Now here’s some comedy. Without the United States to foot the bill, the rich countries and the poor countries are at each other’s throats over why there won’t be anyone to hand out goodies to the freeloaders. Well, I guess the world will burn up very soon and polar bears will need sun screen.
https://news.yahoo.com/un-climate-talks-unraveling-face-failure-110423955.html
So sad, so very sad.
The Chinese circumnavigated the Americas seventy years before Columbus set sail for the New World. They sailed an ice free Arctic Ocean via the Northwest Passage way back then. Polar bears seemed to have survived just fine.
Is there good evidence for the voyage?
In China it was pretty well documented. The Chinese kept excellent records so unless they faked the whole thing, including ancient maps and forged the ancient books and Admiral’s and Captain’s logs and all, it is convincing. Admiral “Zheng He” is legend in China as a great explorer. His fleets of seagoing junks explored from 1406 to 1435 (our calendar). Part of his fleet split in the Caribbean and went north. They stopped in Greenland, mapping as they went and crossed the Northwest Passage the next year. If they didn’t actually circumnavigate the Americas, they sure guessed pretty good on… Read more »
I had heard a long time ago about Chinese voyages to the Americas but not about the Northwest Passage. That sort of parallels the Phoenicians circumnavigating Africa for the Egyptian Pharaoh. That was thousands of years before Vasco da Gama managed it. But I don’t fault the Europeans for ethnocentricity too much. That’s a universal trait. We all think we’re the first and the best. But what the Europeans did do first was to enter the Industrial Age. Steam power, mass production, electricity and efficient firearms made nineteenth century conquests of the undeveloped countries inevitable. Luckily for everyone they weren’t… Read more »