1418 Chinese world map: a scam, or real? The arguments begin

A prominent Chinese lawyer and collector unveiled an old map on Monday that he and some supporters say should topple one of the central tenets of Western civilization: that Europeans were the first to sail around the world and discover America.

The Chinese map, which was drawn in 1763 but claims to be a reproduction of an ancient map dated 1418, presents the world as a globe with all the major continents rendered with an exactitude that European maps did not have for another century and a half, after Columbus, Da Gama, Magellan, Dias and others had completed their renowned explorations.

I’m something of a map freak, and will be watching this with interest…