{{infobox eruption | name

Minoan eruption | photo File:Santorini Landsat.jpg | photo-size | caption Satellite image of Thera, November 21, 2000 | date 2nd millennium BCE | volcano Thera | type Plinian | location Santorini, Greece | coordinates | VEI 6 or 7 | location-map | map-size | map-caption | impact Devastated the Minoan settlements of Akrotiri and the island of Thera as well as communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and on the coast of Crete. }}

The Minoan eruption of Thera, also referred to as the Thera eruption or Santorini eruption, was a major catastrophic volcanic eruption with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 6 or 7 and a Dense-rock equivalent (DRE) of , which is estimated to have occurred in the mid second millennium BCE. The eruption was one of the largest volcanic events on Earth in recorded history. The eruption devastated the island of Thera (also called Santorini), including the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri, as well as communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and on the coast of Crete.

There are no clear ancient records of the eruption; the eruption seems to have inspired certain Greek myths, may have caused turmoil in Egypt, and may be alluded to in a Chinese chronicle. Additionally, it has been speculated that the Minoan eruption and the destruction of the city at Akrotiri provided the basis for or otherwise inspired Plato's story of Atlantis.

Eruption[link]

Background[link]

Geological evidence shows the Thera volcano erupted numerous times over several hundred thousand years before the Minoan eruption. In a repeating process, the volcano would violently erupt, then eventually collapse into a roughly circular seawater-filled caldera, with numerous small islands forming the circle. The caldera would slowly refill with magma, building a new volcano, which erupted and then collapsed in an ongoing cyclical process.

Immediately prior to the Minoan eruption, the walls of the caldera formed a nearly continuous ring of islands with the only entrance lying between Thera and the tiny island of Aspronisi. This cataclysmic eruption was centered on a small island just north of the existing island of Nea Kameni in the centre of the then-existing caldera. The northern part of the caldera was refilled by the volcanic ash and lava, then collapsed again.

Magnitude[link]

Recent research, by a team of international scientists in 2006, revealed that the Santorini event was much larger than the original estimate of of Dense-Rock Equivalent (DRE), or total volume of material erupted from the volcano, that was published in 1991. With an estimated DRE in excess of , the volume of ejecta was approximately , placing the Volcanic Explosivity Index of the Thera eruption at 6 or 7. This was up to four times what was thrown into the stratosphere by Krakatoa in 1883, a well-recorded event. The Thera volcanic events and subsequent ashfall probably sterilized the island, as occurred on Krakatoa. Only the Mount Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815, Lake Taupo's Hatepe eruption around 180 CE, and perhaps the Baekdu Mountain eruption around 970 CE released more material into the atmosphere during historic times.

Sequence[link]

On Santorini, there is a thick layer of white tephra that overlies the soil clearly delineating the ground level prior to the eruption. This layer has three distinct bands that indicate the different phases of the eruption. Studies have identified four major eruption phases, and one minor precursory tephra fall. The thinness of the first ash layer, along with the lack of noticeable erosion of that layer by winter rains before the next layer was deposited, indicate that the volcano gave the local population a few months' warning. Since no human remains have been found at the Akrotiri site, this preliminary volcanic activity probably caused the island's population to flee. It is also suggested that several months before the eruption, Santorini experienced one or more earthquakes, which damaged the local settlements.

Intense magmatic activity of the first major phase (B0₁/Minoan A) of the eruption deposited up to of pumice and ash, with a minor lithic component, southeast and east. Archaeological evidence indicated burial of man-made structures with limited damage. The second (B0₂/Minoan B) and third (B0₃/Minoan C) eruption phases involved pyroclastic flow activity and the possible generation of tsunamis. Man-made structures not buried during Minoan A were completely destroyed. The third phase was also characterized by the initiation of caldera collapse. The fourth, and last, major phase (B0₄/Minoan D) was marked by varied activity: lithic-rich base surge deposits, lahars, debris flows, and co-ignimbrite ash-fall deposits. This phase was characterized by the completion of caldera collapse, which produced tsunami.

