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.
But how life on Earth got started is still a question that
torments modern scientists. Recent theories have been put thus: (1) Dr. Stanley
Miller, working on one of Darwin’s original ideas about life’s ingredients
coming together in a "warm little pond" mixed methane, ammonia and hydrogen in a
flask of boiling water and passed electric sparks, to stimulate conditions on
primitive earth, and came up with amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
(2) Dr. Max Bernstein proved those gases could have come from hydrothermal vents
in deep oceans, (3) Other researchers said the first genetic material was a
large molecule, RNA, a component of protein and crystallized into amyloid fibers
for RNA to grow and reproduce would assemble spontaneously in favorable
conditions, and (4) Dr. Charles Cockle explained that the bombardment of
asteroids on early Earth generated, in its impact craters, the heat and other
conditions needed for living cells.
The above paragraph, a condensation of a long science article, and the
trouble my readers and I have assimilating it, leads me to see why most of us
prefer the Biblical version of how life on earth started. The story of the 6-day
Creation by God of life’s elements and everything on this earth, including the
first man and woman, Adam and Eve, is somehow more understandable and easier to
accept than the convolutions of molecules and amyloids locked in chemical
reactions. Thank God for the Bible too.
