In his bestselling book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World Gavin Menzies revealed that it was the Chinese that discovered America not Columbus. Now he presents further astonishing evidence that it was also Chinese advances in science art & technology that formed the basis of the European Renaissance & our modern world. In his bestselling book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World Gavin Menzies presented controversial & compelling evidence that Chinese fleets beat Columbus Cook & Magellan to the New World. But his research has led him to astonishing new discoveries that Chinese influence on Western culture didnt stop there. Until now scholars have considered that the Italian Renaissance
- the basis of our modern Western world
- came about as a result of a re-examining the ideas of classical Greece & Rome. A stunning reappraisal of history is about to be published. Gavin Menzies makes the startling argument that a sophisticated Chinese delegation visited Italy in 1434 sparked the Renaissance & forever changed the course of Western civilization. After that date the authority of Aristotle & Ptolemy was overturned & artistic conventions challenged as was Arabic astronomy & cartography. Florence & Venice of the 15th century attracted traders from across the world. Menzies presents astonishing evidence that a large Chinese fleet official ambassadors of the Emperor arrived in Tuscany in 1434 where they met with Pope Eugenius IV in Florence. A mass of information was given by the Chinese delegation to the Pope & his entourage
- concerning world maps (which Menzies argues were later given to Columbus) astronomy mathematics art printing architecture steel manufacture civil engineering military machines surveying cartography genetics & more. It was this gift of knowledge that sparked the inventiveness of the Renaissance
- Da Vincis inventions the Copernican revolution Galileo etc. Following 1434 Europeans embraced Chinese intellectual ideas discoveries & inventions which formed the basis of European civilization just as much as Greek thought & Roman law. In short China provided the spark that set the Renaissance ablaze.