中国可能捷足先登于哥伦布

一幅古代地图强烈地暗示着中国航海员才是最早环游世界的人

勇敢的航海员们是欧洲历史上的不朽形象。他们的航海之旅开启了世界。1492年哥伦布发现了新大陆；1488年迪亚兹发现了好望角；1519年麦哲伦开始了他的环球航行。不过，欧洲这份独占鳌头的豪言壮语如今有了麻烦：欧洲可能并非独揽这一殊荣。

最早发现世界各大陆的人更有可能是中国的一位名叫郑和的海军元帅。他的舰队在1405年至1435年期间漫游于各大洋。其辉煌之举被很好地记录在了中国的历史文献中。1418年在中国出现的一部名为《星槎胜览》的书便记载了他的航行。

下周，一份新的惊世证据将在北京和伦敦被披露，以支持郑和说。这份证据是1763年制作的一个副本。副本的原图是1418年的一幅地图。该地图包含了许多 笔记，其内容与书中的描述尤为吻合。贡纳汤普森是一位研究古代地图以及早期探险家的学者。他表示：“它将颠覆我们对15世纪世界历史的看法。”

这张地图（如上所示）将于1月16日在北京与人见面。一天之后，它将出现在格林威治的国家航海博物馆。地图右上角的六个汉字表示这是一张《天下全舆总 图》。左下角的一个注解是说，这个海图是由莫易仝绘制，临摹的乃是1418年的一张世界海图。该海图展示了那些向明帝朱棣进贡的蛮族。临摹者区分了取自原 图的内容和他本人加进的内容。

这张地图是知名商业律师、地图和绘画收藏家刘刚于2001年以大约500美元的价格从一个上海小商人手上购买的。刘先生表示，他清楚这非常具有意义。但他 认为这有可能是一幅现代的赝品，于是就将其购得物交由五位资深的收藏家鉴定。五人一致认为，竹浆纸的虫蛀痕迹、墨水与颜色的褪色都表明，这张地图有100 多年的历史了。

刘先生还是对该地图的价值没有把握。于是，他咨询一些中国古代史的专家，希望他们可以给出建议。但他说没有人愿意帮助他。去年秋，他读到了《1421：中 国发现世界年》这部书。该书是由加文?孟席斯于2003年完成的。作者在书中声称郑和环游了世界并在途中发现了美洲。这种观点引起了广泛的争论。孟席斯以 前是皇家海军的潜艇艇员，现今是一位商业银行家。他还是一名业余的历史学者，不过他的理论极少得到专业人士的认可。但这次却产生了强烈的共鸣：他的书一越 成为畅销书，而且他的1421网站有着很高的人气。无论如何，他的主张使得刘先生确信他的地图是郑和早期航行的遗物。

地图副本的细节之处很是显著。人们可以轻易地辫识出非洲、欧洲以及美洲的轮廓。它显示尼罗河有两个发源地。西北方向的一部分好象没有被冰雪覆盖。但其疏漏 之处也很明显。加州被当做了一个独立的岛屿；英伦各岛根本没有出现在地图上。红海到地中海的距离比实际大了十倍。澳大利亚的方位也不正确（但在中国航海员 先于库克船长几个世纪发现的澳大利亚和新西兰上，地图绘制专家们已不再怀疑）。

地图上那些似乎取自原图的注释是用清晰的汉字书写的，至今仍可轻易辨认。关于美国西海岸，地图上写着：“这个地区的种族肤色黑红，且头腰皆缠羽毛。”对于澳大利亚人，它描述道：“土著人肤色也发黑。所有人都是赤裸着身子，腰挂骨制品。”

但孟席斯的反对者们正是凭借着这份异常的准确而非那些疏漏才质疑1418年地图的真实性的。孟席斯及其支持者们自然是极力地希望确立起这样的事实： 1763年副本不是一份伪造品，而且它忠实于1418年的原图。这将为他们的理论带来有力支持，即中国确实在1421年以前（就算不在1421年当年）发 现了美洲。这个地图副本已送交新西兰怀卡托大学进行碳定年检测。检测结果将于2月份公布。然而，即便确定了该副本的真实性，检测结果也无多大意义，因为它 只能证明临摹者所使用的纸张和墨水的年代。

