[plug] [OT but at least local] Australia discovered!

[Leon Brooks]

Following the rush of R&I Tower enthusiasm, and with the solemn authority 
vested in me by NIP (nobody in particular), I pronounce today to be Weird 
Sunday, at least for this list. We apologise for the incovenience. (-:

>From http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/primenews/story/0,1870,106236,00.html

> When explorer Christopher Columbus landed in America in 1492, he was
> 72 years behind a Chinese expeditionary force, which had already made
> its way to the area.

> And although Captain James Cook was credited with discovering Australia
> for the British Empire in 1770, the Chinese had mapped the island
> continent 337 years earlier.

> Sailing in 1,000-foot-long ships with nine massive junk-style sails,
> the Chinese also circumnavigated the world a century before explorer
> Ferdinand Magellan's epic journey, and reached South America.

> These disclosures are at the centre of findings that British historian
> and map expert Gavin Menzies will disclose to the prestigious Royal
> Geographical Society (RGS) at a conference next week.

Devil's Advocate mode, questions this raises:

* the maps on this (weird) site (http://www.survive2012.com/pirireismap.html)
  show Antarctica and the fact that (under the ice, today) it is a divided
  continent. There is no mention in the RGS report of Antarctica, but
  possibly the Chinese explored that also. If they did, and these maps are
  copies, how did they know about the under-ice terrain?

* If Antarctic was bare of ice in the 1400s, what does this say about (1)
  our present knowlege of palaeoclimatology and (2) the effects of global
  warming (if we've already survived it)?

* The Ries maps were copied from maps using Alexandria as the center of the
  world, hardly likely for Chinese explorers, so where did *those* maps
  come from?

* This seems to be not (e.g. 5th C, http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1028.htm
  23rd C BC, http://home.att.net/~timegroove/discover.htm)<*> the first
  time that the Chinese had discovered/visited America or Australia; when
  will we see the RGS re-revolutionised with some of the inscriptions etc
  that have been found in America from the earlier Chinese missions?

For a final dash of weird history, particularly Oz, try these:

    http://www.jqjacobs.net/writing/downundr.html
    http://www.awarenessquest.com/research.htm
    http://www.millersville.edu/~columbus/papers/wrhagen.html

Cheers; Leon


<*> PS, not weird enough yet? The same Emperor Yao mentioned in the
    starred link is one of many who made observations which imply
    that the Earth's orbit has been a long way from smooth and
    constant; this (http://sunnyokanagan.com/joshua/condensed.html)
    is quite a head-spin but does miss one naturalistic explanation
    I've seen, namely rapid precession due to the passing of a dark,
    heavy body, plus a number of the corroborative evidences, but is
    big on images of original texts etc.