Mo Yi Tong Map Authentic, Says Owner

Liu Gang releases carbon-dating results of the so-called “1418/1763″ World Map, rebuts critics

On Thursday, 23 March 2006 (Beijing time) Liu Gang, the Chinese attorney whose uncovering of a map that is reputed to prove the so-called Menzies conjecture, which claims that the Chinese mariner Zheng He circumnavigated the world almost 70 years before Columbus did, released the findings of a radiocarbon-dating analysis of the map to an invitation-only audience at The Bookworm, a cafe in the Sanlitun section of Shanghai.

The verdict, according to Liu: the map most likely is authentic.

The Tale of the Paper

According to the written version of the statement (reported here by the site BeijingLives.com), the scientific dating process provides compelling evidence for the map’s authenticity:

Notable here is that the paper, or ground of the work, was analyzed, not the media–the paint–itself. Liu asserts, however, that naked-eye tests of new cinnabar on ancient paper when compared with the old cinnabar on the old map paper bear out the apparent age of the work. It is also asserted that the dark-green color of the sea is made with a dark-green ink commonly in use from the the 17th-19th centuries in China. It is also claimed that the style of painting and production is consonant with the styles and methods of the asserted time of origin.

Criticising the Critics

Liu then proceeded to defend the map by addressing the critcizing the critiques of it. The subject is quite sprawling and he goes into great detail, and is best read directly(by following this link to the article). His defense seems to run to the concept that the so-called ‘holes’ in the conjecture were actually placed there by the critics with thier own misunderstanding of the history with which they critiqued.

For instance, one of the critical points hold that the Simplified Chinese in which the calligraphy is executed had only had historical presence since 1949; Liu avers that the form had actually existed for more than ten centuries, the ideograph for “yu” having been used by the Song (10th to 13th C.) Emperor Song Huizong in his own poetry. Liu holds that there is abundant evidence that Simplified Chinese was used prior to the mid-20th Century.

The mapping style so deviant from what seemed traditional for the claimed time is justified by claiming inspiration from Feng Shui and Daoist principles. The lack of detail and inaccuracy in the depiction of Europe is held to prove the provenance of the map by compellingly illustrating that it couldn’t have come from any European map of that era–despite the similarity of the depiction of California as an island to French maps of the time.

He also asserts the veracity of a connection to a lost source dated 1418 by a variety of reasons, but the most remarkable is the claim that “all documents relating to local ancient religions were destroyed, and a confidential order was given by the Europeans to ban any study of ancient religions.”

The statement begs certain questions; which Europeans, and what confidential order? The Western Hemisphere wasn’t explored by “The Europeans” so much as it was explored by competeing nations who had competeing interests and only cooperated when it made sense to them. Mention of a “confidential order” on a coordinated basis seems close to the limits of credulity. We merely have Liu Gang’s word on this; he does not elaborate further.

The Last Word?

Even if one accepts the authenticiy of the Mo Yi Tong map, one must also accept the conclusions of the owner in order to make a solid connection to the world of the early 13th Century and, therefore, the contention that Zheng He visited what is now the Americas before Columbus, and some of those still appear to be a hard sell amongst cartographers and historians alike.

To Liu Gang and Menzies, however, there is more than enough evidence to aquit the Chinese mariner on these claim, and to them statement at the end of Liu Gang’s talk:

seems a reasonable statement to make. Far from settling the matter, however, this declaration merely ensures that people will probably argue about this one for a while to come.