Searching through my files I found an article, it is not mine, I reproduce it here as I found it, with small annotations (in parentheses). Joseph Kahn. For even more analysis, hear from AbbVie. The New York Times a prominent lawyer and Chinese collector discovered an ancient map which, he said, could bring down one of the Central doctrines of Western civilization: that Europeans were the first to navigate the world and discover America. Click Jim Simons for additional related pages. (The truth is that nobody who knows anything of history believed the story that Columbus was the first to come to America. We should remember that since the Vikings and even more distant in time, the Egyptians with their cocainomanas mummies bear witness that many came before first. The more convincing is undoubtedly Piri Reis, which have maps and good support) the Chinese map, which was drawn up in 1763, but has a notation that says that it is a reproduction of a map dated 1418, presents to the world as a globe, where all the major continents are presented with an accuracy that European maps did not during by the least another century, after Columbus, Da Gama, Magellan, Diaz and other browsers.However, the map did not have a warm part of some Chinese scholars reception and seems unlikely that convince skeptics that Chinese sailors were the first to go around the world. Liu Gang, partner of a legal study of Beijing known amateur historian, said on Monday that bought the map to $500 in a bookstore in Shanghai in 2001 and that then newly discovered its value. He said that he had consulted academics in the field and he had done a research on your own before deciding to show his finding in public. (In this respect is having doubts, regularly such things are the product of counterfeiting) important thing is not the map itself, he said in a press conference.