SC - Chocolate

[Oughton, Karin (GEIS, Tirlan)]

Jin Liu Ch'ang here,

Adamantius wrote:
> One account includes the claim that Chinese >explorers discovered an extremely large land mass >across the Western Ocean, after having passed some >smaller islands...
There is an account from about 200BC of a priest crossing the Ocean to what is now America, exploring almost to the Rio Grande but it was a short trip and he returned leaving no settlers.

>Yes, the Chinese discovered Madagascar. 
This was during the Ming dynasty, perhaps 100-150 years before the Portuguese made it there.  In fact the locals initially mistook the Portuguese for the Chinese except the Chinese ships were very much larger.  The exploratory missions brought back many treasures including giraffes which were mistaken for Chinese unicorns (a good sign) and opened up trade.  But the missions were led by a eunuch which upset the bureaucrats (to whom the eunuchs presented a perceived threat), and so the missions were ended within about 20 years and Chinese were forbidden to leave the country.  There are some legends about earlier trips to the east but there were no return trips and no mention of any new crops introduced.  Judging from the lack of mention in the huge amount of written material from the period, no new crops resulted.  All accounts point to introduction of potatoes, corn, etc. by the Portuguese at the very end of period.  As for the reports of cocaine and tobacco in mummies, it should be remembered that both were commonly used (especially tobacco) as insecticides until maybe 50 years ago and the mummies were probably contaminated in that manner or by researchers smoking while they worked (very common until 10 years ago).   

Jin Liu Ch'ang
mundanely a PhD in agriculture
m.k.a. Norman White
gn-white at tamu.edu
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