Mongols in North America

During heavy storms, it is actually advisable to stay away from the coast to prevent the destruction of the ship. Not only would a landing during such a storm cost the complete fleet, but also an enormous part of the men and material - and those that would survive are trapped without the chance to return. Riding out such storm is the most reasonable decision, and a disembarkment would then take place after the storm calmed down.

Been out to sea a lot? We're talking twelfth century Asian ships that simply are not equipped to survive a storm. Faced with the choice between a ship falling apart at sea, and driving for any piece of land, they'll go with land.


Usually, Mongolian riders usually brought three or four horses to the campaigns, most of them mares who could give milk. These mares as well as camels in the supply train were utilised as both water carriers and potential food sources. Supplying these animals was essential for the Mongolian war effort, and thus an absolute necessity.

See Thomas Conlan's In Little Need of Divine Intervention and also this little piece for further information.

As I thought, you have no source for the provisioning of the fleet.

I'm sorry. But your problems get worse rather than better.

One of the key mongol advantages was that their horses lived off the land. They could be pastured anywhere where there was sufficient grass. They weren't carrying gigantic baggage trains of horse fodder everywhere they went. Their secret was mobility and travelling fast and light.

The invasion of Japan was going to be an invasion of a temperate climate with grasslands and hayfields to sustain the horses. There's no reason to pack excessive hay.

Let's say a horse eats about 15 lbs per day of hay or forage. Assume each Mongol rider brings four horses. 60 pounds a day. Assuming the drift over takes 60 days. That's 3600 pounds of hay that your horses need to survive the trip.

Now, if we assume a storm savage enough to actually blow the fleet anywhere into the pacific, you can assume spoilage of hay, say 50% as a generous estimate. Puts you at 7600 pounds of hay for each Mongol warrior.

No way around it, the horses are going to die. And they're going to die faster rather than slower, and they'll die long before they get anywhere near North America.

The Mongols best bet is to slaughter for meat, that will keep them going somewhat.

But then there's the water problem. There isn't any. So they're all going to die of dehydration, and sooner rather than earlier.


That is your opinion, but I already explained why it indeed is theoretically possible without any ASB events.

Not persuasive on deeper examination.
 
filler


That is your opinion, but I already explained why it indeed is theoretically possible without any ASB events.

You do know that the invasion forces were primarily Chinese and Korean and that even the Mongols were primarily non-cavalry?
You may handwave all the geographical, meteorlogical, oceanographic, and nautical concerns and facts presented by several posters here, but trying to force a fun but thoroughly implausible scenario over the objections is not, in my opinion, good alternative history.

It's funny that people have tried to do the same thing getting Romans over the Atlantic. In the face of tons of evidence and data that showed both the immense difficulties but trying to build the most plausible model to get them there. It didn't involve hurricanes... Some tropes die hard.;)
 
Been out to sea a lot? We're talking twelfth century Asian ships that simply are not equipped to survive a storm. Faced with the choice between a ship falling apart at sea, and driving for any piece of land, they'll go with land.




As I thought, you have no source for the provisioning of the fleet.

I'm sorry. But your problems get worse rather than better.

One of the key mongol advantages was that their horses lived off the land. They could be pastured anywhere where there was sufficient grass. They weren't carrying gigantic baggage trains of horse fodder everywhere they went. Their secret was mobility and travelling fast and light.

The invasion of Japan was going to be an invasion of a temperate climate with grasslands and hayfields to sustain the horses. There's no reason to pack excessive hay.

Let's say a horse eats about 15 lbs per day of hay or forage. Assume each Mongol rider brings four horses. 60 pounds a day. Assuming the drift over takes 60 days. That's 3600 pounds of hay that your horses need to survive the trip.

Now, if we assume a storm savage enough to actually blow the fleet anywhere into the pacific, you can assume spoilage of hay, say 50% as a generous estimate. Puts you at 7600 pounds of hay for each Mongol warrior.