五位研究古代海图的学术专家发现，1418年的地图综合了在当时的中国可以得到的一些零散信息。这些信息来自早期的海图。后者要追溯到13世纪和不曾成为探索者的忽必烈。他们相信它的真实性。

该地图除了对世界大部分地区的经纬度都做出了很好的推测外，还意识到了地图是圆的。加州大学的罗伯特克里布斯表示：“中国人几乎在郑和出海前就意识到了经 度问题。他们肯定认为世界是圆的。”汤普森先生说道：“地图的版式与郑和完成航海后中国当时的皇家地理学家的知识水平相吻合。”

而且，1418年地图上面的一些错误很快就出现在了欧洲的地图上。其中最显著就是加州被绘成了一个岛屿。葡萄牙人最早知晓的世界地图乃是1420年前由一 位名叫Albertin di Virga的绘图者制作的。上面包括非洲与美洲。由于当时葡萄牙海员尚未发现那些地方，所以这些信息最有可能来自中国地图的欧洲副本。

可是，这并非得到所有专家的一致认同。一些最为猛烈的批评来自中国专家。渥太华学者王太鹏并不怀疑中国人早在15世纪便开始探索世界（他写过一篇关于中国 大使在1433年访问佛罗伦萨的文章）。但他对郑和的船队抵达北美洲产生了疑问。王先生还表示，郑和的航海图是用一种完全不同的中国传统制图工艺绘制的。 他说：“在1418年地图通过科学鉴定之前，我们还不能轻信这一切。”

多数赝品是受商业利益的驱使，尤其是在如今这个蓬勃发展的古地图市场，情况更是如

此。美国国会图书馆最近以1000万美元的价格收购了一幅1507年由德国人马丁华德济莫勒制成的世界地图的副本。可刘先生谈到，他不会出售他的地图。他说：“这张地图是我生命的一部分。”

这张地图的发现可谓意义重大。如果真的证明它是第一幅世界地图，“那么发现新大陆的历史将被改写。” 孟席斯先生如是说。这有着怎样的意义呢？如果是中国首先探索了世界而非欧洲的航海者，这将成为历史修正主义的一大杰作。但从历史的角度来看，还有一些事情 更具意义。有趣的是，中国人在探索完广阔的世界后，竟然没有进行政治上或者商业上的开发。毕竟哥伦布发现美洲直接引发了欧洲人对美洲的开发。而这在500 年后让美国比任何时期的中国都更为强大。

翻译：红衣主教

原文：China beat Columbus to it, perhaps

An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world

THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.

It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called “The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft”.

Next week, in Beijing and London, fresh and dramatic evidence is to be revealed to bolster Zheng He's case. It is a copy, made in 1763, of a map, dated 1418, which contains notes that substantially match the descriptions in the book. “It will revolutionise our thinking about 15th-century world history,” says Gunnar Thompson, a student of ancient maps and early explorers.

The map (shown above) will be unveiled in Beijing on January 16th and at the NationalMaritimeMuseum in Greenwich a day later. Six Chinese characters in the upper right-hand corner of the map say this is a “general chart of the integrated world”. In the lower left-hand corner is a note that says the chart was drawn by Mo Yi Tong, imitating a world chart made in 1418 which showed the barbarians paying tribute to the Ming emperor, Zhu Di. The copyist distinguishes what he took from the original from what he added himself

The map was bought for about $500 from a small Shanghai dealer in 2001 by Liu Gang, one of the most eminent commercial lawyers in China, who collects maps and paintings. Mr Liu says he knew it was significant, but thought it might be a modern fake. He showed his acquisition to five experienced collectors, who agreed that the traces of vermin on the bamboo paper it is written on, and the depigmentation of ink and colours, indicated that the map was more than 100 years old.

