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T.W. Paterson column: Was Columbus a latecomer in discovering North America?

For years, the collecting of colourful Japanese glass fishing floats has been a popular pastime
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Japanese glass fishing floats such as these have been washing up on B.C. shores for a long time. (submitted)

For years, the collecting of colourful Japanese glass fishing floats has been a popular pastime — proof of the power of the eastward-flowing Japanese current.

A little knowledge, as they say, can be a dangerous thing.

Particularly in this age of social media and its unfortunate by-product, “alt news.”

But uninformed “facts” and opinions aren’t confined to the digital age; they’ve always been with us. It’s just that, thanks to technology, the sharing of information, accurate and otherwise, is easier to do and anyone with a computer or smartphone is free to reach out to the world to share their knowledge and beliefs.

I was recently reminded that this phenomenon has extended its tentacles to history. More and more, while researching online, I come across websites that aren’t just inaccurate in their content but out of touch with reality. Some of them border on the ridiculous.

Some historical events with which I’m familiar from having done my own research to write about them, bear almost no resemblance to the known, or accepted, facts. One of my favourite examples is the story of a B-25 bomber that supposedly crashed somewhere in B.C. while loaded with Nazi bullion and art treasures.

Think about that for a moment. Then ask yourself why Nazi gold and artworks would have been in transit in B.C. skies. How did they get to Canada? Who was in charge of them? Why were they being transported in a Second World War bomber? Does this imply a military connection? Where was it going? Why haven’t you heard or read about it before?

I don’t wonder that, according to the story, the wreckage of the plane and its contents haven’t been found!

Much of what you can find and learn online is, of course, reasonably accurate; in fact, exceptionally so in, I would guess, most cases. From the comfort of our own home we can scour the world’s libraries and archives and read the works of the finest scientists, scholars and storytellers.

In short, we’re blessed to live in an information age. The trick, of course, is to be able to discern the wheat from the chaff. (Which is why, I’m sure, you’re reading the Chronicles.)

This brings me to my subject for the day, the likelihood that Christopher Columbus was, as they say, a day late and a dollar short in his “discovery” of America. There are so many examples, and I do mean archaeologically and anthropologically confirmed examples, of the North American continent having been visited by previous parties of mixed nationalities, that few historians today doubt this to be fact.

Years ago, I wrote about the discovery of a Japanese Samurai sword in the 1920s. It was at considerable depth when unearthed by a Nanaimo city works crew. How did it get there?

Which opens up the big picture of Asian exploration, intentional or otherwise. There are recorded cases of Chinese and Japanese fishermen, their vessels disabled, having been swept eastward by the Japanese Current, to wash ashore on our exposed west coast, particularly that of Vancouver Island, and on the shores of Washington and Oregon. Renowned early historian Hubert Bancroft noted one such wreck, that of a Japanese junk, off the west coast in 1853.

As late as 1926, a Japanese fishing vessel was found drifting off the U.S. coast, its crew dead from starvation. Without power, without radio, they’d been helpless as their craft was swept ever eastward until, too late, discovered.

Before turning to the web, I glanced at my newspaper clipping file which I began in the ’60s. There aren’t that many clippings but the ones I saved are truly intriguing. Such as an article in the Victoria Colonist in 1967, about the discovery of a “rare carved figure bowl of solid stone” by Audrey Pears while digging in her Sooke garden. Bearing a human likeness it was one of 50 similar bowls known to have been found in B.C., in the Fraser and Thompson valleys, at Bazan Bay, in the Gorge area and at Albert Head. It was thought to be 2,000 years old and not of local First Nations provenance. Are these bowls evidence of an Asian presence?

Also of that period was a cache of Chinese “bronze coins” dug up by prospectors in the Cassiar region in the early 1880s. These could have been lost or, perhaps, discarded by the local Indigenous people. But how did they acquire them?

Again, in this same area, according to our source, the Parksville-Qualicum Beach Progress, a few years later, local natives were seen to be in possession of “several solid-silver Buddhist ceremonial dishes which they had found buried beneath the roots of a large tree.

“The Indians [sic] would not part with the vessels but agreed to trade a large bronze disc, two and a half inches in diameter. This was one of several found in one of the dishes.

“The disc found its way to Judge Eli Harrison, who submitted it to experts in New York, Washington and Philadelphia for study. They identified it as a Buddhist charm, 1,500 years old. This disc is now in the possession of a collector in Oregon.”

To further quote from this article, “…Elders of the west coast Indians speak of a visiting people before the coming of the white man. The visitors are described as ‘eaters of maggots’. Modern historians consider the nuggets may well have been rice…”

For years, the collecting of colourful Japanese glass fishing floats has been a popular pastime — and proof of the power of the eastward-flowing Japanese current.

According to Chinese historians, a band of monks crossed the Pacific in 458 AD. After landing in Alaska they worked their way down the Pacific seaboard to Mexico where they founded the colony of Fusan. Some believe that they never made it as far as Mexico, that they set up shop here on Vancouver Island.

In his 2010 book about the Chinese presence in Mexico, a UCLA assistant profession of Chicano and Chicano studies writes that Chinese first arrived in Mexico in the 1600s, likely as personal servants of seagoing Spanish merchants. He makes no mention of Fusan.

In 1974, eight men built a 68-foot-long replica of a 2,000-year-old Chinese junk with the intention of proving that Chinese seafarers could have landed on the North American continent “as long ago as 1000 B.C., nearly 2,000 years before Columbus”.

Named Tai Ki, their replica was based upon a clay model of a junk found near Canton in the grave of the Han dynasty (200 BC-220 AD). Built of wood held together by 2,000 wooden pegs and bamboo nails, the replica was a perfect copy of junks built 2,000 years ago.

Two years later, it was reported that California scuba divers had found 20 large boulders drilled with donut holes on the sea bottom off the Palos Verdes Peninsula and thought to be ships’ anchors of Asian origin. Weighing up to 700 pounds each, they were located in water just 30 feet deep. “There is a good chance they may be ancient Chinese or Japanese anchors from a ship or ships that visited the southern California coast, centuries ago,” said William Clewlow, chief archaeologicala at UCLA’s Institute of Archaeology. “They are shaped like ancient Asian anchors. Stylized, they appear to be 500 to 1,000 years old.”

“We cannot be certain what the rocks are but “the holes in them are obviously man-made.”

I’ve barely touched on this fascinating subject; haven’t, in fact, finished drawing from my own clipping file let alone what has been recorded in historical and scientific research books and papers, and online. But it’ll do for today.

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