MANILA - Just when we thought we had at least a few facts straight, for instance, that Columbus discovered America, Magellan was the first man around the globe and our world began with a Big Bang in outer space, news comes that there are newer truths.

History and science are works in progress, and the latest evidence is that Columbus was not the first in America in 1492. It was already well-known to a Chinese admiral, Zheng He and therefore to China, fully 75 years earlier. The intrepid Chinese genius had ships that were cruising over oceans still unknown to Europeans who believed that everything beyond the Mediterranean was terra incognita populated, they feared, by monsters.
Zheng He was already familiar with all the continents, including Africa, Asia, North and South America, Australia, Europe and Asia and took for granted that the earth was round as early as 1418. And there’s a map to prove it. Long before Columbus thought of experimenting with an egg to persuade his sovereign to release funds for his caravelles (only to claim later that he had found India in the Caribbean); long before the Portuguese explorer Diaz found the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and Magellan set out to prove the earth is not flat but round by sailing West to find the East, Zheng He’s voyages and exploits were chronicled in Chinese records and had a map in 1418 to his specifications entitled “General Chart of the Integrated World."
Last month, an 18th century copy of that 1418 map was unveiled in Beijing and London but was played down by the US and the UK. Little wonder. With China threatening to unseat the only superpower left and beating Europe and America at trade and manufacturing, it was not welcome news for the Western media to hear that Columbus and Magellan were only johnnies-come-lately after all.
The map in question, admittedly a copy of the 1418 map, was bought by an eminent Chinese lawyer and collector from a small dealer in Shanghai in 2001. Five international academic experts have already attested to its authenticity. It is “remarkably precise and recognizable” (The Economist, 14 January 2006) and the reproduction accompanying the article is instantly familiar. Africa is well delineated, the outlines of North America and Asia are plain to see, although it has some inaccuracies. California is drawn as an island, Australia is attenuated and shown closer to South America (half its size) than Asia, and Middle East is ten times larger than in modern maps.
The map comes with descriptions of the people in America (“The skin of the race in this area is black-red, and feathers are wrapped around their heads and waists." Of the Australians, it says, “The skin of the aborigines is also black. All of them are naked and wearing bone articles around their waists.") The map also make good estimates of  the latitude and longitude of the world.
The media are right in taking this piece of news with a grain of salt. The “consequences of the discovery of this map are considerable." Much of the history of “The New World,” the very title will have to be revised. The most intriguing question is why China did not exploit America and the rest of the New World when it had the knowledge and the power as Europeans did later.
Filipinos and other Asians living today on the nervous edge of China should probably find comfort in the apparent ancient disinterest of the once “sleeping dragon of the East” to make colonies of newly discovered lands as the West did.
The latest theories about the origin of life on earth are probably more important, although less interesting and attractive than the Chinese map. Let me start by saying that I have no intention of joining the world debate on Creation vs. Evolution.
Virtually all world religions assume the existence of an Unseen Force, a Superior Being, some sort of supreme authority, or God, who created life and manages it. Modern Christians have also been taught, at least I was, that science and evolution are only a form of God’s mysterious ways.


By Chitang G. Nakpil