Geomorphology[link]

Although the fracturing process is not yet known, the altitudinal statistical analysis indicates that the caldera had formed just before the eruption. During this period the area of the island was smaller and the southern and eastern coastlines appeared regressed. During the eruption period the landscape was covered by the pumice sediments. In some places, the coastline vanished under thick tuff depositions, and in others recent coastlines were extended towards the sea. After the eruption, the geomorphology of the island was characterized by an intense erosional phase, during which the pumice was progressively removed from the higher altitudes towards the lower ones.

Volcanology[link]

This Plinian eruption resulted in an estimated high ash plume which extended into the stratosphere. In addition, the magma underlying the volcano came into contact with the shallow marine embayment, resulting in a violent steam eruption.

The eruption also generated a high tsunami that devastated the north coast of Crete, away. The tsunami had an impact on coastal towns such as Amnisos, where building walls were knocked out of alignment. On the island of Anafi, to the east, ash layers deep have been found, as well as pumice layers on slopes above sea level.

Elsewhere in the Mediterranean there are pumice deposits which could have been caused by the Thera eruption. Ash layers in cores drilled from the seabed and from lakes in Turkey, however, show that the heaviest ashfall was towards the east and northeast of Santorini. The ash found on Crete is now known to have been from a precursory phase of the eruption, some weeks or months before the main eruptive phases, and would have had little impact on the island. Santorini ash deposits were at one time claimed to have been found in the Nile delta, but this is now known to be a misidentification.

Eruption dating[link]

The radiocarbon dates have significant implications for the accepted chronology of Eastern Mediterranean cultures. The Minoan eruption is a key marker for the Bronze Age archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean world. It provides a fixed point for aligning the entire chronology of the second millennium BCE in the Aegean, because evidence of the eruption is found throughout the region. Despite this evidence, the exact date of the eruption has been difficult to determine. For most of the twentieth century, archaeologists placed it at approximately 1500 BCE, but this date appeared to be too young as radiocarbon dating analysis of an olive tree buried beneath a lava flow from the volcano indicate that the eruption occurred between 1627 BCE and 1600 BCE with a 95% degree of probability.

Relative chronology[link]

Archaeologists developed the Late Bronze Age chronologies of eastern Mediterranean cultures by analyzing the origin of artifacts (for example, items from Crete, mainland Greece, Cyprus or Canaan) found in each archaeological layer. If an artifact's origin can be accurately dated, then it gives a reference date for the layer in which it is found. If the Thera eruption could be associated with a given layer of Cretan (or other) culture, chronologists could use the date of that layer to date the eruption itself. Since Thera's culture at the time of destruction was similar to the Late Minoan IA (LMIA) culture on Crete, LMIA is the baseline to establish chronology elsewhere. The eruption also aligns with Late Cycladic I (LCI) and Late Helladic I (LHI) cultures, but predates Peloponnesian LHI. Archeological digs on Akrotiri have also yielded fragments of nine Syro-Palestinian Middle Bronze II (MBII) gypsum vessels.

The Aegean prehistorians felt so confident about their calculations that they rejected early radiocarbon dates in the 1970s for LMI/LCI Thera, because radiocarbon suggested a date about a century earlier than the "traditional" dates.

At Tell el Dab'a in Egypt pumice found at this location which has been dated to 1540 BCE closer to the traditionally accepted date of Thera's eruption, has been found that matches the composition of the Thera eruption. This pumice has been contentious since the 1990s as it represents the most prominent supported date that differs from the old chronology. However, Felix Hoeflmayer argued that the current gap between scientific analysis of the dating of the eruption and the archaeological evidence in the mid-second millennium BCE has been reduced. The radiocarbon data from the olive branch allows an eruption date as late as 1600 BCE, whereas for the New Kingdom a start of the reign of Ahmose of as early as 1570 BCE could be possible. Also, a longer reign of Thutmose IV could further reduce the gap between radiocarbon and archaeology in the mid-second millennium BCE.

Ice cores[link]

At one time, data from Greenland ice cores seemed to support the radiocarbon dates. A large eruption identified in ice cores and dated to 1644 ± 20 BCE was suspected to be Santorini. However, volcanic ash retrieved from an ice core demonstrated that this was not from Santorini, leading to the conclusion that the eruption may have occurred on another date. The late Holocene eruption of the Mount Aniakchak, a volcano in Alaska, is proposed as the most likely source of the minute shards of volcanic glass in the Greenland ice core.

