Finn McCool said:
Has anyone read the book 1421: The Year China discovered America? It presents quite a bit of convincing evidence that the treasure fleets continued around the world and charted the West Coast of Africa, the Carribean, South Africa and the Pacific and circumnavigated the globe before returning home. I personally consider it to be a very real possibility.
Then I'm afraid, Finn, you're a bit naive in terms of historical issues - no offence. More knowledgable academics have repeatedly given it a big thumbs down. One thing that you should realise is that as far as I can remember, to date no real historian (i.e. an academic with qualifications and perhaps a position at a university) has actually backed his claims in public. He gets lots of other "experts" - but sadly they all operate in other areas of expertise. It's a bit like when he goes to ask someone that does crossword puzzles for advice on a source, rather than a cryptologist.
Put it like this - Jung Chang's book on Mao has been better received by historians than Menzies.
Plenty of professional sites to read here:
(This source is very interesting, because it's a refutation by a naval officer. According to his
, Menzies completely failed to counter her husband's arguments when he went to see Menzies.)
"Ultimately, however, Menzies's presentation in 1421 is much like that delivered at the United Nations recently by Secretary of State Powell regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: convincing only to true believers and leaving others at best, in the words of the old hymn, "almost persuaded."
"This is not just a story about ones man’s wild theory. It is a parable of modern popular culture, a tale about intellectual chutzpah and about a publishing industry that knows how to extract profit from a public which wants to thumb its nose at the dry though documented history taught at school."
