or smoked to induce visions. Ancient Peruvian healers and shamans employed Datura’s narcotic and anesthetic properties when performing ritual or medical operations (e.g. skull trepanations). The Auruks of Chile to this day use Datura in the same way their ancestor’s did. The native people of the south-west regions of North America hold Datura sacred. In Zuni tradition it belongs to the rain -priests who use it to appeal to their ancestor-spirits for rain. (Will Aust)
14. Animals indigenous to one continent, found on another
· Horses seen by first Europeans (Acosta)
· Chinese ship’s dogs (Acosta)
· Chinese chickens
· Elephants to Peru and Chile (Ranking). Elephants seen, wild, by Capt. Cochrane
· Elephant bones at Tarija 220 S.
· Sophisticated animal breeding techniques, viz. guanaco to llama; vicuna to alpaca (Darwin, Chapter xx).
15. Distinctive artwork carried from continent to continent
· Shared symbolism of representation of birdmen at Sechin and in China (Fernando Llosa Porras
16. Customs and games exported from China to New World
· Folklore identical to Chinese (para 25).
· Divination practices identical to Chinese
· Methodology of sheep sacrifice almost exactly the same in China and Latin America
· Similarities between superstitions in Peru and China.
· Similarities between jade musical stones, as well as bells of Eten, as alluded to by Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yanqui Salcamaygua in Relacion de Antiguedades deste Reyno del Piru, p.275
· Methods of herding game into predetermined spot – identical to Mongolian methods (Cavill, also Garcilaso de la Vega).
· Quipu – name same as in China.
· Method of recording numbers (knots) and meaning (colours) similar to China: white = silver or peace; yellow = gold, red = war.
· Same method for dating lunar month, solar year approx every 12 years additional month added (W H Prescott).
· Same method for recording time – gnomon (sun’s azimuth (W H Prescott))
· Ancient Chinese shamanistic rituals and the shamanism practiced by the Andean peoples (including Aymara) today and during the reign of the Incas. – Cormac Ginty
· A reader comments on how a television documentary (German television channel RTL II, “Welt der Wunder“,Sunday, 16 January 2005) mentioned South American drawings showing Peruvian warriors using fighting techniques which look like Kung-Fu (A. Hedenetz)
· German edition of National Geographic, 1st January 2005, publishes article about Peruvian Inca pottery showing some men doing kung fu. (Sergio)
· PBS documentary, “The Last Incas”, about a remote tribe in the cloud forests of Peru that shunned contact until now with other people. They wear long white cotton robes and have long hair. They discussed their old traditions. One tradition involved placing decorations shaped like butterflies on trees. Is there some Chinese parallel to this? (Robert Ammirati)
17. Armour, metal weapons and metal implements found in Peru
Conquest period woodcuts of Inca troops show the usual slings and light shields of the area, but officers also carry a long apparently-bronze headed halberd. This is completely different to the usual American macquahuitl obsidian-edged wooden sword, but very similar to Chinese weapons. The original drawings are by Poma de Ayala between 1584 and 1613, the accuracy of which is confirmed by surviving Inca pottery and artefacts. According to de la Vega, the weapon is called a “yauri” and is “a sort of halberd, finished on one side with a sharp point and on the other by a keen-edged blade”. It was normally of copper or bronze, but some used by high-ranking noblemen were silver or even gold – Phil Barker
18. Trans-oceanic spread of diseases from one continent to another
· Roundworm found in local people otherwise found in S E Asia (para 13).
19. DNA and physiological comparisons
· Polymorphic Alu Insertions and the Asian Origin of Native American populations by Gabriel E Novick and Colleagues – refer to Bibliography. The Paez, Guambiano, Ingano, Guayabero and Inca peoples have ‘Chinese’ DNA (post Bering Straits migrations)
· DNA of ‘Juanita’ the ice maiden (Kyoto University) shows she has ‘Taiwanese’ DNA (Arequipa University Report)
20. Meteorological events and weather
Further research needed
21. Stars and navigation
Further research needed
View maps: The Piri Reis map, The Waldseemüller map, The Cantino world map
Related galleries: Cave art
