This article aims to present the thesis of Gavin Menzies when he published his book 1434 that China started the Renaissance with strong arguments. According to Gavin Menzies, the genesis of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution from the 14th to the 18th century in Europe and the discovery of America in 1492 by Europeans occurred thanks to the contribution of the Middle Kingdom, China. Gavin Menzies describes a particularly iniquitous aspect of Eurocentrism of appropriating scientific advances from the East and many of them regarding them as their own achievement, as well as not recognizing that the Chinese discovered America before Columbus. Menzies shows that there was an expropriation of scientific advances from the East by Western Europe and imposed on the rest of the world which is reflected in the widespread and false view among Western intellectuals and historians that one of the key institutions of modern times, such as science, was invented in Europe. In reality, science was an invention of Arab Muslims and Chinese and appropriated by Europeans. This means that the history of humanity needs to be rewritten.

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THE TRUE GENESIS OF THE RENAISSANCE, OF THE SCIENTIFIC
REVOLUTION AND OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to present the thesis of Gavin Menzies when he published his book 1434
that China started the Renaissance with strong arguments. According to Gavin Menzies,
the genesis of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution from the 14th to the 18th
century in Europe and the discovery of America in 1492 by Europeans occurred thanks
to the contribution of the Middle Kingdom, China. Gavin Menzies describes a particularly
iniquitous aspect of Eurocentrism of appropriating scientific advances from the East and
many of them regarding them as their own achievement, as well as not recognizing that
the Chinese discovered America before Columbus. Menzies shows that there was an
expropriation of scientific advances from the East by Western Europe and imposed on
the rest of the world which is reflected in the widespread and false view among Western
intellectuals and historians that one of the key institutions of modern times, such as
science, was invented in Europe. In reality, science was an invention of Arab Muslims
and Chinese and appropriated by Europeans. This means that the history of humanity
needs to be rewritten.
It is known to all that the Renaissance that emerged in Italy in the 14th century and lasted
until the 17th century throughout Europe and the Scientific Revolution that began in the
16th century and lasted until the 18th century were two important moments in the history
of humanity because they meant the birth of a new era diametrically opposed to the
Middle Ages or Dark Ages, which was an era culturally dominated by the Catholic
Church, which cast a shadow over the arts and sciences, preventing them from flourishing
freely. The discovery of America by the Spaniards and Portuguese was driven by the
Commercial Revolution in the Middle Ages, which was a period of great economic
expansion in Europe that lasted from the twelfth to the eighteenth century and by the
construction of new types of vessels and the improvement of cartography and instruments
like the compass.
The Renaissance ushered in the Modern Age. In general, it can be said that the
Renaissance brought about an immense renewal in the most varied fields of knowledge
and produced artists, thinkers and scientists whose works influenced the entire intellectual
production of the following centuries. Renaissance development was not homogeneous
in all regions. It varied from place to place, but its greatest splendor took place in Italy,
especially in the city of Florence, but also in the Flanders region and in Germany. In
general, they were places where commerce gave rise to a wealthy bourgeoisie, which was
willing to finance the artistic and intellectual production of the time. The Renaissance
marked a unique and unparalleled period in the history of science because it is regarded
as a critical moment or turning point in European history with the birth of modern science,
the advent of modernity, the flowering of modern art and architecture, and the beginning
of the capitalism.
With the Renaissance came currents of thought that preached the use of a deeper critical
sense, as well as greater attention to human needs. Science became more accepted, gained
space and removed the mystical influences on thoughts in the Middle Ages. The Scientific
Revolution was one of the most important events of the Modern Age. The Scientific
Revolution made knowledge more structured and more practical. This period marked a
break with the practices of the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, a phase in which the Catholic

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Church dictated knowledge according to religious precepts. Mathematics described
scientific truths and physics explained the phenomena of nature that were once considered
divine phenomena by the Catholic Church, and it was proved that the Earth was not the
center of the Universe and that it moved around the Sun.
The Commercial Revolution started in the 15th century because of the Renaissance, the
Scientific Revolution, the considerable commercial development of the second half of the
Middle Ages and the discovery of the New World. In this period, currency became a
primary factor of wealth because commercial transactions were monetized. Production
and exchange ceased to have a character of mere subsistence and began to serve the
markets of the cities. The Commercial Revolution was the result of the new times
experienced in Europe, as a result of the transition from the medieval to the Modern
period, of overseas expansion and mercantilism, which included a series of economic and
political measures, with which the kings sought to increase absolutism of monarchy and
promote the prosperity of the state. During the Commercial Revolution, the commercial
axis was transferred from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, breaking the monopoly of
Italian cities in trade with the East and initiating mercantilism.
