Tibetan

[William J Poser]

The hypothesis that a "Treasure Fleet" reached North America prior to
Columbus is based on the explorations of Admiral Zheng He and is
most recently defended in the book "1421" by Gavin Menzies.
The book has not been favorably received by scholars. My
own (quite negative) comments on the book are at:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000409.html
and: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003169.html.

Some people have taken the earlier Chinese accounts of voyages to Peng Lai
as describing travel to the Americas, but these accounts are vague and
almost certainly in large part mythological and insofar as they do
describe real places, there is no particular reason to think that
they are in the Americas. (If you have read the Japanese Taketori
Monogatari "The Tale of the Bamboo Gatherer", which exists in
English children's versions, the magical place called Horai in
Japanese is based on the Chinese legends of Peng Lai.)

There is, on the other hand, good evidence that material from
Chinese and Japanese wrecks reached the Pacific Coast. It is
conceivable that people may have survived and also reached
the Pacific Coast alive, but if so, there is no record of it,
and no reason to believe that they ever made it home again.