Word: maps
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...every collector's fantasy. An afternoon in an antique shop produces a gem that lights up a dim piece of the past. This was the seductive story on offer in Beijing last week when lawyer and collector Liu Gang unveiled a map that, he says, proves the Chinese had detailed knowledge of world geography long before the voyages of Columbus, Magellan and da Gama brought such insights to Europe. This "Overall Map of the Geography of All Under Heaven," which Liu says he bought for $500 in Shanghai's Dongtai Road Antique Market, includes notes claiming it was drawn...
...says his find demonstrates that Zheng He sailed around the world and returned to China by 1418 with precise knowledge not only of continental coastlines, but of interior geographic and cultural features, all of which appear on the map. But these details were well known in China by the time the map was supposedly drawn in the 18th century, argue critics such as Li Xiaocong, a cartography expert at Peking University. "It's simply not logical," says Li, "to use a map drawn in [Emperor] Qianlong's time to prove the existence of a map that might have been drawn...
...Gavin Menzies, the map's most vocal champion, is sure it did. Menzies, a retired British Naval Commander, is the author of 1421: The Year China Discovered America, a book that puts Zheng He's fleet on American shores seven decades ahead of Columbus. Published in 2002, this best seller mixes established fact with Menzies' own much-disputed interpretations of history. It was a Chinese edition of 1421 and subsequent e-mails with Menzies that Liu says convinced him of his map's significance. Menzies, who has helped publicize Liu's find, tells TIME: "There isn't one millionth...
...about the map, especially its use of language, has led professional historians to view it with suspicion. "If you look at the text, there are really some things that are a bit strange," says Nicolas Standaert, an expert on the Ming era at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Standaert points to passages circled in red?which the map's legend says are copied from the 1418 map?that contain words or terms not used at that time. Among them is the map's word for the Christian God and its description of what is now the South China...
...Ford, the road map looks like this: assemble a squad of ace designers. Put the engineers, bean counters and marketers in the backseat. Wait for the artists to produce gorgeous metal and interiors. Then pray the company can execute...