Who Discovered America? : The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas (9780062236777) Read online

  CHAPTER 1

  A Land Bridge Too Far

  Decades of research and analysis of the available records convince me that Chinese explorers were the first to reach the Americas. Yet, a seaman to the core though I be, I have long been interested in evaluating the competing theory that many hold about Asian migrations from Siberia to North America across the Bering Strait. Eventually, in 1999, I was able to envision a way to test the case for migration across Beringia, the connector between the continents, a time of glaciers during which humans theoretically could have walked thousands of miles from Asia to America. I devised for myself an opportunity to trace the route under modern conditions when my daughter, Samantha, prepared for her marriage to Pat Murray in Garson, Ontario, north of Lake Huron.

  I thought it would be fun and instructive for me to find an amphibious vehicle, drive from our home in London, England, through the Channel Tunnel across Europe and Siberia, then across the Bering Strait when it froze over, and finally through Alaska and southeast to Ontario. I would collect Samantha and take her to the church in the amphibious car in time for her wedding.

  I planned the operation with great care, more than a year ahead of time. We chose an amphibious Bering Strait–capable vehicle made by Dutton Amphibious Cars of Littlehampton. Tim Dutton, the proprietor, arranged for us to have a trial run in Littlehampton harbor—it performed beautifully. I gathered a list of requirements and gear and began accumulating them.1

  My contact and inspiration for the journey was Commander Tony Brooks, who joined the Royal Navy some ten years after me and became a professional navigator. After he resigned from the Royal Navy, Tony rode a bicycle from London to the Bering Strait across Siberia. We planned to follow the route Tony took, and use his detailed reports to plan each stage. Acting on his advice, we planned to fit our craft, which we dubbed Mariner 2, with an 1800cc Ford diesel engine. George, who owned the local garage in Islington, decided to sell up and come as my co-driver. This brought a wealth of technical expertise to the project. I decided to purchase a second vehicle to accompany us in view of the multitude of spare parts that George considered necessary.

  During my time as navigator of the HMS Narwhal I had developed a working relationship with the Scott Polar Research Institute, at the University of Cambridge. We carried out experiments on their behalf underneath the ice and briefed them when we returned. Lawson Brigham and Bob Headland, the archivist, provided us with very detailed information about the Bering Strait and eastern Siberia, not least accounts of their journeys through the strait on a Russian icebreaker.

  Tony Brooks introduced me to Richard Casey, who had organized and carried out an expedition from Moscow aiming to cross the Bering Strait that was funded by the Russian army—which had provided trucks, fuel and water, icebreakers, helicopters, and backup logistics. Richard and Tony again helped me by introducing me to the captain of a Russian icebreaker who planned to transit from Asia to America, north to south in the Bering Strait, on August 10 and then return north on August 13.

  In modern times, the shortest distance for such a crossing is about fifty-one miles, from Chukchi Peninsula in Russia to Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska. We planned to cross the Bering Strait from Cape Dezhnev to Little Diomede (an island in the middle of the strait) on August 13 and from Little Diomede to Cape Prince of Wales on August 14. We would have emergency help if needed.

  The Russian army agreed to provide us with fuel for the journey through Siberia. Everything seemed set. I decided to call on the Scott Institute one last time to obtain a final briefing from Bob Headland, who had just returned from the strait.

  I was horrified to learn from him how bad things were in Siberia at the time. Two Russian fuel tankers had managed to get through to Pevek the previous autumn but the fuel they brought had run out. Food supply ships had not gotten through and as a result there was widespread starvation in the villages on the Russian side of the strait. The people of Pevek did not even have sufficient fuel for the outboard-motor craft they used to hunt walruses for food. The population had been reduced from ten thousand to one thousand. In Bob Headland’s view, if we went through with what appeared an expensive vehicle with food and fuel we would be attacked. Bob advised against proceeding without an armed escort and a fuel tanker.