Mr Liu was unsure of its meaning, and asked specialists in ancient Chinese history for their advice, but none, he says, was forthcoming. Then, last autumn, he read “1421: The Year China Discovered the World”, a book written in 2003 by Gavin Menzies, in which the author makes the controversial claim that Zheng He circumnavigated the world, discovering America on the way. Mr Menzies, who is a former submariner in the Royal Navy and a merchant banker, is an amateur historian and his theory met with little approval from professionals. But it struck a chord: his book became a bestseller and his 1421 website is very popular. In any event, his arguments convinced Mr Liu that his map was a relic of Zheng He's earlier voyages.

The detail on the copy of the map is remarkable. The outlines of Africa, Europe and the Americas are instantly recognisable. It shows the Nile with two sources. The north-west passage appears to be free of ice. But the inaccuracies, also, are glaring. California is shown as an island; the British Isles do not appear at all. The distance from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean is ten times greater than it ought to be. Australia is in the wrong place (though cartographers no longer doubt that Australia and New Zealand were discovered by Chinese seamen centuries before Captain Cook arrived on the scene).

The commentary on the map, which seems to have been drawn from the original, is written in clear Chinese characters which can still be easily read. Of the west coast of America, the map says: “The skin of the race in this area is black-red, and feathers are wrapped around their heads and waists.” Of the Australians, it reports: “The skin of the aborigine is also black. All of them are naked and wearing bone articles around their waists.”

But this remarkable precision, rather than the errors, is what critics of the Menzies theory are likely to use to question the authenticity of the 1418 map. Mr Menzies and his followers are naturally extremely keen to establish that the 1763 copy is not a forgery and that it faithfully represents the 1418 original. This would lend weighty support to their thesis: that China had indeed discovered America by (if not actually in) 1421. Mass spectrography analysis to date the copied map is under way at WaikatoUniversity in New Zealand, and the results will be announced in February. But even if affirmative, this analysis is of limited importance since it can do no more than date the copyist's paper and inks.

Five academic experts on ancient charts note that the 1418 map puts together information that was available piecemeal in China from earlier nautical maps, going back to the 13th century and Kublai Khan, who was no mean explorer himself. They believe it is authentic.

The map makes good estimates of the latitude and longitude of much of the world, and recognises that the earth is round. “The Chinese were almost certainly aware of longitude before Zheng He set sail,” says Robert Cribbs of CaliforniaStateUniversity. They certainly assumed the world was round. “The format of the map is totally consistent with the level of knowledge that we should expect of royal Chinese geographers following the voyages of Zheng He,” says Mr Thompson.

Moreover, some of the errors in the 1418 map soon turned up in European maps, the most striking being California drawn as an island. The Portuguese are aware of a world map drawn before 1420 by a cartographer named Albertin di Virga, which showed Africa and the Americas. Since no Portuguese seamen had yet discovered those places, the most obvious source for the information seems to be European copies of Chinese maps.

But this is certainly not a unanimous view among the experts, with many of the fiercest critics in China itself. Wang Tai-Peng, a scholarly journalist in Vancouver who does not doubt that the Chinese explored the world early in the 15th century (he has written about a visit by Chinese ambassadors to Florence in 1433), doubts whether Zheng He's ships landed in North America. Mr Wang also claims that Zheng He's navigation maps were drawn in a totally different Chinese map-making tradition. “Until the 1418 map is scientifically authenticated, we still have to take it with a grain of salt,” he says.

Most forgeries are driven by a commercial imperative, especially when the market for ancient maps is booming, as it is now. The Library of Congress recently paid $10m for a copy of a 1507 world map by Martin Waldseemuller, a German cartographer. But Mr Liu says he is not a seller: “The map is part of my life,” he claims.

The consequences of the discovery of this map could be considerable. If it does indeed prove to be the first map of the world, “the history of New World discovery will have to be rewritten,” claims Mr Menzies. How much does this matter? Showing that the world was first explored by Chinese rather than European seamen would be a major piece of historical revisionism. But there is more to history than that. It is no less interesting that the Chinese, having discovered the extent of the world, did not exploit it, politically or commercially. After all, Columbus's discovery of America led to exploitation and then development by Europeans which, 500 years later, made the United States more powerful than China had ever been.