No way around it, the horses are going to die. And they're going to die faster rather than slower, and they'll die long before they get anywhere near North America.

The Mongols best bet is to slaughter for meat, that will keep them going somewhat.

But then there's the water problem. There isn't any. So they're all going to die of dehydration, and sooner rather than earlier.




Not persuasive on deeper examination.

The Japan invasions were relatively close affairs, but the fleets for the second invasion set sail from widely separated ports, One in Korea and one in China. (if I remember correctly)

The China fleet took much longer than was planned and the Korean fleet engaged the Japanese first. The fleets would have carried a reasonable amount of supplies for the cavalry, but in this case, probably not enough for a long voyage, intentional or not. Additionally, the ships were a hodgepodge of poorly built new vessels, poorly refurbished older ships and badly modified river craft. in other words, they were pretty unsuitable for oceanic sailing

Do we have any information on the make up of the invasion force itself? How many Mongol horsemen? how many infantry? I have not been able to find this information.

And, not to contradict D'Valdron, for whom I have immense respect, but I have been fighting the battle of Chinese maritime skills for lo these many years, and the Chinese were capable at this time of building vessels that could cross oceans. They were about the best marine engineers and seamen of the age. (yes, the Polynesians were better navigators and sailors)
 
Do we have any information on the make up of the invasion force itself? How many Mongol horsemen? how many infantry? I have not been able to find this information.
According to the history of the Yuan compiled during the Ming: 15,000 men in the first invasion, 100,000 men in the second. But it says nothing about the composition of forces in its section on Japan. But the second invasion has Mongol, Korean, North Chinese, and South Chinese forces, so it's quite a mixed group.
 
That's kind of the point. It's a last-resort final retreat for the Manchurian Mongols after the Ming take control of China, with the Ming dynasty deciding that mounting an invasion to pursue them across the Straits and conquer their last enclaves on the islands of Sakhalin and Hokkaido isn't worth the effort and the expense.

It's not that hard to cross the straits, and there's a lot of coastline to defend. There's a central highland range which makes easy short distance transport difficult. I don't think that the Mongol remnant would do terribly well defending there. Basically, if the Ming want Sakhalin, they'll take it without much effort.

But perhaps the more likely outcome would be that emergent Japanese would take it. OTL, the Japanese extended their control over Hokkaido. In this timeline, a more advanced Sakhalin might draw see more Japanese involvement.

The Kamchatka peninsula is out of range of both the Chinese and Japanese. It could form your refuge.

And the Kamchatka peninsula isn't a great prize, but for the weakened Mongol remnant on the islands at this stage, it's the only direction in which they can conceivably expand; they'll never bring China back under their control while the reign of the Ming Dynasty continues, and the Koreans or Japanese are too powerful to take on without running the risk of being conquered themselves.

Well, it could make sense that a fleeing Mongol ruling class might retreat to or advance on the Kamchatka peninsula.

From what I can tell, the southern part of the peninsula features a subarctic climate. You might get enough grasslands out of this to support ponies. My impression is that it's mostly boreal forest. The north of the peninsula, and the entry point, has a polar climate, which explains why the OTL mongols never went there. Polar climates are bad for ponies.

There's I don't have references on the subsistence economies of the Koryak and Italmen in any detail. To my recollection, the Italmen lived in fortified villages of up to a couple of hundred people. When population rose, they'd just split and a new village would move up or down the river. Warfare was more or less continuous.

There was no substantive agricultural complex, although there was considerable gathering - pine nuts were bit in the diet, bistort, cow parsnip. The main economy seems to have been fishing - either riverine fishing, with a seasonal focus on salmon runs harvesting and storing huge salmon surpluses. The main game animal was the Reindeer, although there's an assortment of prey species.

If you want my guess, a horse economy like the Mongols could probably sustain themselves at least in the southern half of Kamchatka, but it's not terribly good horse country. Way too much broken geography, most transport and transit is riverine, and river and sea protein make a pretty large part of the diet.

