Gavin Menzies

Gavin Menzies
BornRowan Gavin Paton Menzies
(1937-08-14)14 August 1937
London
Died12 April 2020(2020-04-12) (aged 82)
OccupationAuthor, retired naval officer
NationalityEnglish
GenrePseudohistory
Notable works
  • 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)
  • Who Discovered America?: The Untold Story of the Peopling of the Americas (2013)
SpouseMarcella Menzies

Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies (14 August 1937 – 12 April 2020)[1][2][3] was a British submarine lieutenant-commander who authored books claiming that the Chinese sailed to America before Columbus. Historians have rejected Menzies' theories and assertions[4][5][6][7][8]: 367–372  and have categorised his work as pseudohistory.[9][10][11]

He was 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, in the form of the Minoan civilization, and that it maintained a global seaborne empire extending to the shores of America and India, millennia before actual contact in the Age of Discovery.

  1. ^ "Contemporary Authors: Gavin Menzies". Highbeam Research. 2006. Archived from the original on 5 November 2012. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
  2. ^ "Lt Cdr Gavin Menzies, submariner turned author of far-fetched oceanic histories – obituary". The Daily Telegraph. 14 May 2020.
  3. ^ "Gavin Menzies: August 14th 1937– April 12th, 2020". 18 April 2020. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  4. ^ "The 1421 myth exposed". 1421exposed.com. Archived from the original on 28 March 2007. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  5. ^ Zheng He in the Americas and Other Unlikely Tales of Exploration and Discovery, archived from the original on 17 March 2007, retrieved 22 March 2007
  6. ^ Gordon, Peter (30 January 2003). "1421: The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin Menzies". Asian Review of Books. Archived from the original on 5 July 2003. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  7. ^ Finlay 2004
  8. ^ Goodman, David S. G. (2006). "Mao and The Da Vinci Code: Conspiracy, Narrative and History". The Pacific Review. 19 (3): 359–384. doi:10.1080/09512740600875135. S2CID 144521610.
  9. ^ Fritze, Ronald H. (2011). Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religions (Reprint ed.). Reaktion Books. pp. 12, 19. ISBN 978-1861898173.
  10. ^ Melleuish, Greg; Sheiko, Konstantin; Brown, Stephen (1 November 2009). "Pseudo History/Weird History: Nationalism and the Internet". History Compass. 7 (6): 1484–1495. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00649.x.
  11. ^ Henige, David (July 2008). "The Alchemy of Turning Fiction into Truth" (PDF). Journal of Scholarly Publishing. 39 (4): 354–372. doi:10.3138/jsp.39.4.354. Retrieved 10 October 2013.