The Commercial Revolution resulted in profound changes in the European economy. The
changes in the European economy were profound and radical, preparing the advent of
modern capitalism. Mercantile companies began to apply accounting techniques and to
adopt new forms of commercialization, such as letters of credit and payment. Gold and
silver mining reached its peak. In turn, the world was beginning to integrate economically.
Trade began to operate globally, involving the known continents of the time. A new
economic concept emerged that received the name of Mercantilism, which was increased
with the emergence of a new social class, the bourgeoisie. Overseas expansion was driven
by the great navigations that paved the way for the globalization process and the change
in economic relations in the world and the advent of metalism that, in the mercantilist
philosophy, determined the country's wealth in proportion to the amount of precious metal
accumulated. The Commercial Revolution allowed the accumulation of capital necessary
to lay the foundations of capitalism and its development, which resulted in the Industrial
Revolution in the 18th century.
Reading the book 1434 by Gavin Menzies, a former British naval officer in the 1960s,
which is subtitled “The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Started the
Renaissance”, shows that both the Renaissance how much the Scientific Revolution and
the discovery of America were effectively accomplished with the Chinese contribution.
Gavin Menzies traveled to various countries when he retired and researched China and
the maritime expeditions undertaken by the Chinese in the past. In this book, in addition
to China's contribution to the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the discovery of
America, one can also verify the scientific plagiarism practiced in Europe by several
scientists who appropriated the knowledge developed by the Chinese.
Gavin Menzies confirms what Jack Goody did in his book The Theft of History, by
describing a particularly iniquitous aspect of Eurocentrism in appropriating scientific
advances from the East and many of them regarding them as their own achievement. The
theft of history, according to Goody, refers to the acquisition or expropriation of history
by the West, especially by Western Europe, and imposed on the rest of the world. The
theft of history or the "theft" by the West of the achievements of other cultures, according
to Goody, is reflected in the widespread and false view among Western intellectuals and
historians that one of the key institutions of modern times, such as science, was invented

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in Europe. Jack Goody and Gavin Menzies demonstrate that science was invented by
Arab Muslims and Chinese and appropriated by Europeans.
Gavin Menzies enriches Jack Goody's contribution by presenting evidence linking the
roots of the European Renaissance to the Chinese expeditions of the 15th century. Based
on years of research, Menzies demonstrates that a Chinese expedition to Italy in 1434
commanded by Admiral Zheng He, in which official ambassadors of the Chinese
Emperor Yongle would be, was responsible for transmitting a vast collection of
knowledge that contributed to triggering the Renaissance in Europe. Among this
collection of knowledge are art, geography (including world maps, which were passed on
to Christopher Columbus and Fernão de Magalhães), astronomy, mathematics, printing,
architecture, steel and military weapons. Menzies maintains that at the beginning of the
15th century, around 1403, the Chinese Emperor Yongle (third of the Ming Dynasty)
gave Zheng He the mission of executing the greatest tour around the globe that had been
done until then.
The purpose of Zheng He's expedition was to go "to the ends of the world to collect tribute
from the barbarians scattered across the sea". There is consensus among historians that
China was more technologically advanced than Europe for centuries. China has always
considered itself the center of the world and non-Chinese peoples were treated by them
as “barbarians”. Zheng He's travels took place at a time when China was opening up, with
the aim of winning allegiance to the “barbarians” by transferring his knowledge to them.
He was to train navigators to go out across the oceans while, in parallel, hundreds of ships
of unprecedented dimensions were built by the empire. It was they who, in the following
years, undertook six trips around the planet, making contact with different peoples and
reaching lands whose existences were unknown. Menzies says in his book 1434 that,
along the other voyages of the same period, admirals led by Zheng He also set foot in
what is now Australia, 350 years before the British expedition led by Captain James Cook
in April 1770.
Menzies says that there is evidence of Chinese maritime discoveries that emerged during
an expedition to the remote island of Elcho, Australia, when a team of archaeologists
from the country found between the years 1735 and 1795 a Qing Dynasty coin pressed.
