Ships

Ship Evidence

The Chinese junks of the 1400s dwarfed the size of even the largest seafaring craft in Europe. The ships were approximately 330 feet long and 132 feet wide. As a point of comparison, the largest ship that Columbus voyaged with, the Santa Maria, had a length of approximately 60 feet – nearly 5 times smaller! The probability of these monoliths making it past the southern tip of Africa (keep in mind, that is where He’s ship crashed, forcing him to return home) is next to nothing…but Menzies thinks they did much, much more.

Not only did those ships make it past Africa, to South America, to the Caribbean, and the Eastern coast of North America…but they also traversed Easter Island and the coast of California….

Menzies’ Claim:

That an anchor found off the coast of California is actually the anchor of a Chinese Junk from the ancient voyages of He’s Treasure Fleet…

Reality:

“In 1973 a vessel dredging off the coast of California brought up a sizable rock, carved into the shape of a doughnut. In 1975, twenty or so similar stones were found by divers off the Palos Verdes peninsula in southern California. These discoveries generated a great deal of publicity at the time. Some suggested that the stones were identical to anchor stones used on Chinese sailing vessels as far back as A.D. 500. Reference was made to the Chinese legend of the land of Fusang, supposedly visited by a Buddhist monk about 1,500 years ago.

As Frost (1982) points out, Fusang was placed on the Asian coast by ancient Chinese mapmakers. Nevertheless, some have tried to identify Fusang as America, carefully selecting elements of the legend that seem to reflect the biogeography of the California coast. Even some professional archaeologists suggested that the Palos Verdes anchor stones represented physical evidence of the ancient Chinese exploration of the western coast of North America - direct physical evidence like that seen in the examples provided by the expeditions of Frobisher, Coronado, and de Soto.

The Palos Verdes stones were examined by the geology department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1980. Remember our discussion ….. concerning tracing the raw materials from which ancient artifacts were made. If the anchor stones could be shown to have been made from rock present only in China, the case for a Chinese presence in the New World before Columbus would be much stronger. Unfortunately for the supporters of this hypothesis, it was determined that the alleged Chinese anchors were made of California rock (Frost 1982:26), most likely Monterey shale, a common local rock type.

The stones looked like Chinese anchors, however, because that is precisely what they were. Chinese American fishermen commonly trawled the waters of California in the nineteenth century. They sailed in their traditional craft, the junk. Indeed, the Palos Verdes stones are almost certainly the anchors, moorings, and net weights of these fishermen. They provide no help to those who wish to prove that Fusang is, in reality, ancient California because the anchors clearly were made locally by historically recognized Chinese sailors.”

“Frauds, Myths and Mysteries Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology”, Feder, K.L., McGraw-Hill, 2002 (4th edition), pp 113-114

Reference
Frost, F. 1982, The Palos Verdes Chinese anchor mystery, Archaeology, Jan./Feb. 23-27