Columbus was a poor cartographer. On his first voyage his calculations of latitude were twenty degrees out – he believed he was somewhere in Nova Scotia – and his longitude was a thousand miles in error.

• Garth Menzies, 1421

In school we were told of how Columbus ‘discovered’ the New World in 1492 with his ships the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. These largest of these ships, the Santa Maria was perhaps sixty feet long, displacing about seventy tons. Then, later we were told that Vikings under Erik Eriksson settled in Newfoundland, Canada in the tenth century. In those days, there was a period of global warming ¹ during the 10th to 13th centuries such that Greenland soil was fertile enough to support a Viking colony and was a stepping stone for settling Newfoundland.

When the climate changed once more, as it always has and always will, the earth cooled so the Vikings retreated back to Iceland and the Scandinavian countries abandoning Newfoundland and Greenland.

Well it was a surreal surprise for CT to discover, fairly recently ,that all of the continents, including Antarctica, according to Gavin Menzie’s,(an experienced mariner, a British submarine Captain, inter alia ) book, “1421”,were discovered by Chinese sailors in boats six to eight times larger (120 metres in length, 393 feet) than those of Columbus. These voyages of discovery were from 1421-1423. The original Chinese records of these seminal voyages were burnt by bureaucratic Chinese mandarins in the 15th century as they worried, feared that the huge costs of these expeditions would be ruinous to the Chinese Treasury.

Menzies book has been extremely popular, NY Times best seller, although the mainstream historians have mostly tended to discredit the book and its theories as it does, in CT’s opinion, throw all their historicity, as well as their reputations, way out of whack.

South American chickens differ from North American chickens. The North American chicken was undoubtedly brought over to the New World by Europeans in the 16th century. DNA evidence illustrates that the Asian chicken in South America arrived there in the early 15th century. Menzies book supports the theory that these huge Chinese ships brought the Asian chicken to South America between 1421-1423.

The domesticated Asiatic cock and hen originated several thousand years ago in the jungles of south-east Asia. In South China, Annan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia. The strain remains quite distinct from the European hen. When Magellan arrived in Rio (1519, as it is now called) ,he picked up a great store of chickens….the chickens Magellan and the Spanish conquistadors found in South America had virtually nothing in common with European ;’dung-hill fowl’”.²

Chickens are not very good flyers, and worse swimmers. The only way a chicken could get to South America was only by human intervention. The steadfast, status quo historians counter Menzie’s argument by claiming that the voyage bringing the chickens to South America was executed by Polynesians in a canoe.

Wow! Really? A Polynesian canoe paddled all the way, about 10,000 kilometres, to South America while the chickens cuddled up quietly, patiently for the two hundred (?) day journey. Poppycock. When CT was a child,-many years ago- he remembers watching with his Mother a documentary called Erich von Daniken’s, “Chariots of Fire.” Von Daniken had written a book (1968) previously with the same name. Von Daniken was attempting to prove, through historical artifacts, that aliens had indeed visited our planet.

One of the most sensational artifacts that von Daniken presented was a map of the world called the Piri Reis. Piri Reis was also called Ahmed Muhiddin Piri (circa1465-1553), an Ottoman admiral, navigator, geographer and cartographer. The famous Piri Reis map was called after its ‘creator.’ Piri Reis drew his world map in 1513 well before any European had been to Antarctica, Patagonia and other places in the world where no European had yet been yet the map depicted these areas fairly accurately. So, CT thought at the time, aliens must have visited our planet. How else could such an accurate map be drawn if no human had been there?

Well the mystery was solved, some 40 odd years later after I read “1421”:

The first European, Magellan, did not sail for Patagonia until years after the Piri Reis [map] was drawn. So who originally provided the information to enable Patagonia to be drawn on the Piri Reis, and how did he obtain it?”³

• Garth Menzies, 1421

Well the Ottoman mapmaker obviously obtained the information from Chinese maps that were charted during the 1421-1423 voyages. Sorry, Mr. von Daniken, although your hypothesis at the time was quite logical this artifact was not an alien one. Doesn’t mean that Aliens have not visited our planet but that is a topic for another time.

History, like any science, has to be re-interpreted, massaged, re-examined continuously. In this account, the work of Menzies, one’s whole world idea is amended,changed. However, the status quo historians guard their reality with malice, arrogance and delusional certainty. Do we desire to be their intellectual Tenants at all times, or do we use our own minds to become our own intellectual Landlord

Read the book yourselves, and see if you agree or not on this topic with Mr. Menzies or with the status quo historians.