  Until that day I had thought crossing the Bering Strait across the ice in winter or by amphibious vehicle in summer was a realistic possibility. I had no idea just how terribly hard life was. Tony Brooks said the “Road of Bones,” which he had used to travel through the Gulag Archipelago, was the most horrible experience he had ever had. Stalin had sent thousands of slaves by ship to build that road. Some mutinied. Hoses were turned on them and they froze solid—hence the bones.

  After listening to the horror stories of the past and hearing about the dire situation of the present, I knew that I needed to reevaluate not only my own planned trip but also the issue of the viability of crossing the strait, under any conditions and at any time.

  Scientists continue to claim that America was populated by waves of people crossing the Bering Strait from Siberia. Was crossing the Bering strait really possible? For a start there was no food, save for what a traveler could catch. Today’s Inuit or Eskimo people cannot catch enough walruses to feed a population of one thousand. They need motorboats to hunt and catch them. Today, never mind in 10,000 B.C., before the Bering Strait was flooded, it is a thousand-mile trek across Siberia to reach the strait—without fruit or berries or trees for wood to make water from ice. Today there is a three-thousand-mile gap between the Russian and American hard road systems, and that is across an endless expanse of boggy tundra, forest, and rivers. It is virtually impossible to trek through the wilderness of Chukotka in the summer due to these endless bogs, rivers, and lakes. The only realistic time to pass through this region is during frigid winter months when all water becomes solid. How do you melt the ice for drinking water without wood to make a fire?

  Next followed an obvious question: Why should people head north to ever colder regions, which they would have to do to reach the Bering Strait? Why not travel by sea with the current to America, where life is warmer and easier? And where there are kelp and animals for food? How could they know what to expect when they reached the Bering Strait on foot? Where did they expect to find food when heading north?

  The more I thought about the Bering Strait theory of populating the Americas, the more ridiculous it became. If one cannot manage the journey today, when backed by a mighty Russian military machine, how could people have done it with nothing but their hind legs—having to walk in appalling conditions, without food, for months on end?

  I concluded only armchair academics could believe in the Bering Strait theory of migration. In my view it never happened—another fairy story to boost the myth that transatlantic journeys were impossible before Columbus.

  Sadly, but wisely I am sure, I abandoned my plan to cross Europe and Asia into Alaska on the amphibious vehicle. I decided to attend Samatha’s wedding by conventional transport.

  After the wedding, instead, I switched focus to a matter related thematically to theories about the land bridge. The spotlight now was a thousand miles away, on an equally vexing theory: the history of the Silk Road, the trade route from China to the West.

  This had been another object of my interest and study at least since the 1970s. The link was my interest in the successes and fortunes of Chinese trade and world political power.

  The Silk Road was also related to my study of Chinese explorations. Just as the Chinese used their maps and their seamanship to discover America, their maritime skills were also required on the trade routes westward from China to Asia Minor and then to Europe. The Silk Road’s land route was supplemented by ships on the high seas.

  CHAPTER 2

  Along the Silk Road

  It is certain that the Silk Road, which was really not a single road, but a series of trade routes across Eurasia, had an impact even more than two millennia ago in China’s
expansion to the West. But it was the very nature of the Silk Road that made it susceptible to changing patterns of migration, rivalries, and political influence.

  Just how viable was the land route known as the Silk Road? No doubt parts of the network were vibrant crossroads for mercantile affairs and cultural and political transit. But as we were able to observe, parts of the route were impenetrable, even now. It is now clear to me that ancient sea routes provided by the Chinese were crucial in the success of what we know as the Silk Road.

  As I wrote in my first book, 1421, it was in December of that year that the Ottoman Empire blocked the land routes of the Silk Road from China through central Asia and on to the Middle East. What’s more, the Ottomans controlled the Bosphorus Strait at Constantinople. Separately, the ancient canal that joined the Red Sea and the Nile had fallen into disuse.1

  With the empire’s hegemony and the loss of the maritime alternatives, traders needed to find an additional route—an ocean route—from East to West. This was precisely the moment that Zheng He had set off on his two-and-a-half-year voyage across the globe, thereby changing world history.

