Tai Peng Wang’s letter to the editor of the Austrialian weekend
Dear Editor of Inquirer
Picture yourself in the beginning of Australia’s history. Where would
you be then? Text book history would place you at the beginning of European
presence in the early 16th century at the earliest. But indeed that is sheer
nonsense at best. Fact is, any suggestion that before European explorers,
Australia’s history was a complete blank and entirely without any Chinese,
Persian, South Indian, Indonesian contacts and influences is an innocent
fraud.
The substantial quantities of broken Chinese ceramics dating from the Han
to early Ming in North Australia bear witness to a long history of China’s
South Sea Trade with Australia. Since Australia was an integral part of
China’s South Sea Trade, the Chinese world traveller Wang Da Yuan of the
Yuan, had set foot in various parts of North Australia such as Bathust
Island and Melville Island and Arnhem land. However, his visit to Australia
was confined to only a few above mentioned places.
By the early 15th century, Zheng He fleets had circumnavigated Australia in her
entirety. They had charted Australia both along the east and west coasts
with written remarks on their sea maps: “There are people living here,” on
both northeast and northwest coasts of Australia. However, the surviving
Zheng He’s sea charts were only too incomplete to tell the whole story as
most had been lost or destroyed. Fortunately, the newly discovered 1418 map
of the Ming tributary states represents the whole of Australia and even the
Antarctic realistically first time ever in history,
In this 1418 map, or more accurately, the original sources of the map makers
says: “The skin of the aborigine is also black, All of them are naked and
wearing bone articles around their waists. All of them had a habit of
cannibalism”. Such a remark reflects the Chinese first encounter with the
Australian aborigines at that time. That is in itself an indisputable proof
that the map is genuine ad Australia’s history began long before any
European arrivals but the Chinese’s or Arabs’ or South Indians’ or
Indonesians’ much earlier, however.
Wang Tai Peng
columnist (Asia-Inc}
22 nd August 2006
Brisbane Australia
View the map – Zheng He’s integrated map of the world, 1418 map