Mike Owen, head of the excavation work, even said that the object added to the already
strong indications that Chinese had made contact with aborigines in the region before
Cook. In 1512, the Turkish cartographer Piri Reis designed the world map including not
only the Americas, but detailing the Patagonian terrain to the south of the continent. It
was only possible, according to Menzies, by the information obtained decades earlier
from the Chinese and already spread across the territories of Asia. On these voyages, the
ships led by Zheng He would have crossed the Cape of Good Hope before Bartolomeu
Dias, having passed through Cape Verde, Africa, the islands of the Azores, now
Portuguese territory, the Bahamas (Caribbean) and the Malvinas. He would have even
established some colonies where today Australia, New Zealand, California, the island of
Puerto Rico (USA) and Mexico are located, where he would have taken the first horses.
The purpose of Zheng He's expedition was to instruct distant foreign countries to show
deference and submission to China. According to Menzies, to instruct foreign countries,
Admiral Zheng He's expedition carried a Yongle Dadian encyclopedia completed in 1421
composed of 11,095 books and worked on for many years by 3,000 Chinese scholars who
compiled all Chinese learning from the previous 2,000 years covering all the affairs of
the planet. Menzies states that the Yongle Dadian encyclopedia covered subjects such as
geography and cartography, agriculture, civil and military engineering, warfare, health

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and medicine, city construction and planning, steel and steelworks, ceramic firing and
painting, biochemistry, grafting, alcohol production, silk production and weaving,
gunpowder making, shipbuilding and cryptography. There are chapters that give practical
advice on how to use trigonometry, no less than 95 mathematical treatises are mentioned,
and cryptanalysis, which is the use of mathematics to decipher codes.
In the Yongle Dadian encyclopedia there are methods for calculating the area of circles
and volumes of spheres, cones, pyramids, cubes, cylinders and the principle for extracting
square roots. Even Pascal's triangle was included in the Yongle Dadian encyclopedia
centuries before Pascal existed. The Yongle Dadian encyclopedia presents knowledge of
Chinese mathematics, as well as surveying tools to calculate areas of rice fields, the
volume of water needed to flood these crops and, from there, the size and proportion of
its flow to fill the dikes. It also provided methods for constructing channels and
calculating the strength of the necessary floodgates. Yongle Dadian details the
construction of mortars, bazookas, cannons, rocket-propelled missiles, flamethrowers and
all kinds of gunpowder bombs. Menzies claims that this vast encyclopedia was an effort
to bring together in one place, at Zheng He's fleet, the Chinese knowledge gained in all
fields over thousands of years.
According to Menzies, all the Chinese knowledge brought to the attention of rulers and
personalities in Italy would have given rise to the inventiveness that took place during the
Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, including the genius of Da Vinci, Copernicus,
Galileo and many others who had access to Chinese knowledge. To reach his conclusions,
Gavin Menzies carried out research in several libraries around the world, in addition to
obtaining archaeological evidence that led to evidence that the European Renaissance and
the discovery of America were only possible thanks to the expedition carried out to Italy
by the Chinese admiral Zheng He where Chinese knowledge was spread. Among the
knowledge transmitted by the Chinese, Gavin Menzies cites the nautical maps that were
used by Christopher Columbus and other Portuguese explorers on their way to the New
World.
Gavin Menzies verified the scientific plagiarism practiced by several characters such as
Leonardo da Vinci, considered one of the greatest geniuses of humanity, if not the
greatest, who impresses the world to this day with his drawings of fantastic inventions
and fetched machines of almost 500 years ago that he would have plagiarized with his
drawings copied from Chinese originals by other Italians and perfected by him, whose
greatest merit was really that da Vinci was a good illustrator. Comparing Leonardo da
Vinci's drawings with the Chinese manual Nung Shu, Gavin Menzies verifies that each
element of a machine, magnificently designed by him, had previously been illustrated by
the Chinese in this much simpler manual. In short, Gavin Menzies claims that the main
part of Leonardo da Vinci's work rested on a vast foundation of works previously created
by the Chinese.
Gavin Menzies found that the mechanical designs of flour mills and rollers, water mills
and sawmills, forklifts, machines for transporting weights, all kinds of reels and cranes,
mechanized carts, pumps, water lifting devices by Leonardo da Vinci were advances and
improvements of Francesco di Giorgio's Trattado di architetura civile e militare, which
he copied from the Chinese. Leonardo's rules of perspective for painting and sculpture
originated in Alberti's De pictura and De statua which he copied from the Chinese. His
parachute was based on Di Giorgio's. The helicopter was modeled after a Chinese toy
exported to Italy around 1440 and designed by Taccola. Da Vinci's three-dimensional

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illustrations of the components of men and machines are a unique and brilliant
contribution to civilization as are his sublime sculptures and paintings.
