Did the Chinese Discover America?

A copy of a 600 years old map found in a second-hand book shop is the key to proving that chinese, not Christopher Columbus, were the first to discover the New World, a controversial British historian claims. The document is purpotedly an 18th century copy of a 1418 map charted by chinese Admiral Zheng He which appears to show the New World in details.

This purpoted evidence that a chines sailor mapped the Western Hemisphere more than seven decades before Columbus is just one of Earth shatttering that author Gavins Menzies makes in his nwe book ``Who discovered America?``. The traditional story of Columbus discovering the New World is absolute fantasy, it`s a fairy tales, Menziez told in his book.

Among Menzies other claims are that the first inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere didn`t come over land from the Bering strait, but instead were chinese sailors who first crossed the Pacific Ocean 40,000 years ago.

Futhermore, he says a majestic fleet of chinese ships, commanded by Zheng He, sailed around the continent of South America 100 years before Ferdinand Megellan supposedly became the first the undertake the task. Mr. Menzies believes that Columbus actually had a map of the world that was potted  by the chinese Admiral Zheng He, who created the map where he sailed to the New World in 1421, more than seven decades before Columbus.