Re: Cheng Ho

[Doug Weller <dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk>]

Hi,

Tuesday, March 12, 2002, 3:36:52 AM, you wrote:


>        In South America there is pre-Inca pottery in the form of pottery 
> vessels and houses that look like Japanese pottery and the theory is that 
> Japanese fishing vessels were blown off course and landed in South America, 
> whether with or without live people in them I do not know.  An archaeologist 
> named Betty J. Meggers wrote about it.

Betty Meggers did her work 40 years ago.  Later work appears to have
overturned her findings. There isn't anything useful that I can find
on the net concerning this later work, but a book by John Hoopes deals
with it. John's web site and a link to info about his book is here:

http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~hoopes/hoopes.htm

Native American languages and Chinese really aren't related.  But
there is no doubt that the Chinese built some truly amazing ships at this
time, and if they hadn't relapsed to being inward looking the world
would look very different today.

Having said all this, and noting serious doubts as to circumnavigation
of the globe by the Chinese, I would not be surprised if we found some
evidence of at least shipwreck contact on the NW coast of North
America.

Doug

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