OVER TEN YEARS AGO I STUMBLED UPON AN INCREDIBLE discovery, a clue hidden in an ancient map which, though it did not lead to buried treasure, suggested that the history of the world as it has been known and handed down for centuries would have to be radically revised.

I was pursuing an interest that had become a consuming passion for me: medieval history, and in particular the maps and charts of early explorers. I loved to examine these old charts, tracing contours, coastlines, the shifting shapes of shoals and sandbars, the menace of rocks and reefs. I followed the ebb and flow of tides, the pull of unseen currents and the track of prevailing winds, peeling back the layers of meaning contained within the charts.

On March 8, 142I, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was "to proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect  tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.

When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. Also concealed was how the Chinese colonized America before the Europeans and transplanted in America and other countries the principal economic crops that have fed and clothed the world.

Unveiling incontrovertible evidence of these astonishing voyages, 1421 rewrites our understanding of history. Our knowledge of world exploration as it has been commonly accepted for centuries must now be reconceived due to this landmark work of historical investigation.

LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

LIST OF PLATES

CHINESE NOMENCLATURE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

I  Imperial China

 THE EMPEROR'S GRAND PLAN

 A THUNDERBOLT STRIKES

 THE FLEETS SET SAIL

II  The Guiding Stars

 ROUNDING THE CAPE

 THE NEW WORLD

III  The Voyage of Hong Bao

 VOYAGE TO ANTARCTICA AND

 AUSTRALIA

IV  The Vorase of Zhou Man

 AUSTRALIA

 THE BARRIER REEF AND THE SPICE

 ISLANDS

 THE FIRST COLONy ]N THE AMERICAS

 COLONIES IN CENTRAL AMERICA

V   The Voyage of Zhou Wen

 SATAN'S ISLAND

 THE TREASURE FLEET RUNS AGROUND

 SETTLEMENT IN NORTH AMERICA

 EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE

VI  The Voyage of Yang Qing

 SOLVING THE RIDDLE

VII  Portusa[ Inherits the Crown

 WHERE THE EARTH END

 COLONIZING THE NEW WORLD

 ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

EPILOGUE: THE CHINESE LEGACy

POSTSCRIPT

APPENDICES

1  CHINESE CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF

   THE WORLD 1421-3: Synopsis of Evidence

2  THE DETERMINATION OF LONGITUDE

NOTES

INDEX