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When Did the Chinese First Visit the Americas?

© John Walsh

It is fascinating to conjecture just when and where the first contacts with between the eastern and western worlds. Fascinating and ultimately frustrating since, at present, there is no definite evidence one way or another. The book 1421 by Gavin Menzies has received a great deal of attention and indeed notoriety for its claims that the Chinese admiral Cheng Ho was involved in a successful mission to the Americas, although there is no real evidence for this.

Very early contacts between East and West are well-attested. A coin bearing the head of the Emperor Antoninus Pius (CE 138-61) and medallions of the same emperor and his successor Marcus Aurelius (CE 161-80) have been found in the coastal centre of Oc Eo (Higham, 2002, p.236). Meanwhile, the Syrian king Yadihk-Abu, found in mummified form and dated to 1721 BCE, was put to rest together with cloves which could only have come from the Moluccas Islands (Turner, 2004, p.xv). This attests to the ability of sailors to traverse extensive areas of open ocean far beyond the ability of contemporaneous Europeans, who were obliged to hug the shorelines for many centuries beyond this time. These sailors have persisted with the same form of technology to the modern age:

"The seamanship of the early southeast Asians was so remarkable that they were able to cross the six-thousand-mile expanse of the Indian Ocean to settle Madagascar off the east African coast. There are also strong indications that they sailed in the opposition direction and successfully crossed the Pacific, landing in Central and South America. This was believed to be the first period of contact between Asia and the New World. The vessels that made this extraordinary voyage are believed to be identical to the sailing rafts still used today by fishermen off the coasts of Taiwan, Vietnam, and Peru. They are made of tightly bound balsa logs and employ a complicated steering system that allows them to be manoeuvred across the trade winds. Six leeboards or centreboards, three in the stern and three in the bow, can be adjusted to steer a course close to the wind, regardless of the direction or strength of the wind (Levathes, 1994, p.25)."

Yet there are also legends relating to very early contact with South American cultures. When the Shang people were defeated and driven out of their homelands, many turned to the ocean-going Yi peoples of southern China and some took ship with them searching for new lands to settle. This was around 1000 BCE, at about the same time that, mysteriously, Olmec artists in Mexico started to display an unprecedented facility with working with jade, began depicting Asian rather than American animals and other phenomena suggesting an influx of Chinese culture.

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