I'd see the culture changing rapidly though. There's just too much sea and river protein available for the mongols to ignore. They're not going to shut themselves off from the local subsistence economy. So they'll likely adopt a lot of Koryak and Italmen ways. They'll keep ponies, there are too many advantages to poniees, even in Kamchatka. But the lifestyle won't be as focused.


Well, themselves for starters; and if they choose not to wage destructive wars with the Japanese or Koreans, focusing instead on building their naval strength and forging alliances to counter the threat posed by a potential Ming Chinese invasion, Japan and Korea would also be valuable trade partners. The market for sea otter furs here could be enough to get a fur trade going, no problem.

Would it? The Siberian Fur Trade was driven by an insatiable Russian demand for furs. The Russian market and traders literally denuded wild areas, and had to extend further and further out.

Here, you don't have a metropolitan culture driving a fur trade. You're looking at an indigenous or local population's market, and this is not going to be a heavy population. Hunter gathering, fishing, sealing, river and sea fishing. I find it hard to imagine that forming the basis of a commercial economy.

Now having said that, you might get a demand and trading network going for a fur trade with Japan and Korea. But historically, that didn't occur to any significant extent, and certainly Japan was well positioned to develop its fur trade. They never bothered.

On 'Ice and Mice' I've been trying to puzzle out the Japanese market, for things like Fur and Ivory. I haven't come to any good conclusions.

In any case, for Fur, I'd say that you'd have to watch the timing. The likeliest peak demand for furs would be the Little Ice Age a few hundred years back, when everything got shit cold, and furs were in substantial demand for clothing. But that's also when Kamchatka's going to be most inhospitable for mongols and their ponies.

I'm not saying no. But it's uphill at this point.


Well, these fishermen would probably just be following the fur traders and their settlements, supplying these new communities.

Except wouldn't the Fur traders just be trading with existing communities mostly. There's only a few Islands which were uninhabited. The Aleuts were a pretty hefty population. I don't see a lot of fishermen following fur traders. You might have to work on that part of the model.


You wouldn't expect to see hauls of fish from these waters being traded back to the home islands, or to their Japanese and Korean neighbours, for some time; maybe decades, maybe even a century or more. But the good fishing in these waters (and the relatively poor arable land and crop-growing conditions, minimising competition from farmers) should still be enough to entice some fishermen eastwards.

You'll have to work on it.

I think you might be onto something though. Don't mind the rough ride from me. I'm doing this timeline about an Inuit Agricultural civilization, and I have to fight tooth and nail every step of the way. A good idea is worth fighting for.
 
You do know that the invasion forces were primarily Chinese and Korean and that even the Mongols were primarily non-cavalry?
You may handwave all the geographical, meteorlogical, oceanographic, and nautical concerns and facts presented by several posters here, but trying to force a fun but thoroughly implausible scenario over the objections is not, in my opinion, good alternative history.

It's funny that people have tried to do the same thing getting Romans over the Atlantic. In the face of tons of evidence and data that showed both the immense difficulties but trying to build the most plausible model to get them there. It didn't involve hurricanes... Some tropes die hard.;)

Yeah, I remember that thread. We were both in it up to our elbows, along with Phildup, and let me tell you, it was some unholy heavy lifting. It was like rolling a boulder up a steep hill, every single step of the way. No matter how far we could push it, it just kept getting tougher.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=310207

But that's still a walk in the park compared to getting the Mongols to sail over.
 
An iconic eyewitness picture of the invasions from the Japanese perspective: mounted samurai charging Mongol archers on foot. Rocket or grenade burst overhead.
war.jpg

and
fight.jpg

retreating forces--apparently mixed nationalities, mostly infantry with a couple cavalry in mad retreat from a single samurai!
 
Can anyone think of a scenario where you could have had the mongols moving north and east through siberia towards alaska and into north america?

