国际地图学双年会发表论文《中国在西元1430年前测绘美洲》

摘要及演讲时间地点

4611.2 - Chinese Mapped America Before 1430

Tuesday, July 4

3:10 PM - 3:30 PM

Location: Hoover

Presenting Author(s)

Siu-Leung Lee, PhD

President, Zheng He Society of the Americas

Qualitative and quantitative comparison of Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (the 1602 Chinese world map) and contemporaneous world maps by Mercator (1569), Ortelius (1570) , Mercator’s Arctic map (1595), and Plancius (1594) in particular, reveals that the Chinese map is not an adapted copy from European maps. The Chinese world map includes geography of a pre-Renaissance Europe and American geography unknown to Europeans until more than 200 years after Ricci’s death. On this Chinese map, approximately 50% of the place names, including those of America, have no equivalents on European maps. Chinese names descriptive of the geographic feature of Mount Ranier, the fjords of Alaska, Mount Denali and the unique tidal bore of Turnagain Arm near Anchorage are all accurate by latitudes. Contrarily, the geography of North and South America on the Plancius map is ambiguous and erroneous. The geography and text of the Chinese world map are consistent with a completion date not in 1602 but 1430, some sixty years  before Christopher Columbus’ first voyage. Geographical analysis of Martino Martini’s Novus Atlas Sinensis (1655) reveals that Ming Chinese was capable of determining longitude/latitude on land and ocean, as well as spherical projection. Thus, information about American geography was transferred from China to Europe, not the reverse.The Chinese world map Kunyu Wanguo Quantu is the result of Chinese circumnavigation and pioneering the Age of Exploration prior to Christopher Columbus.

会议日程见该会网站：

https://www.eventscribe.com/2017/ICC/agenda.asp?h=Full%20Schedule&BCFO=P|G  

论文中文版将刊载《测绘科学》2017年7月号。敬请关注。

李兆良

2017.6.24