Tree rings[link]

Another method used to establish the date of eruption is tree-ring dating. Tree-ring data has shown that a large event interfering with normal tree growth in North America occurred during 1629–1628 BCE. Evidence of a climatic event around 1628 BCE has been found in studies of growth depression of European oaks in Ireland and of Scotch pines in Sweden. Bristlecone pine frost rings also indicate a date of 1627 BCE, supporting the late 1600s BCE dating. Procedural changes in how ice cores are interpreted would bring that data more in line with the dendrochronological numbers.

Dissent[link]

Although radiocarbon consistently indicates a 1600 BCE eruption dating, some archeologists still believe that the date is contradicted by findings in Egyptian and Theran excavations. For example, buried Egyptian and Cypriot pottery found on Thera were dated to a later period than the radiometric dates for the eruption, and, since the conventional Egyptian chronology has been established by numerous archaeological studies, the exact date of the eruption remains controversial.

Climatic effects[link]

Hydrogeologist Philip LaMoreaux asserted in 1995 that the eruption caused significant climatic changes in the eastern Mediterranean region, Aegean Sea and much of the Northern Hemisphere, but this was forcefully rebutted by volcanologist David Pyle a year later.

Around the time of the radiocarbon-indicated date of the eruption, there is evidence for a significant climatic event in the Northern Hemisphere. The evidence includes failure of crops in China (see below), as well as evidence from tree rings, cited above: bristlecone pines of California; bog oaks of Ireland, England, and Germany; and other trees in Sweden. The tree rings precisely date the event to 1628 BCE.

Historical impact[link]

Minoan civilization[link]

The eruption devastated the nearby Minoan settlement at Akrotiri on Santorini, which was entombed in a layer of pumice. It is believed that the eruption also severely affected the Minoan population on Crete, although the extent of the impact is debated. Early theories proposed that ashfall from Thera on the eastern half of Crete choked off plant life, causing starvation of the local population. However, after more thorough field examinations, this theory has lost credibility, as it has been determined that no more than of ash fell anywhere on Crete. Other theories have been proposed based on archeological evidence found on Crete indicating that a tsunami, likely associated with the eruption, impacted the coastal areas of Crete and may have severely devastated the Minoan coastal settlements. A more recent theory is that much of the damage done to Minoan sites resulted from a large earthquake that preceded the Thera Eruption.

Significant Minoan remains have been found above the Late Minoan I era Thera ash layer and tsunami level, and it is unclear whether these effects were enough to trigger the downfall of the Minoan civilization. The Mycenaean conquest of the Minoans occurred in Late Minoan II period, not many years after the eruption, and many archaeologists speculate that the eruption induced a crisis in Minoan civilization, which allowed the Mycenaeans to conquer them easily.

Chinese records[link]

A volcanic winter from an eruption in the late 17th century BCE has been claimed by some researchers to correlate with entries in Chinese records documenting the collapse of the Xia dynasty in China. According to the ''Bamboo Annals,'' the collapse of the dynasty and the rise of the Shang dynasty, approximately dated to 1618 BCE, were accompanied by "'yellow fog, a dim sun, then three suns, frost in July, famine, and the withering of all five cereals".

Impact on Egyptian history[link]

There are no surviving Egyptian records of the eruption, and the absence of such records is sometimes attributed to the general disorder in Egypt around the Second Intermediate Period. However, there are connections between the Thera eruption and the calamities of the ''Admonitions of Ipuwer,'' a text from Lower Egypt during the Middle Kingdom or Second Intermediate Period.

Heavy rainstorms which devastated much of Egypt, and were described on the Tempest Stele of Ahmose I, have been attributed to short-term climatic changes caused by the Theran eruption.

While it has been argued that the damage from this storm may have been caused by an earthquake following the Thera Eruption, it has also been suggested that it was caused during a war with the Hyksos, and the storm reference is merely a metaphor for chaos, upon which the Pharaoh was attempting to impose order.

