Art exported around the world by Zheng He’s fleet / Pictures of Chinese people / junks found in other lands
From China to:
North America
Clothes styles – see Alexander von Wuthenau, Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, in which pre-Columbian peoples are depicted – Chinese with their distinctive clothes and hats living amongst Indian peoples.
The Piasa – Father Marquette’s description of this painted beast is virtually an exact match for the dragon heraldry of the Yellow Emperor, Huang Di. Please refer to the link at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon Was the Piasa an Imperial dragon, proudly proclaiming China’s claim on the Mississippi Valley? For more information on the Piasa please visit the following links: http://www.indians.org/welker/piasa.htm and www.gavinmenzies.net/gallery.asp
Mark Nickless, who originally drew our attention to the Piasa Bird Monster has written an article on the phenomenon. To read his article please click here
Researchers have had an opportunity to examine a rare original 1854 Henry Lewis lithograph of the Piasa, published in Dusseldorf. It has some intriguing details that had not been seen in the small copy previously available to them:
1.It is apparent that a bluff face of at least 5000sq. ft. in area had been quarried and worked smooth before the Piasa was painted. Also, there are distinct quarrying marks to the left of the Piasa, in an unusual pattern.
2. The Indians in the foreground are shooting at the Piasa. They feared it and sought to obliterate it. It could not have been theirs!
3. The face on the right-hand creature is crudely added, and could not have been part of the original work – (Mark Nickless)
Washington Potters (R Hassel evidence) – obliterated by the mud slide .
www.gavinmenzies.net/gallery.asp
The book “Shipwrecks,Smugglers and Maritime Mysteries” (ISBN0-934793-03-4) by Wheeler and Kallman, page 6 states: “After discovering Chumas Indian drawings of Chinese junks in caves along the coast, some historians think the Chinese may have visited the Santa Barbara Channel before the Spanish did.” (Russ Taylor)
Browsing through Mythology of the Americas a visitor to our website came across a photo of a Totonac stela that has a clear representation of the Chinese / Taoist yin-yang symbol carved into its base. This isn’t something that vaguely resembles the same motif nor does it require a skewed interpretation to see it – Gavin Palmer
Central America
· Carved stonework – Chichen Itza, Copan (see para 20 (viii)).
· Metal carving (bronze?) of a Chinese cart driven by a horse found in Mexico (Leesie Mappes)
· Campeche concentric circles – same design found in recently unearthed Ming site in Guangzhou (John Robinson)
· In “The Blood of Kings”. by Linda Schele and Mary Ellen Miller there are a few photographs of Mayan sculptures that a reader believes to be of Chinese people. The figures have Chinese features and sport Chinese dress and hair style in these terra cotta sculptures – Robert Hildebrand
South America
The People’s of the Andes – Music – Inland from the Peruvian coast Chinese pentatonic scales (C D E G A) prevail, as does a large quarter higher on the piano (FXx GXx AX x CXx DXx). Indian peoples of North and Central America do not deploy the Chinese scales. Thus either Chinese music scales somehow ‘leapfrogged’ north and central America or were brought by sea to Peru (Gir Nijman).
Pottery styles – S American puma ware/Chinese tiger ware (Professor Gary Tee).
· Statue of Buddha sitting in the lotus position in small museum at the Mayan ruins in Guatemala (Giovanna Caruso)
· Peru and British Columbia (Wampum) – Quipus. Carver p. 362 and to Hawaii (Marquesas)
· A visitor to the Museo Precolumbino in Santiago, Chile, found beside many Olmec, Inca and Maya statues with their typical South American features, one with a definitely Chinese head and headdress. The description was rather vague and assumed it to be from the Olmec period, somewhere between 900 and 1200 AD – Ortwin Ahrens
Africa
– We have been made aware of an exhibition in the National Museum of China on “The Arts of the Ancient Kingdom of Kongo”. The organisers had also published a book Kongo Kingdom Art. The area covered was from Luanda to Libreville, especially the area surrounding the River Congo. The theme was ‘Chinese influence on the art of the Congo from the 14th to the 16th centuries.’ There is one section of the book entitled “African Art in China – What Zheng He forgot to bring back from Kongo”.
