1421: The Year China Discovered the World

There have been stories and reports before about Chinese explorers going quite a far way in those years, so on that front he's not presenting anything new. He seems to be arguing something a lot more complete and systematic, though, which personally I'd have to wonder at.

That the Chinese civilization at the time was the most advanced on the planet in technical terms is generally not doubted, and there were notable maritime feats, including a grand tour of a huge naval force down into the Indian Ocean.

There's always that pesky destroying of records by ancient Chinese too. (Plus I'm always skeptical of a new website that already had a detailed FAQ!)

Im skeptical of a websites that use the .tv ending myself.

It's mostly a historical non-question because the country 'discovering' somewhere is of infinitesimally tiny historical significance compared to the country exploiting it.

It will probably mostly be used for identity-politics purposes.

On identity-politics issues I've heard 3,800 year old caucasian mummies were found in China. I can't find the exact url but it went on about how they were probably hailing from what is now iran and brought iron with them.

To explain how the heck they have managed to get there it was observed that this period was about the time when humans domesticated horses. The hypothesis was that they slightly got carried away, drunk on a brand new freedom. That mind altering new way of seeing the world made them eventually wake-up in china :-)
I thought that tidbit was inspiring and made me think about how virtual worlds are about the only thing to provide such a state of mind nowadays. It looks like we will continue our exploration "inwards" for a while... is it better than spamming the whole universe, i'm still thinking this trough but I could add that elaborate virtual worlds exploration till closing oneself to the outside world might be a reason why we haven't been contacted by ET's.
they might b 2 busy playing with their complex massive multiplayer role playing game network.

unless humans as a species sprang up independently in various places (which they didn't), or arrive in spaceships as the docile herd animals of the 12FLs, then "discovering the world" must have been going on long before records began — ie apart maybe from captain cook and the antarctic, or marlon brando and pitcairn island, whoever "discovered" america/australia/wherever, was discovering that someone else was already there

Nevertheless mark, I'd much rather have Szechuan Day than Columbus Day.

Still, this would've happened during the Ming dynasty, which was notorious for sending out sea expeditions (until the Mongols started up again) -- it seems very plausible, but the question is why didn't they start any new civilizations in these places?

As I understand it shortly after the big expeditions the Chinese Emperor decided on an isolationist policy and the colonies were left to go hang, basically.

i know absolutely nothing about chinese history except that someone built a wall and then there was confucius (or is that vice versa?), but wasn't china a bit obsessed with keeping barbarians OUT, which wd tie in with being a bit diffident about establishing colonies

(the european empires were much more ambivalent about contact with barbarians, seeing as they themselves had been considered barbarians not all that long before...)