There is a consensus that Egypt, being far away from areas of significant seismic activity, would not be significantly affected by an earthquake in the Aegean. Furthermore, other documents, such as Hatshepsut's Speos Artemidos, depict similar storms, but are clearly speaking figuratively, not literally. Research indicates that this particular stele is just another reference to the Pharaoh's overcoming the powers of chaos and darkness.

Greek traditions[link]

The eruption of Thera and volcanic fallout may have inspired the myths of the Titanomachy in Hesiod's ''Theogony''. The Titanomachy could have picked up elements of western Anatolian folk memory as the tale spread westward. Hesiod's lines have been compared with volcanic activity, citing Zeus's thunderbolts as volcanic lightning, the boiling earth and sea as a breach of the magma chamber, immense flame and heat as evidence of phreatic explosions, among many other descriptions.

Atlantis[link]

There is some archaeological, seismological, and vulcanological evidence that the myth of Atlantis, described by Plato, is based upon the Santorini eruption.

See also[link]

Timetable of major worldwide volcanic eruptions

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Thera Foundation articles on archaeology, chronology, geology, volcanology, etc.

Santorini Decade Volcano — Santorini's geology and volcanic history, the Minoan eruption and the legend of Atlantis.

The Thera (Santorini) Volcanic Eruption and the Absolute Chronology of the Aegean Bronze Age - A WWW companion site to: Sturt W. Manning, ''A Test of Time: the volcano of Thera and the chronology and history of the Aegean and east Mediterranean in the mid second millennium BC''.

VolcanoWorld Information about the eruption with photographs

Thera 2006 Expedition – exploration of the submarine deposits and morphology of Santorini volcano

The eruption of Santorini in the Late Bronze Age – Online doctoral thesis on the eruption, scientific analyses and its environmental effects (by David A. Sewell, 2001)

Category:Ancient Thera Category:Ancient natural disasters Category:Minoan civilization Category:Volcanic events Category:Volcanoes of Greece Category:VEI-6 volcanoes Category:VEI-7 volcanoes

ca:Erupció minoica de:Minoische Eruption el:Μινωική έκρηξη es:Erupción minoica fr:Éruption minoenne hr:Minojska erupcija id:Letusan Minoa it:Eruzione minoica nl:Minoïsche uitbarsting oc:Erupcion minoïca pt:Erupção minoica ru:Минойское извержение sh:Minojska erupcija sv:Den minoiska eruptionen uk:Мінойське виверження zh:米诺斯火山爆发

name	Gavin Menzies
birth name	Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies
nationality	English
occupation	Author, retired naval officer
birth date	August 14, 1937
death date
birth place	London, England
placeofburial coordinates
spouse	Marcella Menzies
genre	Alternate History, Pseudohistory
notableworks	*''1421: The Year China Discovered the World'' (2002) ''1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance'' (2008) ''The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed'' (2011) }}

Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies (born 14 August 1937) is a retired British submarine lieutenant-commander and author. He is best known for his controversial book ''1421: The Year China Discovered the World'', in which he asserts that the fleets of Chinese Admiral Zheng He visited the Americas prior to European explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492, and that the same fleet circumnavigated the globe a century before the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan. Menzies' second book, ''1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance'' extended his discovery hypothesis to the European continent. In his third book, ''The Lost Empire of Atlantis'', Menzies claims that Atlantis did exist and maintained a global seaborne empire extending to the shores of America and India, millennia before actual contact in the Age of Discovery.

Mainstream historians dismiss Menzies' theories and assertions as fictitious.

Biography[link]

Menzies was born in London, England, and his family moved to China when he was three weeks old. He was educated at Orwell Park Secondary School in Ipswich, and Charterhouse School. Menzies joined the Royal Navy in 1953 and served in submarines from 1959 to 1970. Menzies claims he sailed the routes sailed by Ferdinand Magellan and James Cook, while he was commanding officer of the diesel submarine HMS ''Rorqual'' between 1968 and 1970, a contention questioned by some of his critics.

