March 19, 2002

  • What’s the best milieu in which to obtain an education? I feel it’s one where all "cherished beliefs" are questionable, all "well-groomed systems" suspect, and all biases considered as bunk.


    Unfortunately, until I assumed full responsibility for my own education during my early college years, I was poorly-educated by "educators" whom themselves were misled in holding fast, despite contrary evidence, to "cherished beliefs" slotted into "well-groomed systems".


    In grade school and high school, I was largely taught "the facts" but not how to think. I was deluged with and drilled on a "given body of knowledge" , but not shown the "interesting footnotes" which would, perhaps, have led a thinking youth to re-evaluate the world anew.


    Oh well!  Perhaps the static, ill-informed structure that then managed my early tutelage was simply setting itself up later for my moment of intellectual enlightenment wherein I would reject its samsaric narcissism and embrace the open book of Life. Yep. In college, though like others, I took the mandated coursework and read the textbooks, I also considered the "required tasks" as mere adjunct to my own self-designed core of learning which typically extended far-beyond the reaches of the accumulated syllabi. In practice, I’d often read a good part of the textbooks of courses I would be taking a quarter or semester ahead of enrolling in the classes. By class-time, then, already familiarized with the required texts, I would often embrace additional texts and tomes, sometimes alternative in outlook, whereby I would teach myself, thus extending my knowledge beyond all grading expectations. This pursuit during my college years explained why I so often frequented bookstores, spending lots of scarce bucks to buy six to eight "outside reading" books a week and typically reading half of them.


    Thus prepped in college to think critically and still trying to maintain the stride, it is with great interest that I perused the story behind an internet news item headline the other day which read:


    Historian Presses Claim China Beat Out Columbus


    LONDON (Reuters) - An amateur British historian who has made headlines by contending that the Chinese reached America 70 years before Christopher Columbus has presented new evidence to support his theory.


    If proven true, Gavin Menzies' contentions could prompt a rewriting of some of the most cherished theories in history books, but academics said they were not yet convinced.


    Basically, Menzies claims that Chinese Admiral Zheng He's 107 ship world-class fleet mapped the world between 1421 and 1423 before destroying most of their records and abandoning global seafaring in the mid-15th century. And not only did the Chinese beat Columbus (1492) out in sailing to the "New World" but they were also ahead of the Magellan expedition (1522) in circumnavigating the earth.


    The evidence is still out. The academicians of the Royal Geographical Society are properly skeptical and will remain so at least until Menzies publishes a forthcoming book wherein he promises to reveal the whereabouts in the Carribean of what he claims is Zheng He’s wrecked fleet.


    So we will have a test of evidence-hurray for that! But my gripe (of course, I have a gripe or there would be no where to go with this !) is that this new claim is being popularly presented by the media to establish the Chinese as the true discoverers of the New World instead of  the Italian/Spanish contingent of Columbus/Ferdinand+Isabella—which is pure crap !  Ever hear of Bjarni Herjólfsson? Okay, to make it easier, Leif Eriksson? They were, of course, the two Vikings, Norsemen, who, in 986 and about 1000 AD respectively, first sighted and then landed upon the shores of North America which they declared Vinland.



    So they were the first "discoverers" of North America preceding both Zheng He and Columbus by over 400 years! But wait…they all found natives. How the hell did natives get there if the cradle of humanity resides in the vicinity of the Tigres-Euphrates valleys? Of course, the first true discovers remain prehistoric and unknown-perhaps forever. haha.


    So how are we to consider the players-Herjólfsson/Eriksson, Zheng He, and Columbus with regards to America’s discovery?


    Let’s get this straight once and for all:


    Herjólfsson/Eriksson   The first modern (historic) discoverers of the New World making Norsemen the first non-indigenous settlers. (Goodbye Columbus)  (And, yes, I know that we all know this, but every Columbus Day, at least, we ought to adamantly reassert this!)


    Zheng He   Possibly (awaiting evidence) the first navigator ever to circumvent the globe (!!), but probably only (awaiting evidence) a modern re-discoverer of the New World, yet the first in the vicinity of the Caribbean and South America. (So Long--mebbe--Magellan)


    Columbus   What can you say? Less notable historically than he and much of modern written history has made him out to be. A third-stringer who should nevertheless be credited with what historians call the Columbian Exchange—the two-way transfers of diseases, plants, animals, and cultures that followed Columbus’s voyages. Diphtheria, measles, smallpox, and malaria traveled to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Syphilis found its way back to Europe (So you mean that Columbus was just fucking around ?!). And…oh yes…the disease, forced labor, invasion, and conquest imposed by the Europeans caused the deaths of millions of America’s indigenous peoples, in what surely must be considered one of the darkest tragedies of all time.


    And they (the non-Scandinavian Europeans of Columbus’ time) dared to call the Vikings barbarians??

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