Did China also discover the Americas in 1421?

Longitude
If anyone has not yet read "Longitude", you are missing a great true story that changed our world. I treasure my hardback copy. When I retired and moved from California to New Mexico, I gave away nearly 1,000 books. However, I still had to install 8 floor to ceiling bookcases to house the books I brought to my new home. I tend to favor non-fiction and find it amazing and pleased that there is such a huge demand for non-fiction books. It seems there IS hope for our society.

-----BumbleBeeBoogie

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
by Dava Sobel

Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com

The thorniest scientific problem of the eighteenth century was how to determine longitude. Many thousands of lives had been lost at sea over the centuries due to the inability to determine an east-west position. This is the engrossing story of the clockmaker, John "Longitude" Harrison, who solved the problem that Newton and Galileo had failed to conquer, yet claimed only half the promised rich reward.

Other good reading:

The Map That Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester (Author) (Paperback)
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester (Author) (Paperback)
The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World by Amir D. Aczel (Author) (Paperback)
The Illustrated Longitude by Dava Sobel, William J. H. Andrewes (Paperback)
Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem by Simon Singh, John Lynch (Paperback)

I think you would greatly enjoy the works of Simon Schama, and one short and very enjoyable read is Dead Certanties.

what Harrison invented was more a chronometer that could withstand travelling in all positionsand not be affected by shipboard conditions. The Chinese water clocks were stationary, thats why their calculation of solar longitude is accurate over a year but not hour to hour or even day to day. A reference noon is needed to be carried on the trip so that ephemeris tables could be used to compute the difference and accrately fix longitude. I am not aware of anyone that has stated that the Chinese had ephemeris tabl;es.
Nowadays all we need to do is carry extra batteries. or have an inverter on the boat.

captain Bligh had one of the first pocket chronometers when he was put off the Bounty in the famous (infamous) mutiny. That is a large part of the reason he was able to take 18 men in a 23 foot launch 3600 miles from the Friendly Islands in the South Pacific to Timor in Indonesia.

Actually, i believe that was closer to 4500 miles . . . i'll go check it out . . .

This is from Plantexplorers.com ( ) :



I consulted several other on-line sources, which more or less gave the same figure, 3600-3700 miles . . . what is significant to me is that the long, personal relationship of Fletcher Christian and William Bligh lead the former to accede to the request for his navigational instruments on the part of the latter. I rather think that Bligh could have made Timor by dead reckoning, he was that good, but i also think that the outcome would not have been as good.

Speaking of adrift, has anyone read the book with the same name. "Adrift", by Steve Callahan -- highly entertaining.
Callahan was traveling the world in his sailboat and the night after he left the Canary Islands he was asleep at sea when the boat being tossed side to side awoke him. He had just enough time to determine that it wasn't a storm that was tossing the ship -- the seas were calm -- but his boat literally split in half and he had just enough to grab a small rubber dinghy and leaped into the ocean as his boat sunk from sight. He never did determine what caused his boat to sink (whales, I think he speculated) but he managed to survive at sea for two and a half months with virtually no supplies. It's one of the best survival stories I've ever read.

gustav, Some people's ability to survive miraculously from sure death for most is always a human interest story. Survival for two and a half month in the middle of the ocean without supplies sounds like some tale of great magnitude. c.i.

C.I., Check it out. It's a very fast read. Let me know what you think. Let's see.... it's 3:OO p.m. CST I'll allow compensation of 1 hour for you to find and acquire the book. Two hours to read, so I'll check back and 6:00 and get your opinion.
Gus

gus, Whew! It took me ten minutes to learn how to speed read, fifteen minutes to find the book, and two minutes to read it. Amazing! He was adrift for 76 days, traveled 1,800 miles, and lived on a 5.5 foot inflatable. He had only three pounds of food, and 8 pints of water. An amazing story of survival for sure. c.i.

The Bounty castaways had a number of advantages that Callahan did not. They had a goal (Timor) and the means to get there (oars and sail) they knew where they were and their daily progress (Bligh's navigation) and each other (psychological and moral support). Callahan on the other hand had only himself. He could neither control his progress or direction and had no one to talk to but the fish and his hallucinations. This makes his survival all the more remarkable.

Acquiunk, So, I'm assuming you read the book? Good stuff, huh?

C.I. I am very impressed with your ability to complete an assignment in such a short period of time. Considering the fact that you not only found the book, but also learned to speed-read, and finish the book, all with hours to spare, is nothing short of remarkable.

