[MR] Ancient Origins: Medieval Chinese Ships in Newfoundland?

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

O.K. I will admit that I stayed up to 11:00 last night to watch THE CURSE
OF OAK ISLAND season premier. That show is addictive, even if I don't buy
into the program's breathy insinuations that everybody from the Templars,
Aztecs and even William Shakespeare, left treasure here. At least the show
hasn't blamed space aliens . . . yet. One idea they haven't yet floated is
that medieval Chinese might have been on Oak Island.

In season promos, and probably at the end of last night's episode,
metal-detector geek Gary Drayton appears to have unearthed a coin with a
square hole in the center. That was probably the cliff-hanger at the end of
the show, and whatever he found will be "revealed" next week. Coins with
square holes are associated with China, though they likely appeared in
other cultures as well, and even Chinese coins likely migrated all over the
world through trade, just as Arabic coins have turned up at Viking sites in
Scandinavia. So let's see where the Oak Island team goes with their new
"evidence" whenever the coin is actually featured in an episode.

So back to Ancient Origins. On 31 October they offered a piece on the
possible existence of Chinese shipwrecks off the coast of Newfoundland.
The story relates the tale of the Chinese admiral Zeng He and his treasure
fleets. Also shown are Chinese maps from the 1400s that show six of the
world's continents with fair accuracy including the eastern coast of North
America (somehow they missed Australia). Assuming these maps are not
frauds, they show that the Chinese had to have been in Newfoundland well
before "official" European exploration.

Here is the link to the story:
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/ancient-ships-0014479
.

If you enjoy THE CURSE OF OAK ISLAND, more power to you. Even though I
frequently groan, I find the show fascinating.

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