# Silk Road to the Americas?



## Jd755 (Yesterday at 3:34 PM)

The Silk Road.
This post is nothing more than my take on the apparent impossibility of the Silk Road going east from China.
I say impossibility as it doesn't seem to bending discussed let alone investigated, at least in the English language world. There are no links to anything simply because I haven't come across anything. So its my speculation I'm afraid.

The Silk Road we are told runs east to west west to east. China to western Europe in the main with sub roads, if you will, going south and north in various points along the route. Its said its purpose was commerce with Western European merchants and city states going east to sell things and in turn buy things cheap, once they were in China, or far enough away from their western Europe homeland to make it seem they were in China, and on their return sell the products at a premium.
They sold their produce on the outward journey at many places along this road and repeated this on the return journey. They also bought things along the road and took them further east to sell or exchange for other things.
People, their religions, their states, their behaviours, their ways, there food, plants, animals and drinks went back and forth as well as produce.

That is a potted summary of what we are told. We have to be told as it is no longer in operation so experiencing it is impossible.
But why would this same trading arrangement not go East to Japan and the  Americas, or north to the multivariate cultures and peoples we know very little of of south to the Antipodes?

Crossing the ocean between China and Japan and onto America is much easier than sending caravans back and forth over thousands of milles. Crossing the Bering strait is even easier. It makes more sense in my estimation to go East from China than West unless there were no people living in America and the Japan back then was not the Japan it is claimed Admiral Perry opened up.

If the western coastal strip of the Americas were occupied by people say from the Siberian region, or Chinese people or the Pacific Island peoples or the Japanese then it should be a two way exchange via sea and or land in which Chinese and American goods and ideas etc changing places back and forth. It is also not beyond the realm of possibility that Western European products ideas etc could make it to the Americas.

China seems to me to be also well placed to forge a route south to Australia and New Zealand. Either overland from mainland China, down through modern day Indonesia or direct by sea to Australia. Assuming both islands were populated then the back and forth movement of products resources ideas people places China in a unique position.
One where whoever runs the place has a handle on what is going on in three of the four compass points from its location. I would argue they had a handle on the North as well I just have little clue what is said to have been going on there.

Africa seems to be the bit beyond any form of overland silk road unless a route through the middle east were possible though the middle eastern lands change hands frequently such a route may depend on who's in control of what.
The sea route along the coast or across the Indian ocean is a possibility of course that cannot be discounted and likely more reliable.

All conjecture don't forget.

In short China quite literally became the hub of the world wheel, if Australia and the Americas were populated. Its very much like that today with sea lanes linking all thee places I mentioned moving physical products and resources back and forth and piggybacking on them are ideas, processes and methods.
The Chinese of today are not known for missing opportunities and I would argue neither were thee Chinese back in Silk Road days.
I feel sure they would have set up and operated mutually beneficial routes with anyone if it benefitted them. Looking specifically east at the vast resources of the Americas and their proximity to China I find it inconceivable the Chinese would ignore it. Same goes for Australia. Trading or exchanging with the people already there is easier and more effective than conquering them.
Conquering is just about the worst thing a trading nation can do especially if the land being conquered is a market.
If its a resource land and people conquering makes more sense as thee conqueror gains direct control of a resource but also gains the drain of defending it from whoever fancies a piece of the action.

So anyway there it is not much depth, sorry, no links, sorry, no sources legitimate or illegitimate,  sorry, no theory just simple thoughts on a probability typed out and posted on an internet forum.
If any of it triggers thoughts of your own and you are moved to type and add them in please do.
If you have come across anything in non English sources of any description that shed light on this probability then PLEASE add them in. That would be of great interest as would anything that shows I am talking out of my arse!


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## Quiahuitl (Yesterday at 8:19 PM)

This KD post shows this 1827 map of Eurasia with 'Americans' written in.
Also the Alaska purchase is dated i868 lol.


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## Starfire (Today at 4:11 AM)

Quiahuitl said:


> This KD post shows this 1827 map of Eurasia with 'Americans' written in.
> Also the Alaska purchase is dated i868 lol.
> View attachment 27092


I was reading that thread too. I had to know more, so here's what I found out.