What can I say -- I am at a loss for words.

Gus

When you make a 'remarkable' demand, I had to resort to a remarkable answer. c.i.

ci-laast week you asked about the fathers of geology. I gave you my opinions about Nick Steno and JAmes Hutton. turns out there are 2 new books on these guys. The best is"the man who found time" by Jack Repcheck. Its a great read about Hutton, who is someone we are always drilled about but never in the context of the age. repchek did a fine job by writing a very compelling and interesting account , which, I must say, I read in an evening,it was that good

The other book "seashell on the mountaintop" by Alan Cutler is an ok book but left me with more questions about Steno. Its still valuable information on the foundings of a discipline separated from religious dogma and catma

If you likemWinchesters book on Bill Smith, youre going to love the Hutton Book.

Thank you, farmerman. Will look up the Hutton book for my next read. c.i.

Actually to bring this old topic back to life, China did do a lot before people first and yes, other country may have had that in they head too but speed counts and China win out in that one.
As for up to no use, well a lot of discoveries do relate to philosophy and today still remain in use. Then there are common things that no one knows originated from China. Yes, some things was for enertainment but China is stupid in that it burns its history. How is one to proceed if they can't even remember they old? That held them back and slowed them down.

One more thing is that having something doesn't mean you have to use it. Otherwise, the Chinese would have taken over the world with gunpowder and powerful ships before Europeans heard of them.

Here is a list and a short description of some of the things they have invented, I think most of them are still in actuall use or are at least modifications of them?

Equatorial astronomical instruments: 2400 BC+. Modern astronomical observatories derive from a Chinese, not a European tradition, which makes an understanding of sky position easier. They are oriented and mounted according to what is known as the equatorial system of astronomy. This is traditionally Chinese, and it goes back to at least 2400 BC. It takes the equators the horizontal circle around the side of the instrument, and the pole as the top point. This may seem simple and obvious, but it was not the system used by European ancestors. In European tradition, which is called ?'ecliptic', the two horizontal circles which were of importance were not the equator but the horizon and the ecliptic (the circle described by the Sun's motion in the sky, which is the same plane as the Earth's orbit around the Sun). It came to be realised in seventeenth-century Europe that the Chinese system of equatorial astronomy was more convenient and showed greater promise.

Decimal System: China, Fourteenth Century BC. An example of how the Chinese used the decimal system may be seen in an inscription from the thirteenth century BC, in which ?'547 days' is written ?'Five hundred plus four decades plus seven of days'. The Chinese wrote with characters instead of an alphabet. When writing with a Western alphabet of more than nine letters, there is a temptation to go on with words like eleven. With Chinese characters, ten is ten-blank and eleven is ten-one (zero was left as a blank space: 405 is ?'four blank five'), This was much easier than inventing a new character for each number (imagine having to memorize an enormous number of characters just to read the date!). Having a decimal system from the beginning was a big advantage in making mathematical advances. The first evidence of decimals in Europe is in a Spanish manuscript of 976 AD.

Growing Crops in Rows: Sixth Century BC. Growing crops in rows may seem to you to be obvious and necessary process but they were not practiced in western world until the eighteenth century. The Chinese were doing this at least by the sixth century BC, which are about 2200 years in advance of the West in one of the most sensible aspects of agriculture. One of the evidence was the Master Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals. It tells us: "If the crops are grown in rows they will mature rapidly because they will not interfere with each other's growth. The horizontal rows must be well drawn, the vertical rows made with skill, for if the lines are straight the wind will pass gently through."

Kite: Fifth or Fourth Century BC. Two kite makers, Kungshu P'an who made kites shaped like birds, which could fly for up to three days, and Mo Ti (who is said to have spent three years building a special kite) were famous in Chinese traditional stories from as early as the fifth century BC. Kites were used in wartime as early as 1232 when the Chinese flew kites with messages over Mongol lines. The strings were cut and the kites landed among the Chinese prisoners, inciting them to revolt and escape. Kites fitted with hooks and bait were used for fishing, and kites were fitted with strings and whistles to make musical sounds while flying. The kite was first mentioned in Europe in a popular book of marvels and tricks in 1589.

Cast Iron: Forth Century BC. By having good refractory clays for the construction of blast furnace walls, and the discovery of how to reduce the temperature at which iron melts by using phosphorus, the Chinese were able cast iron into ornamental and functional shapes. Coal, used as a fuel, was placed around elongated crucibles containing iron ore. This expertise allowed the production of pots and pans with thin walls. With the development of annealing in the third century, ploughshares, longer swords, and even buildings were eventually made of iron. In the West, blast furnaces are known to have existed in Scandinavia by the late eighth century AD, but cast iron was not widely available in Europe before 1380.