In 1959, by his own account, Menzies was an officer on the ''HMS Newfoundland'', on a voyage from Singapore to Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and on to the Cape Verde Islands and back to England. Menzies claims that the knowledge of the winds, currents, and sea conditions that he gained on this voyage was essential to reconstructing the 1421 Chinese voyage that he discusses in his first book. Critics have challenged the depth of his nautical knowledge. In 1969, Menzies was involved in an incident in the Philippines, when the ''Rorqual'' rammed a U.S. Navy minesweeper, the USS ''Endurance,'' which was moored at a pier. This collision punched a hole in the ''Endurance'' but did not damage the ''Rorqual''. The ensuing enquiry found Menzies and one of his subordinates responsible for a combination of factors that led to the accident, including the absence of the coxswain (who usually takes the helm in port) who had been replaced by a less experienced crew member, and technical issues with the boat's telegraph.

Menzies retired the following year, and stood unsuccessfully as an independent candidate in Wolverhampton South West during the United Kingdom general election 1970, where—standing against Enoch Powell—he called for unrestricted immigration to Great Britain, drawing 0.2% of the vote. In 1990, Menzies began researching Chinese maritime history. He has, however, no academic training and no command of the Chinese language, which his critics have pointed out prevents him from understanding original source material relevant to his thesis. Menzies trained as a barrister, but in 1996 he was declared a vexatious litigant by HM Courts Service which prohibits him from taking legal action in England and Wales without prior judicial permission. Menzies is an honorary professor at Yunnan University in China.

''1421: The Year China Discovered the World''[link]

In 2002, Menzies published his first book: ''1421: The Year China Discovered the World''. The book is written informally, as a series of vignettes of Menzies' travels around the globe examining what he claims is evidence for his "1421 hypothesis", interspersed with speculation and description of the achievements of Admiral Zheng He's fleet. Menzies states in the introduction that the book is an attempt to answer the question:

On some early European world maps, it appears that someone had charted and surveyed lands supposedly unknown to the Europeans. Who could have charted and surveyed these lands before they were 'discovered'?

In the book, Menzies concludes that only China had the time, money, manpower and leadership to send such expeditions and then sets out to prove that the Chinese visited lands unknown in either China or Europe. He claims that from 1421 to 1423, during the Ming Dynasty of China under Emperor Zhu Di (朱棣) the fleets of Admiral Zheng He (鄭和), commanded by the Chinese captains Zhou Wen (周聞), Zhou Man (周滿), Yang Qing (楊慶), and Hong Bao (洪保), discovered Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Antarctica, and the Northeast Passage; circumnavigated Greenland, tried to reach the North and South Poles, and circumnavigated the world before Ferdinand Magellan. The book has been published in many languages and countries around the world and was listed as a New York Times best seller for several weeks in 2003. Although the book contains numerous footnotes, references and acknowledgments, critics point out that it lacks supporting references for Chinese voyages beyond East Africa, the location acknowledged by professional historians as the limit of the fleet's travels. Menzies bases his main theory on original interpretations and extrapolations of academic studies of minority population DNA, archaeological finds and ancient maps.

Menzies claims that knowledge of Zheng He's discoveries was subsequently lost because the Mandarin bureaucrats of the Imperial court feared that the costs of further voyages would ruin the Chinese economy. He conjectures (without supporting evidence) that when Zhu Di died in 1424 and the new Hongxi Emperor forbade further expeditions, the Mandarins hid or destroyed the records of previous exploration to discourage further voyages. Tan Ta Sen, president of the International Zheng He Society, has acknowledged the book's popular appeal as well as its scholarly failings:

The book is very interesting, but you still need more evidence. We don't regard it as an historical book, but as a narrative one. I want to see more proof. But at least Menzies has started something, and people could find more evidence.

Criticism[link]

Within the academic world, the book (and Menzies' "1421 hypothesis") is dismissed by sinologists and professional historians. In 2004, historian Robert Finlay severely criticized Menzies in the ''Journal of World History'' for his "reckless manner of dealing with evidence" that led him to propose hypotheses "without a shred of proof". Finlay wrote:

Unfortunately, this reckless manner of dealing with evidence is typical of ''1421'', vitiating all its extraordinary claims: the voyages it describes never took place, Chinese information never reached Prince Henry and Columbus, and there is no evidence of the Ming fleets in newly discovered lands. The fundamental assumption of the book—that Zhu Di dispatched the Ming fleets because he had a "grand plan", a vision of charting the world and creating a maritime empire spanning the oceans—is simply asserted by Menzies without a shred of proof ... The reasoning of ''1421'' is inexorably circular, its evidence spurious, its research derisory, its borrowings unacknowledged, its citations slipshod, and its assertions preposterous ... Examination of the book's central claims reveals they are uniformly without substance.

