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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Menzies and Zheng He
From: Doug
Date: 2002 Mar 17, 22:19 EST
From: Doug
Date: 2002 Mar 17, 22:19 EST
There was an article in The New York Times (either 3/16 or 3/17) about the Menzies theory. Much of his info has yet to come out but he writes that "Using the program Starry Night, he recreated the star positions of that time. Then, to try and anchor the stars to the old maps, he drew a perpendicular line from a star in the Southern Cross to Deception Island off the tip of South America. The current maps suddenly line up with current coastlines to an uncanny degree, showing the Chinese must have gotten that far west and south." He also says that the Venetian Merchant Nicola da Conti may have travelled with Admiral Zheng and he might have taken the documents (maps?) out of China and back to Europe. Hope this helps Doug Sheer