Law of Motion: Third or Forth Century BC. The book Mo Ching is the collection of writings of a school of philosophers called Mohists, after their founder and sage Mo Ti (more commonly known as Mo Tzu, which means "Master Mo"). The Mohists disappeared completely from Chinese history after only a moderate time, and most of their writings remained unread and almost forgotten until recently. Their brilliant scientific insights were also largely lost, and made very little lasting impact on later Chinese history. The Mohists were also the only ancient Chinese to consider the subject of dynamics in the theoretical sense, though practical dynamics was continuously applied in the great strides made by Chinese technology and invention.

Horse Collar: Third Century BC. About the fourth century BC the Chinese devised a harness with a breast strap known as the trace harness, modified approximately one hundred later into the collar harness. Unlike the throat-and-girth harness used in the West, which choked a horse and reduced its efficiency (it took two horses to haul a half a ton), the collar harness allowed a single horse to haul a ton and a half. The trace harness arrived in Europe in the sixth century and made its way across Europe by the eighth century.

Mouldboard Plough: Third Century BC. Called kuan, these ploughshares were made of malleable cast iron. They had an advanced design, with a central ridge ending in a sharp point to cut the soil and wings that sloped gently up towards the centre to throw the soil off the plough and reduce friction. When brought to Holland in the 17th Century, these ploughs began the Agricultural Revolution.

Hot Air Balloon: Second Century BC. Chinese globe lanterns made of paper, like the one shown here, were used as miniature hot-air balloons in China for centuries. The invention of paper came at about the same time as the first balloons were tested-the second century BC. By the second century BC, the Chinese were making miniature hot-air balloons using eggshells. A book written at that time, The Ten Thousand Infallible Arts of the Prince of Huai-Nan, mentions this pastime: "Eggs can be made to fly in the air by the aid of burning tinder."

Rotary Winnowing Fan: Second Century BC. The Chinese were about two thousand years ahead of the West in their approach towards the winnowing of grain, the means used to separate out husks and stalks from the grain after harvest and threshing. The easiest method goes back even before the cultivation of crops: 'The grain is thrown up into the air, preferably in a strong wind, so that the chaff is blown away while the grain falls down to the ground. Later, winnowing baskets were used, which required dextrous handing. With the right kind of rhythmic wrist movement, one can separate the heavy grain from the chaff, which is gradually tipped over the edge of the basket, leaving the grain behind. Later still, the winnowing sieve was introduced. By the second century BC, Chinese had invented rotary winnowing fan. Models of them have been found in the ancient tombs, made of pottery and with miniature working parts.

Circulation of the Blood: Second Century BC. Most people believe blood circulation was discovered by William Harvey in 1628, but there are other recorded notations dating back to the writings of an Arab of Damascus, al-Nafis (died 1288). However, circulation appears discussed in full and complex form in The Yellow Emperor's Manual of Corporeal Medicine in China by the second century BC.

Paper and Playing Cards: Second Century BC. Papyrus, the inner bark of the papyrus plant, is not true paper. Paper is a sheet of sediment, which results from the settling of a layer of disintegrated fibres from a watery solution onto a flat mould. Once the water is drained away, the deposited layer is removed and dried. The oldest surviving piece of paper in the world is made of hemp fibres, discovered in 1957 in a tomb near Xian, China, and dates from between the years 140 and 87 BC. The oldest paper with writing on it, also from China, is dated to 110 AD and contains about two dozen characters. Paper reached India in the seventh century and West Asia in the eighth. The Arabs sold paper to Europeans until manufacture in the West in the twelfth century. Playing cards were invented in China after they discovered paper. Even today, some of the packs used in China have suits of coins, which Mah Jong players knew as circles and bamboos. Cards entered Europe from Islamic empires where cups and swords were added as symbols.

Parachute: Second Century BC. Most people know that Leonardo da Vinci left sketches of the parachute, which was the first appearance of the idea in Europe. However, the Chinese seem to have invented the parachute and actually used it well over fifteen hundred years before Leonardo. The first textual evidence we have for this is in the famous Historical Records of China's greatest historian, Ssuma Ch'ien, which was completed about 90 BC. We can therefore safely consider the parachute as dating from at least the second century BC. Ssuma Ch'ien had access to vast archives, and the fact that he attributed the parachute to such remote antiquity means that its origins may well have been some centuries before this time.