Mongols would want to conquer known lands (Egypt, Europe) first before venturing to NA. They have the capacity to build ships via China and Korea. The Malay archipelago would have the almost same ship building techniques as the Polynesian to cross the pacific or the atlantic.

However, They are weak logistically in power projection since all their island conquering ventures (Japan/Java) were failures.
 
You would need an intact Bering Land bridge

Ive thought a lot about doing a timeline on this subject I just never got around to it.

Intact bering Land bridge.png
 
You would need an intact Bering Land bridge

Ive thought a lot about doing a timeline on this subject I just never got around to it.

Beringia comes with an Ice Age, for no extra cost. ;)
(so your map would have all sorts of things above water, besides what your map shows.)
But, yes. You can have great fun with all the ramifications of the land bridge sticking around. Probably no distinct Old World diseases that the New Worlders wouldn't have some immunity to. Among other things...
 
Or since the land bridge sticks out you could have a ship follow the coastline which would lead to the discovery of the New world, that was going to be my scenario have a fishing ship or trade ship accidentally follows the coast line of the Bering land bridge and land somewhere in Northern British Columbia, prompting further Mongol exploration.
 
The Chinese have records dating back to the fifth century that indicate they were aware of the Bering straight and Diomede Islands as well as the Aleutians.

If so, no land bridge really necessary, so this would not have to go to ASB.
 
Link, por favor? :)

This is something I had in my files from the aforementioned Mongols in America timeline I am working on.

I know that much of this borders on "Menzian" but the important factors are the distances and the references to the islands. I have Bolded some relevant references ti simplify life.

I make not claims to the validity of the information presented in the exert below, but the Fu-sang legend is a long standing feature of Chinese literature and record.

[FONT=&quot]PROF WEI CHU-HSIEN &
"CHINA AND AMERICA"[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]This section is to explore ancient China's contacts with the American Continent. In this section, I will transcribe Wei Chu-Hsien's studies. Prof Wei Chu-Hsien, a student of Wang Guo-wei, Liang Qi-chao, Chen Yin-ko and Li Chi in 1926's Tsing-Hwa University of Beijing, had published a book called China and America -Volume One in March of 1982 via Taiwan's shuo wen shu dian bookstore. As Wei Chu-Hsien noted, he had been tormented by the fact that it was difficult to find translators who knew and understood ancient classics good enough to translate his book into English. Similarly, I felt often intimidated by the strenuous task ahead of me at the sight of the high-rising volumes of ancient Chinese history; I am also torn by a split exertion of my efforts to ancient history or to modern history, with a stubborn cognizance that ancient history could not buy a living while modern history might not self-strength China which is now ruled by self-destructing communists.

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]In "China and America -Volume One", Prof Wei Chu-Hsien stated that he, first coming across in 1961 a Confucius' passage on 6 birds which flew backward as recorded in Spring and Autumn Annals, had linked the 'yi' bird to America's hummingbirds. For the next ten years, he began to compile 81 essays, totalling 1.4 million characters, on ancient China's contacts with America which was separated from each other by a 56 mile stripe of the Bering Straits but with two Diomede Islands in the middle. Wei Chu-Hsien met Prof Lau Tun-li of SUNY in 1970 and began to exchange opinions as to American Indian's heritage such as i) praying for rain, ii) ancestral stone worshipping, and iii) Chinese inscriptions found in America. In 1969, a HK publishing house first published a table of contents about the book which was entitled "The Chinese Discovered America !" Wei Chu-Hsien stated that he had to use the subscription fees from some donators for sustaining his impoverished 'filling lines with characters' career.