  My goal, after scotching our journey to the Bering Sea, was to look at this other prominent land-sea conundrum and to evaluate competing theories. Asia Minor was the place to go. We set off for the Silk Road in 2001, exploring the eastern and central portions from Beijing through central Asia, and ending in Samarkand. Traveling this with a team of twelve friends—I like to call them the “Cantravelers”—we planned the trip mostly by public transport, notably by the extremely powerful and efficient Chinese diesel-electric trains.

  It was not my first foray along this route. Marcella and I first took our little girls (as they then were) with us across the western part of the Silk Road in 1978. We traveled through Iran and Turkey from Shiraz to Isfahan, then past Lake Van and across Anatolia to Istanbul. It was a lovely summer and we stayed in some magical caravanserais, soaking up Persian and Turkish culture.

  This second journey was equally striking, and always exotic. A typical day would start at a railway station where the train had deposited us at dawn. Awaiting us would be a prearranged minibus driver and guide for the day. We would explore the sites, usually long-lost cities, during the morning, have a packed lunch, then continue sightseeing in the afternoon, traveling ever westward. At dusk the driver would deposit us at the railway station for the next night’s travel—again westward for some six hundred miles while we slept. Before dinner we would gather in the cabin of the “duty Cantraveler,” who would have arranged beer, wine, and Chinese champagne.

  Each night one of us gave a talk on an aspect of Silk Road travel—popular subjects including Islam, Buddhism, Chinese and Tibetan monasteries, the Taklimakan Desert, and export of Chinese blue and white ceramics. It was a highly efficient, economical, and educational way of traveling. The trains were clean, the food reasonable, though I disliked noodles at breakfast. Our journey was westward from Beijing to twelve cities: Xian, Lanzhou, Xiahe, Jiayuguan, Dunhuang, Turpan, Ürümqi, Kashgar, Naryn, Bishkek, Tashkent, and Samarkand, whence Marcella and I flew home.

  One fascination was awakening at dawn each morning to see a completely different landscape from the night before. For example, we boarded a train at Xian and traveled overnight through the lush Yellow River valley, with farmers in their big hats weeding rice fields, and arrived at dawn at Lanzhou, a dusty plain where the wind blew sand into our ears.

  Another surprise was how the Silk Road invariably lay in the foothills of mountains that were still snowcapped in May. By June, rivers are full of snowmelt. By choosing the date of the journey, travelers could find water within a day’s camel ride all the way from the South China Sea to Samarkand.

  The guidebooks all allude to the Silk Road being almost impossibly tough, across the worst territory in the world; in the deserts goblins would appear among sandstorms to kill and eat travelers. In fact the route lies between the Gobi and Taklimakan deserts—skirting the latter to the north, where one finds pleasant markets full of fruits.

  Our goal was to experience a modern version of what must have been a dangerous, arduous ancient journey. We wanted to assess the quality of that crossing, to witness the diversity of culture, the imposing geography, to see archaeological sites and meet the descendants of those who populated the Silk Road. Here are some highlights along the route:

  XIAN

  First was Xian, more than 650 miles southwest of Beijing. Xian was the capital of the Tang dynasty and claimed to be the greatest city in the world. Today it retains its magnificent rectangular walls, which allow twenty horsemen to ride abreast. There are mementos of Xian’s two-thousand-year history in mosques, Buddhist temples, bell and drum towers, the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, who was the first emperor of unified China (who built the famous terra-cotta warrior statues in the second century B.C.), and a host of tombs stuffed with priceless works of art all over the plains surrounding Xian.

  The incredible wealth of China during the Tang dynasty can be seen in the superb Provincial Museum—the finest collection of Tang dynasty (618–907) art in the world—a sumptuous display. We had three days in Xian but would happily have spent three weeks there.

  Site plan showing the First Emperor’s Mausoleum, showing location of the Emperor’s tomb, Terracotta Army, and other elements of the complex.