Chain Pump and Deep Drilling for Natural Gas: First Century BC. One of the inventions of greatest utility, which has spread from China throughout the world, so that its origins are no longer realised, is the square-pallet chain pump. The use of chain pump spread out the China rapidly, so it is not possible to find out who invented it but according to some historical articles; we can say it's around the first century BC. The Chinese developed a drilling method by the first century BC and were able to drill boreholes up to 4800 feet deep. The deep drilling for today's sullies of oil and natural gas is a development from these Chinese techniques. The size of Chinese drilling equipment was remarkable. Derrick could rise as much as 180 feet above ground. Tubes for extracting could be as much as 130 feet long. At the top of a borehole would be a shaft dug with spades, reaching down to the level of hard rock, whether this was one foot or dozens of feet down.

Driving Belt: First Century BC. The belt-drive or driving-belt transmits power from one wheel to another, and produces continuous rotary motion. It existed as early as the first century BC in China. It is attested by a passage in Yang Hsiung's book, Dictionary of Local Expressions, of 15 BC. It was developed for use in machines connected with silk manufacture, especially one called a quilling-machine, which wound the long silk fibres on to bobbins for the weavers' shuttles. These machines featured a large wheel and a driving-belt and small pulley. The machines are mentioned again in the book Enlargement of Literary Expositor compiled between 230 and 232 AD. The Driving-belt was essential for the invention of the spinning-wheel. The belts could run not only round normal wheels with rims, whether grooved or not, but also round rimless wheels. A rimless spinning-wheel may sound a contradiction in terms, and the use of a driving-belt with rimless wheels might at first seem an impossible but in fact a cat's cradle of fibres strung between wheel spokes which protrude slightly or exist in two sets placed in alternation can create an entirely adequate nexus for a belt.

Wheelbarrow: First Century BC. Wheelbarrows did not exist in Europe before the eleventh or twelfth century (the earliest known Western depiction is in a window at Chartres Cathedral, dated around 1220 AD). Descriptions of the wheelbarrow in China refer to first century BC and the oldest surviving picture, a frieze relief from a tomb-shrine in Szechuan province, dates from about 118 AD.

Rudder: First Century AD. Until Europeans adopted the rudder from the Chinese, Western ships had to make do with steering oars. This meant that long voyages of discovery by Europeans were impossible. The world's oldest representation of a rudder may be seen in Plate 136. This is a pottery model of a Chinese ship excavated from a tomb dated to the first century AD. Chinese seagoing rudders grew to many times the size of a man. Huge ships with enormous rudders were used on the Chinese voyages of discovery, which preceded the European ones. The Chinese sailed round the Cape of Good Hope in the opposite direction to that taken by the Europeans and at an earlier time. They were also first to discover Australia, landing at the site now called Port Darwin. Chinese trade with the Philippines and Indonesia was common; and trade with the eastern coast of Africa was so extensive that pieces of broken Chinese porcelain are to be found scattered all up and down the beaches of Tanzania and Mozambique, dating back for centuries. The Chinese also made voyages to the American continents, though it is questionable whether they were return voyages. Many Asian influences have been identified in ancient America. Another traditional Chinese invention was the 'fenestrated rudder', which is simply a rudder with holes made in it. The Chinese soon discovered that while easing the task of turning the rudder through the water, the holes did not appreciably diminish its steering function. However, it was not until 1901 that fenestrated rudders were introduced to the West.

Seismograph: Second Century AD. China has always been plagued with earthquakes and the government wanted to know where the economy would be interrupted. A seismograph was developed by the brilliant scientist, mathematician, and inventor Chang Heng (whose works also show he envisaged the earth as a sphere with nine continents and introduced the crisscrossing grid of latitude and longitude). His invention was noted in court records of the later Han Dynasty in 132 AD. Modern seismographs only began development in 1848.

Refined Value of Pi: Third Century AD. The value of pi was computed by Archimedes to three decimal places, and by Ptolemy to four decimal places but after that, for 1450 years, no greater accuracy was achieved in the Western world. The Chinese, however, made great strides forward in computing pi. Liu Hui in the third century AD started by inscribing a polygon of 192 sides in a circle, and then went on to inscribe one of 3072 sides, which ?'squeezed' even closer. He was thus able to calculate a value of pi of 3.14159. At this point, the Chinese overtook the Greeks. But the real leap forward came in the fifth century AD, when truly advanced values for pi appeared in China. The mathematicians Tsu Ch'ung-Chih and Tsu Keng-Chih (father and son), by means of calculations which have been lost, obtained an 'accurate' value of pi to ten decimal places, as 3.1415929203.