Wei Chu-Hsien, in his Backword, felt that his theory had been vindicated by the discovery of stone anchors near California coast in Nov 1982. Wei Chu-Hsien spent considerable time reading into ancient classics and excavated interesting points covering more than the American continents: Wei Chu-Hsien pointed to Chu Ci (i.e., Chu Principality poems) and Wai Guo Tu (i.e., foreign country maps) for records of a land similar to Australia where the weather was hot in winter and cold in summer and where the grass died away in summer and grew in winter; Wei Chu-Hsien further validated records of southern hemisphere by pointing out two incidents of sun eclipse as recorded in Spring and Autumn Annals; and Wei Chu-Hsien emphasized the cross emblem on the tombstones of nobles of Southern Dynasties in Nanking for the spread of Christianity in China 1500 years ago. Wei Chu-Hsien analyzed the character 'long' for dragon and derived a conclusion that it was originally in the form of 'king snake' which the ancient Indian circus people brought over to Shang China. Wei Chu-Hsien also analyzed the character for phoenix to derive a conclusion that ancient Indonesians had brought 'jile-niao' peacock kind of red bird to China. (Dragon totem could also be a lizard. Wei Chu-Hsien mentioned that 'Shang Ruins' had produced 4-leg and 1-tail lizard which Shang Chinese treated as dragon and that ancient emissary to Korea mentioned that ancient Ryukyu people treated lizard as dragon, too. On the oracle bones, dragon, in a third form, could be seen as similar to sea-horses.) [/FONT][FONT=&quot]


[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Dao-yi (Island Alien) Designation, & Fu-sang[/FONT][FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Sima Qian's Shi Ji stopped at Wudi's overthrow of Wei Man Choson; in descriptions of Xu Fu's elixir-seeking journey, Sima Qian did repeat ancient Chinese legends about the islands of Peng-Lai, Fang-Zhang and Ying-Zhou (land in the sea). Chen Shou's San Guo Zhi covered the island of Japan and grouped the early Japanese in the section on Dongyi (Eastern Yi). Later history records referred to Japanese as Dao-yi (Island Alien).

Ancient Chinese had different terms for barbarians in four directions. Dongyi or Yi-of-the-East will include peoples in Manchuria, Korea and Japan. In early times, the Yi was associated with the word 'niao' for bird, and there were eight to nine different 'niao-yi' people in the east. Shang Dynasty people, considered a group of Yi people, were recorded to have treated 'Xuan Niao' (i.e., Black bird, possibly sparrow) as their totem. Manchurian legends as to the birth of their founder had something to do with birth-mother swallowing the red fruit dropped by a bird. Toba Wei Dynasty, in return for being called the nickname of 'suo lu' (pigtailed enemies), would call southern Chinese by the derogatory name of 'niao yi' (i.e., bird aliens) for possibly southern Chinese pitched accents or generic kind of name for southeastern Chinese and islanders. In later times, the Yi designation would be associated with a word 'dao' for island, pointing to the barbarian peoples in East China Seas. (Both the character 'niao' and 'dao' looked quite close and might have corrupted consecutively during the course of history.) Yi is more an inclusive word to mean aliens. The big Korean school of thought, touched on in [/FONT][FONT=&quot]prehistory[/FONT][FONT=&quot] section, claimed that the Koreans were true descendants of the Dongyi people.

Island Statelets Beyond Japan:
Chen Shou's San Guo Zhi recorded dozens of statelets on the Japanese islands, including Queen Beimihu (Himiko) Wa Statelet, Gounu-guo statelet under a king in the south, and a pygmy statelet to the south of Wa etc. Also recorded would be two statelets to the southeast of Japan, i.e., Luo-guo (naked body) statelet and Heichi-guo (black teeth) statelet, which could be reached by travelling for one year on boat. Some Japanese historians speculated that the two statelets to the southeast of Japan must have been located in Central or South Americas. Yao Silian's Liang Shu (History of Southern Liang Dynasty) further mentioned that the two statelets of Luo-guo and Heichi-guo were 4,000 Chinese li distance to the southeast of Japan or 1-year sea journey by boat. (Conflict: 4,000 Chinese li distance or one-year boat travel, in my opinion, could not match with the distance of 7000 li between South Korea and Japan. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]http://www.os.xaxon.ne.jp/~sinkodai/efuruta/esss.html[/FONT][FONT=&quot] stated that "San-kuo-shih or Three Country Record does not use the distance unit of li to be 435 meters as used during the Chin or Han dynasty Period but rather it uses the unit adopted by the Wei and Western Chin dynasties, which is that one li is approximately 77 meters." Note ancient chronicles usually built upon previous dynasty's records via direct paragraph by paragraph citation.) Liang Shu also recorded an island 10,000 li to the southwest of Japan where people, of black body and white eyes, were said to have delicious meat on their body; it said that travellers would shoot to kill those islanders for eating them. To the northeast of Japan, Liang Shu recorded a Wen-shen-guo (tattoo) statelet that was located 7,000 Chinese li distance away from Japan; 5000 li to the east of Wen-shen-guo would be Da-han-guo statelet. (In my opinion, Wen-shen-guo would be somewhere near Hokkaido, while Da-han-guo statelet would be likely in Bering Straits, Aleutian Islands & Alaska.)