-A visitor to our website tells of a friend’s complete mask collection from Liberia. One of the masks comes from a tribe called “The Chen” or “The Chien” Tribe. Its eyes are slanted totally differently to any other mask from the country. Could the Chien have come from China, survivors of shipwrecks like the Pate islanders and the “Chinese Hottentots”? – Ulf Eriksson
-Gabon – The Fang / Bapounou “Mukundji” tribal masks from the Punu region of Gabon (NgunieéNyanga). They show narrow faced, elongated features, a pursed mouth, red or black narrow long nose, slit eyes and arched eyebrows. The faces are white painted and the black hair is in a remarkable chignon style, either single or double on top of the head.The faces are very “Chinese” looking (Walter H. Ziegler)
South Africa – Professor Raymond Dart in the March 1925 issue of “Nature” referred to San rock paintings of what appeared to be figures with Chinese hats. These paintings were found in the far south on the banks of the Kei River north of East London. He was severely criticised and ridiculed by his contemporaries and successors, even as late as in the 1990’s for having believed that the Chinese dared to venture into the dangerous currents south of Zanzibar. In the Mapungubwe collection, housed at the University of Pretoria, there are also shards of Chinese ceramics which prove that these artefacts must have found their way into the interior to the settlements of the early African kingdoms before European colonization. Further to this, skeletons of Mongoloid people were found in Whitcher’s cave, situated about 6 miles from the coast between Port Elisabeth and Mossel Bay, near to where the Dart San drawings were found – Professor Alex Duffey
Australia – supposed Aboriginal rock carvings in Berowra Waters, approx. 50 km north of Sydney. The carvings are on a vertical slab (Aboriginals carved on horizontal slabs), they consist of swirls & circles (unlike their paintings Aboriginals almost always carved ‘scenes’, i.e. figures, animals, tools, etc ) & they are at the end of the ship navigable area of the inlet from the sea, near the water, again rare for Aboriginal carvings – Will Coles
-Cave paintings on Flinders Island – the paintings are to be found in a cave overhang on Flinders Island off Cape York in Princess Charlotte Bay, and some of the boats are clearly reminiscent of Chinese junks.
– Yalgoo Cave Painting, WA, using the traditional Chinese style of composition with the flattened perspective including a horizon, the middle ground image of a ship and the foreground, peninsular (Stuart West)
– Petroglyphs from the Burrup near Dampier on the NW coast of Western Australia. These are well known locally and one is even described as “The Chinaman”. (Dr. John Groom)
– Flinders Island off Cape York in Princess Charlotte Bay – Cave paintings of Chinese junks.
-Australian reader remembers his father telling him that there were paintings of white people from before white settlement in caves in the Nullabor. The local aborigines had seen these people as the spirits of departed souls and had once viewed modern whites much the same way. He has also seen stone fish in the north and in Victoria. These are apparently most unusual for aborigines who did not settle in one place or normally create such structures but if they learnt it from others (and it is an Asian technique) then it would make more sense. (Royce Burns)
– An old statue has been found near the Gympie Pyramid site which is currently under archaeological investigation. The archaeologist in charge believes it to be 600-700 years old and related to early Sino-Tibetan cultures. It is to undergo scientific testing in the near future to establish more accurate facts and origins – Brett Green
Europe
– Italy – Small Chinese junk in a corner of a wall painting at Pompeii (J Huber) – can anyone shed any light on this?
– England – The motif of 3 hares, which share ears between them, each looking as though they have two, originates in the cave paintings in Tyo Dunhaung. They can be also found on many a stained glass window in Devon eg at the Castle Inn in Lydford and also on the floor tile of Chester Cathedral. It can also be found in France and Germany. Is it possible that the Chinese brought this motif over themselves rather than passed on along the Silk Route as is presumed? – (efmstary)
– Scandinavia – A master student of archaeology in Sweden has been doing research into carvings 6000-500 BC at the Umea University. In 2001 she visited carving sites in northern Sweden and found strong similarities between them and Chinese cave art of the time. As far as she can see the elk culture and rituals came from the Amur region in northern China. We think it is possible to follow activity from the Amur region and up north by the Leena river, to Finland, Sweden and Norway by reading the carvings. Our source has found many interesting Chinese glyphs, not least signs for silk, and the depiction of a figure with long dress, like a Chinese magician. The carvings are depicted very distinctly, the lines of which are more like lines of graphic art, and are clearly the work of a sophisticated culture.
New Zealand and Pacific coast of N W Canada
‘The Protruding Tongue’ and related motifs (Mino Baders 1966 in Wiener Beithraege zur Kultur Geschichte und Lingvistik, Vol 15, Vienna.)
The Inuits
Masks – Henry Collins, many articles.
Easter Island and to the Maya (Copan)
Carved stone lions compare Forbidden City, Honan (Brooks)
Copan (Dean Day) and Easter Island (Kerson Huang) and Bali.
From Burma:
(a) The Burmese swastika sign on Sioux and Lakota peoples’ clothes
(b) ‘Tilted’ stone of Kyaiktiyo to Massachusetts, USA (see para 20 (iii)).
Totem Poles – Vancouver Island, New Zealand and Wuhan
– Totem poles are identical.
– Totem poles of Haida Nation and NZ Maori – both built on the base of a turtle – (Graeme H. Hill)
– A reader points out how there are strong similarities between Northwest Coast Indian art forms and Chinese representational forms of animals, particularly in bronze work of the Shang and Chou periods.
· According to one reader, the most prominent and permanent display in the Anthropology Museum of British Columbia (Vancouver), is the birdman. It is the Haida native Americans’ legend that all people were derived from this birdman. This is apparently similar to the Hemudu culture of China. If one compares the Chinese Taotie (ToTim) motif and the North American natives’ totem motif, there are clear similarities. In China, Totim is one animal symbol (one of a Dragon’s nine sons). In North America, it became many symbols including bears, birds, people etc. The cultural connection between the Totim on Shang dynasty utensils and the totem poles of North America is strikingly similar – Siu-Leung Lee
Related galleries: Metal artefacts, Miscellaneous artefacts, Cave art