A group of scholars and navigators, Su Ming Yang of the United States, Jin Guo-Ping of Portugal, Philip Rivers of Malaysia, Malhão Pereira and Geoff Wade of Singapore questioned Menzies' methods and findings in a joint message:

His book ''1421: The Year China Discovered the World'', is a work of sheer fiction presented as revisionist history. Not a single document or artifact has been found to support his new claims on the supposed Ming naval expeditions beyond Africa...Menzies' numerous claims and the hundreds of pieces of "evidence" he has assembled have been thoroughly and entirely discredited by historians, maritime experts and oceanographers from China, the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.

''1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance''[link]

In 2008 Menzies released a second book entitled ''1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance''. In it Menzies claims that in 1434 Chinese delegations reached Italy and brought books and globes that, to a great extent, launched the Renaissance. He claims that a letter written in 1474 by Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli and found amongst the private papers of Columbus indicates that an earlier Chinese ambassador had direct correspondence with Pope Eugene IV in Rome. Menzies then claims that materials from the Chinese ''Book of Agriculture'', the ''Nong Shu'' (農書), published in 1313 by the Yuan-dynasty scholar-official Wang Zhen (fl. 1290–1333), were copied by European scholars and provided direct inspiration for the illustrations of mechanical devices which are attributed to the Italian Renaissance polymaths Taccola (1382–1453) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).

Criticism[link]

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a professor of history at Tufts University in the United States and at Queen Mary, University of London, examined Menzies' claim that private papers of Columbus indicate a Chinese ambassador in correspondence with the Pope, and labels this claim as "drivel." He states that no reputable scholar supports the view that Toscanelli's letter refers to a Chinese ambassador. Martin Kemp, Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University questions the rigor of Menzies' application of the historical method and, in regard to European illustrations purporting to be copied from the Chinese ''Nong Shu'', asserts that Menzies "says something is a copy just because they look similar. He says two things are almost identical when they are not." Further, Taccola started work on his treatise as early as 1419 and essentially completed it in 1433, one year before the supposed arrival of the Chinese fleet. Geoff Wade, a senior research fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, acknowledges that there was a cross exchange of technological ideas between Europe and China, but ultimately classifies Menzies' book as historical fiction and asserts that there is "absolutely no Chinese evidence" for a maritime venture to Italy in 1434. Heeffer investigated Menzies' claim that Regiomontanus based his solution to the Chinese remainder theorem on the Chinese work Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections from 1247. He arrived at the conclusion that the solution method does not depend on this text but on the earlier The Mathematical Classic of Sun Zi as does the treatment of a similar problem by Fibonacci which predates the Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections. Furthermore, Regiomontanus could rely on practices with remainder tables from the abacus tradition.

''The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed''[link]

In October 2011, Menzies released his third book ''The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed'' which asserts that the legendary Atlantis existed as part of the Minoan Civilization and maintained a sea empire extending from its Mediterranean powerbase as far as the shores of America and India.

References[link]

External links[link]

Gavin Menzies' website promoting 1434

Gavin Menzies' official website about his research on Zheng He

; Criticism

''1421 Exposed'' - Website set up by an international group of academics and researchers

Gavin's Fantasy Land, 1421

A critical view of Menzies' story

Australian Broadcasting Corporation's FOUR CORNERS Program Transcript of "Junk History"

Mark Newbrook: ''Zheng He in the Americas and Other Unlikely Tales of Exploration and Discovery'' - Skeptical Inquirer, Sept 2004 (volume 14-3)

Category:1937 births Category:Old Carthusians Category:Living people Category:People from London Category:Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact Category:Pseudohistorians Category:Royal Navy submarine commanders

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