Algebra: Third Century AD. Algebra and geometry developed independently. Today, we could not possibly do without their intimate partnership. Everything from buildings to airplanes is constructed not just from blueprint drawings but also from sets of equations describing the contours, surfaces, and structures. However, the first people to do this sort of thing, expressing geometrical shapes by equations, were the Chinese. A Chinese book of the third century AD called the Sea Island Mathematical Manual gives a series of geometrical propositions in algebraic form and describes geometrical figures by algebraic equations. Throughout Chinese history after that, if one wanted to consider geometry, algebra was regularly employed.

Helicopter Rotor and the Propeller: Forth Century AD. By fourth century AD a common toy in China was the helicopter top, called the ?'bamboo dragonfly'. The top was an axis with a cord wound round it, and with blades sticking out from the axis and set at an angle. One pulled the cord, and the top went climbing in the air. Sir George Cayley, the father of modern aeronautics, studied the Chinese helicopter top in 1809. The helicopter top in China led to nothing but amusement and pleasure, but fourteen hundred years later, it was to be one of the key elements in the birth of modern aeronautics in the West.

Matches: Sixth Century AD. The first version of the match was invented in 577 AD by impoverished court ladies during a military siege. Hard pressed for tinder during the siege, they could otherwise not start fires for cooking, heating, etc. The matches consisted of little sticks of pinewood impregnated with sulphur. There is no evidence of matches in Europe before 1530.

Dial and Pointer Devices: Sixth or Seventh Century AD. The earliest Chinese compasses did not have needles. The ?'pointers' were shaped as spoons, fish, or even sometimes as turtles. The introduction of a needle was a refinement, which made possible a much greater precision of readings on the dials surrounding the pointer. It was at this stage of development that we could say that the Chinese pioneered the world's first dial and pointer devices, which are absolutely fundamental to modern science.

Brandy and Whiskey: Seventh Century AD. The tribal people of Central Asia discovered ?'frozen-out wine' in their frigid climate in the third century AD. In wine that had frozen was a remaining liquid (pure alcohol). Freezing became a test for alcohol content. Distilled wine was known in China by the seventh century. The distillation of alcohol in the West was discovered in Italy in the twelfth century.

Segmental Arch Bridge: Seventh Century AD. A conceptual breakthrough occured when a Chinese engineer was the first to realise that an arch did no have to be a semi-circle. A bridge could be built which was based not on the traditional semi-circle arch but on what is known as a segmental arch. Bridges built in this way take less material and are stronger than ones built as semi-circular arches. It was the concept of a genius, Li Ch'un, the founder of an entire school of constructional engineering whose influence lasted for many centuries. We are fortunate in that his first great bridge, built in 610, survives intact and is still very much in use today.

Mechanical Clock: Eight Century AD. The difficulty in inventing a mechanical clock was to figure out a way in which a wheel no bigger than a room could turn at the same speed as the Earth, but still be turning more or less continuously. If this could be accomplished, then the wheel became a mini-Earth and could tell the time. For, after all, the time is nothing more nor less than how far the Earth has turned today. Accomplishing this mechanical feat was one of the greatest steps forward of the human race. Where would we be today without clocks? The mechanical clock was invented in China in the eighth century. By 1310, this had finally been achieved in Europe. And the stimulus for it seems to have been some garbled accounts of Chinese mechanical clocks which came to the West by way of traders. This was the same century that brought to Europe the Chinese inventions of gunpowder, segmental arch bridges, cast iron, and printing.

Chess: Ninth Century AD. Chinese Chess was invented around the ninth century AD. It is not like the modern day versions of Chinese and Western and it was considerably modified from the original version that was invented by a philosopher in the 6th century. Chinese chess is also called Siang -Chi or Siang K'i. The pieces are of Chinese characters on disks that are played on an un-chequered board. Each player has an area of 4 squares in the middle at the nearest edge called the 'Fortre". You divide the players in the middle which is the "River", an open area, one square wide. The pieces are: the general, mandarins, elephants, horsemen, chariots, cannons and the soldiers. This game entertained; it taught strategies; and it was a good tool for teaching one how to prepare to manage armies.

Paper Money: Ninth Century AD. Its original name was ?'flying money' because it was so light it could blow out of one's hand. As ?'exchange certificates' used by merchants, paper money was quickly adopted by the government for forwarding tax payments. Real paper money, used as a medium of exchange and backed by deposited cash (a Chinese term for metal coins), apparently came into use in the tenth century. The first Western money was issued in Sweden in 1661. America followed in 1690, France in 1720, England in 1797, and Germany not until 1806.

Flame Thrower: Tenth Century AD. If one considers a flame-thrower to be a device capable of emitting a continuous stream of flame in warfare, it was invented by the Chinese by the tenth century AD. The reason for the superiority of the Chinese device, and the reason we a consider it to be the first genuine flame-thrower, was the continuous stream of flame made possible by the Chinese invention of the double-acting piston bellows, which was also used in chemical warfare by the early fourth century BC for spraying soldiers with clouds of poison gas. The superiority of Chinese metallurgy was also apparent here, as the flame-thrower was made of the very best cartridge-quality brass, containing 70 per cent copper.

Top: Tenth/Eleventh Century AD. The top in China can be traced back as far as the Sung Dynasty between 960 to 1279 AD A four inch ivory disc called the Ch'en-Ch'ien was the forerunner to the top. It served as a pastime by court ladies. "Tuo-luo" was the word for top, and was first found in records of the Ming Dynasty between 1386 to 1644 AD, when it was played by children in early spring. Some tops were spun by means of a string wound around the base. The string was pulled sharply as the top is thrown forward. A small whip was used with some tops to maintain a continuous spin.Tops come in a variety of sizes and materials. Tops are equipped with a sharp metal end to slip other tops apart in top "duals". Tops were developed in the Ta-hse village.

Bombs, Rockets and Multistage Rockets: Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries AD. Around 1150 it crossed someone's mind to attach a comet-like firework to a four-foot bamboo stick with an arrowhead and a balancing weight behind the feathers. To make the rockets multi-staged, a secondary set of rockets was attached to the shaft, their fuses lighted as the first rockets burned out. Rockets are first mentioned in the West in connection with a battle in Italy in 1380, arriving in the wake of Marco Polo.

And by the way, yes China did discover America and Australia before anyone else. However, they only spread their influences there and not take over both place.

One is that, they didn't want to take over the place and second, travelling across the Pacific (by sea) even now aren't fun.

I also half disagree with whoever said that America was invented and not discovered. Yes, America was invented but not the white people. The Aztecs and native Americans invented it. Who said they had no modern technology?

They probably had one of the best knowing how to protect their environment and not destroy it like all countries do today.
White people came in due to greed and virtually wiped them out and not only that, in Australia as least, they treated them with disrespect and virtually in my opinon "raped" them in which they call assimilation.

Yes, you are right about China and in hated for outsider but look at this from another view. Look at it from an Aboriginal or Iraqi view and you will understand why they act in certain ways they do today. China was in the same situation when the West invaded, you know, it hurts and if you people care to learn Chinese and the national anthem, its a war song still in use today. It express the struggle to adapt and merge into the forceful new society and leave behind their own culture and so they cloud this with such "arrogances" as you may call it but doesn't all country with different view and power do that today?
Just look at the study of history today, if you are like me and live in Australia you ended up studing the short history of Australia after white settlement. In ancient history, we study Greek and Rome and a little of Egypt which were just as mighty as the two.

My comment was that they did "JUST ABOUT" everything first. So I suggest you learn to read before calling anyone else stupid.

We are a early-smart nation.
The Great Yellow river in the North and the Great Yangtze River in the south created a great nation with great culture great intelligence and great technology.
But histroy told us every great nation cannot avoid the falling down, China was not an exception.

Ironically, about 1300 years ago when china was during the most properous time and Europe is falling into the black. The Scandinavians were the most uncivilized and the nation in the world. But nowadays they are the richest and the most civilized nations on the planet.

quite a joke right?

(there arent any discrimination meanings in my post. I just want to show my sadness. Anyway China is preparing to come into a new prosperous time)

oh again i remember a quite ludicrous thing.

Our nation biult up a trememdous fleet just because they want to hold the mountains of gold, gems, and china.

Why they want to carry these things? Because they want to give them to the local countries and the tribes as the gift on the voyage(mostly in Southest Asia, India, Arab, and Africa)

That is the funny things only can be done by generous empire

You forget what East India Company use thier large ship for?