Annex 21 – Evidence for the Japanese Ships which accompanied Zheng He’s Fleets
• When writing the hardback version of 1421 I thought Zheng He’s ships were composed of Chinese junks with a few Indian ships who joined a Calicut. As time has gone by more and more evidence has shown that substantial numbers of Indian and Korean ships joined the convoy. Recent DNA evidence coupled with finds of Iron implements and weapons has shown that the Japanese contingent was very large indeed.
• DNA shows as that Chou Wen’s fleet on their voyage from North America across the Atlantic contained a Korean division and that his ships had North American Indians abroad – either as passengers or slaves but no Japanese.
• Zhou Man’s fleet on the other hand contained many Japanese ships. Where Chinese DNA is found along Zhou Man’s track, so is Japanese DNA across the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand (as detailed in Talk ‘C’) and North and South America.
• Zheng He’s Fleet were in effect a floating ‘United Nations’. Vasco da Gama was correct all these years ago when he reported that a huge multinational fleet of 800 ships, had preceded him to Calicut on the Malabar Coast of India in ‘about’ 1419.
• Chinese policy was to bring all the world into Confucian harmony. To do this they required to be able to converse with local peoples across the world in their own language.
• Zheng He set up a school for foreign interpreters in Nanjing. By the time of his sixth voyage, interpreters aboard the fleet could converse in 17 languages. One of Emperor Zhu Di’s first orders was to send Zheng He on his first voyage in 1403 to recruit foreign navigators.
• www.gavinmenzies.net contains DNA and other evidence of Japanese voyages under the command of Zhou Man to the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America, thence across the Pacific to Australia. They left their genetic fingerprints which can be seen in the DNA evidence contained in “The Genetic Legacy of Zheng He’s Fleets”.
• We have recently been informed of DNA results of the original native peoples of Vancouver Island – the Salish people. The principal report on which I rely is that of Professor Mariana Fernandez Cobo in ‘The American Journal of Physical Anthropology’ 2002. She and her colleague’s analysed urine of the Salish Indians, the Navajo; the Guarani of the Amazon and of mainland Japan. The DNA of all four, the entire sequence CAGTTAGA is absolutely identical. This would be a coincidence of 65,536 to one. The Salish, Navajo and Guarani studied in the report can only be Japanese.
• In itself this is of great interest but equally fascinating is the repeated evidence that Japanese ships sailed with Zhou Man. North of Vancouver Island (Salish – Japanese DNA) are the Queen Charlotte Islands whose original inhabitants the Haida have ‘Chinese’ DNA (Professor Bryan Sykes).
• This mirrors what is found in the Amazon. The Guarani have Japanese DNA (Professor Cobo) whilst the tribes living around them the Karitiana and Surui have ‘Chinese’ DNA (Professor Novick and Colleagues). All of these Amazonian peoples have been cut off from the outside world for centuries.
• The Chachi of Ecuador have Japanese DNA (Professor Torroni and colleagues): their neighbours the Paez, Guambiano and Ingano have Chinese DNA (Professor Novick and Colleagues).
• The Navajo have both Japanese (Professor Cobo) and Chinese (Professor Novick) DNA.
• As time goes by doubtless more and more evidence will be found – it will be placed on the website.
