Anne-- Must comment on Mezier's pride in his navigational skills. My husband and I took celestial navigation classes some years ago in preparation for taking our sailboat from Seattle to Guam (a trip we never made). We both ended up certified by the Coast Guard as qualified "seamen", well able to read charts, identify our position at sea etc., but believe me, that did not qualify either of us to make judgments about the "truths" of the early explorers and who did what when. --Joanne Anne Pemberton <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Joanne & Lyle, Thank you both for your insightful and full explanations on the book I am reading. It is a good story, but knowing that it is fiction does not take away from the writing, just on the knowledge. In the section I was reading last night, Mezier asserts that the Chinese Explorers left a stone monument on the Verdes islands off the west coast of Africa. Unfortunately, when it was examined, the medieval language was from India rather than from China. If the Chinese wanted to prove they were there, why would they not leave the stones in their own language? Other passages have given me pause to question his tale as well. In recent months, I've read 1491 by Charles Mann, and re-read The Invasion of America by Jennings. One or both mentions the Asian features and items found among Native societies, and Mann mentions Asian DNA in some as well. Mann postulates that in addition to the Natives who arrived in America via the Bering Strait, there could have also been an incursion that crossed the Pacific at or near Antartica and traveled up the coast of South America, probably in small boats, to build an early civilization on the coast of Peru. One of the things that Menzies does that bothers me, is constantly asserting that he is better equipped than historians and anthropologists to discover these "truths" because he is a first class "navigator" and can read sea charts! Again, thanks for the insights and links! Anne Anne Pemberton [log in to unmask] http://www.erols.com/apembert http://www.educationalsynthesis.org --------------------------------- Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing.