Christopher Columbus discovered America. Historians estimate that between 50 and 100 million indigenous people lived in the pre-Columbian Americas. By 1650, disease, war, and other factors diminished their population to around 8 million. Zheng he was a Muslim. Zheng he became the greatest admiral in Chinese history. Zheng he was a unic. The Chinese wanted to dominate Indian ocean trade. Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored seven naval expeditions. The Yongle emperor designed them to establish a Chinese presence, impose imperial control over trade, impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin and extend the empire's tributary system. It has also been claimed, on the basis of later texts, that the voyages also presented an opportunity to seek out Zhu Yunwen (the previous emperor whom the Yongle emperor had usurped and who was rumored to have fled into exile) – possibly the "largest scale manhunt on water in the history of China". Zheng he was a unic. Zheng he lead huge treasure ships. At the time China was the leading manufacturer of quality goods in the world. They built the "Great Wall" so they could protect China from the Mongols. The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China in part to protect the Chinese Empire or its prototypical states against intrusions by various nomadic groups or military incursions by various warlike peoples or forces. Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger, stronger, and unified are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains. Since then, the Great Wall has on and off been rebuilt, maintained, enhanced; the majority of the existing wall was reconstructed during the Ming Dynasty. Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a
tomb in China, it is empty: he was, like many great admirals, buried at sea. Zheng he led seven expeditions to what the Chinese called "the Western Ocean" (Indian Ocean). He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms – including King Vira Alakeshwara of Ceylon, who came to China as a captive to apologize to the Emperor. Some recent historians have disputed the existence of Henry's school at Sagres. He had cartographers there, but to what extent Sagres was a center of navigation is a topic of historical debate. Henry was born in 1394 in Porto, probably when the royal couple was living in the city's old mint, now called Casa do Infante (Prince's House). He was the third son born to Philippa of Lancaster, the sister of King Henry IV of England. His sister died at a young age so he never got to have a relationship with her. Henry was 21 when he, his father and brothers captured the Moorish port of Ceuta in northern Morocco, that had long been a base for Barbary pirates who raided the Portuguese coast, depopulating villages by capturing their inhabitants to be sold in the African slave market. Following this success, Henry started to explore the coast of Africa, most of which was unknown to Europeans. His objectives included finding the source of the West African gold trade and the legendary Christian kingdom of Prester John, and stopping the pirate attacks on the Portuguese coast. At that time the ships of the Mediterranean were too slow and too heavy to make these voyages. Under his direction, a new and much lighter ship was developed, the caravel, which could sail further and faster. In 1419, Henry's father appointed him governor of the province of the Algarve. Zheng he visited Africa, Middle East and India. Emperors are usually male. Portugal has a fair bit of coastline and relatively resource-poor. Columbus and his crew knew the earth was round. He was just wrong about the Earths size. Columbus was not a lucky idiot. Columbus never wrote in his native language. Columbus was not a scholarly man. Yet he studied these books, made
hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the
world that were characteristically simple and strong and sometimes
wrong, the kind of ideas that the self-educated person gains from
independent reading and clings to in defiance of what anyone else tries
to tell him.
