1421: The Year China Discovered America

On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China to "proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas." When the fleet returned home in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in the long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. And they colonized America before the Europeans, transplanting the principal economic crops that have since fed and clothed the world.

• 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance (P.S.)
• Who Discovered America?: The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas
• The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
• 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
• Who Discovered America?: The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas
• 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
• 1492: The Year The World Began
• After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection
• The Island of Seven Cities