Mr Menzies has no formal training as a historian and no advanced degree from a major university - he was a submariner in the British Royal Navy - but he can no longer be called an ‘amateur.’ Mr Menzies calls the story that Christopher Columbus' discovered America in 1492 a 'fairy tale' - saying he was not only not the first explorer - he was 40,000 years late Ko-Lan - a remote Peruvian town at the bottom of a ravine translates to 'difficult passage.' He says old Peruvian maps show places with names like Chawan - Chinese for 'land prepared for sowing' and Chulin - 'wood or forest.' The map is further corroborated, Mr Menzies says, by the Chinese names of numerous towns and regions in Peru. In the region of the map that Mr Menzies believes refers to Peru are written the inscriptions - 'Here the people practiced the religion of Paracas' and 'Here the people practice human sacrifice' - clear references peoples known to have inhabited Peru at the time. He concluded that it was originally written in the Ming Dynasty - a Chinese period that lasted from 1368 to 1644. Mr Liu had the map authenticated by an appraiser from Christie's Auctions, who said that the document was 'very old' and was not a newly-made fake.Īfter Mr Liu brought the map forward, Menzies also had a team of historians analyze every word on it. Mr Menzie's assertion about Zheng He's voyage to the New World isn't new - he first wrote about it in 2002 - but the map is. Mr Menzies argues that it clearly shows North American rivers and coasts, as well as the continent of South America. The document, he says, is an 18th century copy of Admiral Zheng He's 1417 map. discovered by Beijing attorney Liu Gang in a second-hand bookshop that he says proves his theory. His book includes what Menzies says is a copy of that map. Mr Menzies believes that this portion of the map depicts the Chinese mapping of North and South America in 1418 - showing major rivers.

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