RAVE - 1421, The Year China Discovered America, by Gavin Menzies

The incredible true story (or is it?) of how China discovered North and South America, Australia and Africa, long before Europeans.

Gavin Menzies is an ex Royal Navy submarine captain, and when he retired from the Royal Navy he combined his passion for history with his knowledge of winds and sea currents to retrace the steps Columbus would have followed on his path to the East Indies.

As we all know, he fetched up in what became known as the West Indies, and named the island on which he landed La Española, meaning "The Spanish Island". When d'Anghiera wrote his history of  the island in Latin, he translated the name as Hispaniola. Because Anghiera's account was translated into English and French very soon after, the name "Hispaniola" is the most frequently used name for that island. Of course, now its Eastern half is Dominica and its Western half is Cuba. 

This is nothing to do with the main story.

Briefly, Menzies surmised that other, much earlier ships discovered the island, and they might have been from China. Having retraced the prevailing tides and potential winds to China, he explores outwards from China, discovering not only that winds and tides could be used to plot ancient Chinese fleet movements up the West and East coasts of The Americas, to Africa and Australia.

The evidence he found to support his theories are stunning, and you need to read this book in order to decide whether he's gullible, or a genius.

To make matters even more intriguing, in the blue corner are a number of other "experts" who say they don't believe Menzie's theories: www.1421exposed.com