Gavin Menzies says it is time to recognize the Chinese contributions to the works of Da
Vinci, Francesco di Giorgio, Alberti and Taccola that, without them, the history of the
Renaissance would have been very different and Leonardo da Vinci would most likely
not have developed all his creativity. Menzies' research led him to the conclusion that
mathematicians Taccola, Francesco di Giorgio and Alberti had copied from the Chinese
on mathematics, surveying, cartographic perspective and cryptography, by the German
mathematician Regiomontano had copied from the Chinese on spherical trigonometry,
and Toscanelli and Nicholas of Cusa on astronomy. Menzies claimed that it seemed that
everything Taccola, Di Giorgio, Regiomontano, Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci had
“invented” was already in Chinese books.
Gavin Menzies notes that the invention of printing is attributed to Gutenberg even though
block or movable printing was invented in China in 1051. The heliocentrism proposed by
Copernicus in opposition to Ptolemy's thesis that the Earth was the center of the Universe
was copied from Regiomontano who, by in turn, he copied from the work Guo Shoujing
contained in the Yongle Dadian encyclopedia. Kepler's laws resulted from the
improvement of Copernican astronomy originated in Regiomontano and Nicholas of Cusa
who got their fundamental ideas from Toscanelli and the Chinese astronomical calendar.
Galileo is credited with discovering Jupiter's moons Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede
in 1610. However, Chinese astronomer Gan De discovered Jupiter's satellites two
thousand years before Galileo. All this confirms the plagiarism of Chinese scientific
knowledge by European scientists who did not credit the Chinese for these scientific
advances.
Despite scientific plagiarism, these facts prove the Chinese contribution to the
Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution in Europe. China's contribution to the
discovery of America resulted from the fact that Zheng He's expedition not only showed
the way to the New World, but also provided Europeans with knowledge that enabled
them to know their latitude and longitude in order to reach it and return in home security.
By showing the way to the New World and providing nautical maps that were used by
Christopher Columbus and other Portuguese explorers on their way to the New World,
the Chinese contributed to the discovery of America.
Almost two decades ago, however, an alternative history of the "discovery of the
Americas" began to be considered, contrary to the historiographical consensus that
attributes the discovery of America to Columbus. It was assumed that fleets headed by
two Chinese admirals, Zhou Man and Hong Bao, had sailed from Africa to the mouth of
the Orinoco River in present-day Venezuela, then descending along the entire coast of the
continent to the Strait of Magellan, south of South America, still in the year 1421,
therefore, 71 years before the voyage of Christopher Columbus. They had been trained
and were led by the great Chinese navigator of that time, the Muslim eunuch Zheng He.
The thesis of the "Chinese discovery of the Americas", whose versions already existed
before, became famous through two best -sellers written by Gavin Menzies in the early
2000s: 1421: o ano em que a China descobriu o mundo (the year China discovered the
world) (Bertrand, 2006) e Who Discovered America? The Untold History of the Peopling
of the Americas.
From the above, it is demonstrated the Chinese contribution to the outbreak of the
Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution from the 14th to the 18th century in Europe,

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to the discovery of America, as well as the scientific plagiarism practiced by renowned
scientists from Europe who appropriated Chinese knowledge and disseminated it like
yours.
REFERENCES
ALCOFORADO, Fernando. A verdade sobre a gênese do Renascimento e da Revolução
Científica na Europa. Available on the website
<https://www.academia.edu/49069286/A_VERDADE_SOBRE_A_GENESE_DO_RE
NASCIMENTO_E_DA_REVOLUCAO_CIENTIFICA_NA_EUROPA>, 29/05/2021.
GOODY, Jack. The Theft of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
MENZIES, Gavin. 1434. Rio de janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2010.
MENZIES, Gavin. 1421. Lisboa: Publicações Dom Quixote, 2004.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 82, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System,
member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional
Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of
strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the
books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem
Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os
condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de
Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora
Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos
na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica,
Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate
ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores
Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no
Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba,
2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV,
Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua
convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o
mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019) and A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência
(Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021) .