  XIAHE

  We reached Xiahe, several hundred miles to the southwest, after a long, tiring minibus journey from the railway station toward Tibet. The town is set in a scenic mountain valley on the edge of Tibet, at an altitude of about seven thousand feet—high enough to give one a severe headache. The Labrang Lamasery, where we stayed, is one of the most important Yellow Hat Sect monasteries in China. Today just one thousand lamas serve there, compared to four times that in the past. My recollections are of their brilliant vermilion clothes and the stench of yak butter and yak fat candles. On the way back to the rail line we visited the famous Bingling Temple, which includes 183 grottos and an eighty-foot-high statue of Maitreya, the future Buddha.

  JIAYUGUAN

  It came as a considerable surprise, perhaps a shock, to learn Jiayuguan is where the Great Wall ends. Emperor Zhu Di’s father, Hong Wu, built this section in 1372. It has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. We spent the afternoon walking along the wall, viewing the dusty desert surroundings.

  Before we started this journey I had thought the Great Wall would protect merchants from Mongol attack the whole way from China to the West. I now realized that this was a misconception—the wall stretches only halfway across China, to Jiayuguan.

  For thousands of miles, from here to Kashgar, merchants were defenseless against Mongol attack. The same was the case on the stretch from Kashgar across the steppes to Samarkand. How was travel along the Silk Road possible without protection? Indeed, that would be a powerful argument for having an alternative, more secure means of journeying from China westward.

  DUNHUANG

  Dunhuang boasts perhaps the world’s finest Buddhist cave art. Some 492 grottos contain 2,000 sketches and 45,000 paintings—a most romantic city. In the evening we took camels to view the famous lake, surrounded by the “singing sands,” an oasis of green trees. I experimented with camels to learn how much weight they could carry through the soft sand at Dunhuang.

  TURPAN

  The day started earlier than usual. The train pulled into the station at Turpan before dawn. We washed and shaved in the station restrooms, still half asleep. Our morning tour was through the qanats, underground tunnels that channel mountain water to irrigate the famous melons and grapes. In the afternoon we visited the ancient Bronze Age city of Gaochang. Dinner was washed down with Turpan white wine. The few museum artifacts were badly presented—a pity, as the collections included dinosaur skeletons. There was no evidence of Silk Road trade, none of the famous Chinese blue and white I had hoped to see. We boarded the train that evening surrounded by merchants selling every sort of grape—raisins and sultanas
, as well as currants, white figs, and salted plums. Our overall impression was of dust and dust-colored buildings surrounded by grape-drying rooms.

  KASHGAR

  The trip from Turpan to Kashgar, 864 miles toward Kyrgyzstan to the southwest, takes most of a day. We arrived on Marcella’s birthday, the day of the Sunday market, perhaps the most famous horse market in the world. William Dalrymple’s In Xanadu describes it as “a fair and a carnival, a masque and a festival.” Kashgar lies on the edge of the desert, with the Pamirs to the north and the foothills of the Hindu Kush to the south. The Sunday market attracts thousands of Uyghurs to Kashgar to exchange cereals, vegetables, camels, sheep, and cattle. The minority peoples appear in their colorful traditional dresses. Around the edge of the market, women dunk silkworms into warm water to make silk thread. Ladies in scarlet and crimson mingle between swaths of clothes. Aisle after aisle of colored cloth and spices dazzle your senses and the market is filled with a cacophony of voices, creating an almost magical world.

  Outside the market, animals weave between oxcarts pushing their way through tinsmiths, rope makers, butchers, brush makers, cobblers, tinkers, and furriers with furs from the local mountains. Kazakhs and Kirghiz, Uyghurs and Uzbeks barter, gossip, and grumble. Horses are put through their paces before being sold. The noise is deafening. Waiting animals are drowned out by loudspeakers. Men in beards with tanned, brown, and leathery faces share stories and jokes. The air is heavy with the smell of warm animals, manure, and roast mutton.

  There were neither Chinese nor Europeans there; only us and the peoples of the area. The goods, the food, and animals were all local. We had not seen an international market since Xian.

  THE STEPPES