Anthony Finley of Philadelphia first published this in 1824 as an addendum to a set of atlases he published in 1818. This addendum was "classical" maps of locations mentioned by ancient authors. So maybe drawn based on actual maps, maybe drawn from a description, maybe just made up.
Finley - Atlas Classica; Or Select Maps Of Ancient Geography : AncientHistoryMaps : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

He copied it from John Mellish, who published it in 1815, as an addendum to a set of atlases.
LUNAversal Viewer

Who copied it from Wilkinson's Atlas Classica, first published in 1797. This has way more maps than Finley's version. It would be interesting to look more into the dates of reprints of the three different collections and see what maps were taken out of the collections and when.
LUNAversal Viewer
Wilkinson's Atlas Classica : AncientHistoryWorks : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Not sure where Wilkinson lifted it from.

Here's an image that JD might like. The Silk Road could have gone across that land bridge.







Regarding the date of the Russian sale of Alaska to the United States...
The check-looking item definitely has a fishy date, could be i868. But the document item clearly spells out the year down by the signatures. Either or both of the items could be real or fake. I do think the Alaska Purchase was part of a settlement to reorganize the remnants of the Tartarian Empire.










(I am happy to take feedback on the proper downloading of images to have the highest resolution available without having doubles. But message me with suggestions,  don't clog up JD's thread.)


Jd755 said:


> The Silk Road.
> This post is nothing more than my take on the apparent impossibility of the Silk Road going east from China.
> I say impossibility as it doesn't seem to bending discussed let alone investigated, at least in the English language world. There are no links to anything simply because I haven't come across anything. So its my speculation I'm afraid.
> 
> ...


Nice to know you can speculate, too. 

I've got a few supporting things for your idea. Not sure if they would be proof or anything.

A writer named Gavin Menzies wrote two books concerning Chinese exploration of the areas you are talking about. These are 1421 and 1434. I have not read the books, just perused the website a while back, so forgive if I misspeak anything. He writes about two different great fleets that were sent out by the Chinese emperor of the time. These voyages were intended to set up trade, establish Chinese superiority and request tribute and obsequience to the emperor. Each voyage was intended to travel to all the known world and circumnavigate the globe.

From
Home - Gavin Menzies

_*1421: The Year China Discovered the World*
“…On the 8th of March, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships, huge junks nearly five hundred feet long and built from the finest teak, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di’s loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was ‘to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas’ and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. The journey would last over two years and circle the globe.

When they returned Zhu Di lost control and China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. The great ships rotted at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. They had also discovered Antarctica, reached Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook and solved the problem of longitude three hundred years before the Europeans…”

*1434 – The year a magnificent Chinese fleet sailed to Italy and ignited the Renaissance*
"In 1434, Gavin Menzies offers a stunning reappraisal of history, presenting compelling new evidence on the European Renaissance, tracing its roots to China

In this provocative, highly readable history, Gavin Menzies makes the startling argument that China provided the spark that set the Renaissance ablaze. Based on years of research, this marvellous history argues that a Chinese fleet, official ambassadors of the emperor, arrived in Tuscany in 1434, where they met with Pope Eugenius IV in Florence. The delegation presented the pope with a wealth of knowledge, from a diverse range of fields: geography (including world maps that the author believes were passed on to Christopher Columbus), astronomy, mathematics, art, printing, architecture, steel manufacturing, civil engineering, military weaponry, surveying, cartography, genetics, and more. This gift of knowledge sparked the inventiveness of the Renaissance, including da Vinci’s mechanical creations, the Copernican revolution, Galileo’s discoveries, and more.

From 1434 onward, Europeans embraced Chinese intellectual ideas, discoveries, and inventions – all which have formed the basis of European civilisation just as much as Greek philosophy and Roman law. Erudite and brilliantly reasoned, 1434 is sure to make headlines and change the way we see ourselves, our history, and our world."_

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You wondered about the Chinese in New Zealand and Australia. Here's a link about Chinese influence in New Zealand and there are still visible shipwrecks of Chinese junks on the northern coasts of New Zealand. I'm sure the site has Australian info as well.

18 Annex 18 - Evidence of Chinese Fleets visit to New Zealand - Gavin Menzies

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The Forbidden City in Beijing used to be Peking and contain Tartar City and the Imperial City.  The Tartarian Walls formed a tall barrier to protect the elite protected there. 

SH Archive - The great Tartar wall in China

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Gotta go now, kinda late here. There's several more relevant things I've learned that I will add soon.


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