Bei Shi (History of Northern Dynasties) recorded a big island statelet called Dan-mou-luo-guo statelet to the south of Paekche. It said that the island, having a span of over 1000 li distance south-north and several hundred li east-west, could be reached by boat after three months' travel, that it had lots of deers, and that it was a vassal of Paekche. (Conflict: Three months' travel would probably lead to Southeast Islands or Australia.) Since Bei Shi separately described the Liuqiu (Ryukyu) island, Dan-mou-luo-guo might not be the same as Ryukyu. Liuqiu (Ryukyu) island was recorded to be reacheable after 5 days of boat travelling.

Fu-sang Statelet:
Liang Shu was noted for its record of [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Fu-sang[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Statelet to the east. The word 'fusang' would later be used by Chinese for designating Japan in poems; Wei Chu-Hsien validated a separate identity of Fusang from Japan by citing ancient records in regards to the usage of iron in Japan but not in Fusang. The more exact mapping would be to measure distance between statelets in between: a Wen-shen-guo (tattoo) statelet (near Hokkaido?) was located 7,000 Chinese li distance to the northeast of Japan; 5000 li to the east of Wen-shen-guo would be Da-han-guo statelet (near Bering Straits, Aleutian Islands & Alaska?). Fu-Sang (Fusang) Statelet was located 20,000 Chinese li distance to the east of Da-han-guo, somewhere near British Columbia or Oregon. Here, we could see an apparent linkage from China, to Korea, to Japan, to "tattoo body" country, to "Great Han" country, and to Fu-sang. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Both Chinese websites and American websites, e.g., [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Tower/1217/asia.html[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]http://ussers.wi.net/~maracon/index.html[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1028.htm[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]had mentioned Monk Huishen and the Kingdom of Fu-Sang (Fusang). Popular belief is that Fusang was located in today's Mexico. Liang Shu stated that during the first year of the Yongyuan Era of Southern Qi Dynasty, i.e., AD 499, a monk by the name of Hui-shen (Huishen or Hui Shen) arrived at Jingzhou prefecture from the Fu-Sang (Fusang) Statelet. Hui-shen claimed that Fu-Sang (Fusang) was to the east of China; that it was located 20,000 li distance from Da-han-guo statelet; that it was a land full of Fu-Sang (Fusang) wood (speculated to be North American corn by Chinese or cactus-like agave by Americans); that Fu-Sang (Fusang) leaf was similar to Tong-tree leaf; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) looked similar to bamboo shoots at early stage; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) people ate it for food; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) appeared to be of red color and tasted like pear; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) surface could be used for cloth or cotton. Hui-shen further stated that Fu-Sang (Fusang) people had log cabins but no cities; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) had written language and used Fu-Sang (Fusang) skin for paper; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) had no army or weapons; that Fusang did not treasure gold or silver; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) had two prisons, with minor offence going to north while serious offence going to south prison; that amnesty went to north prison, only; that king possessed drums and wore different color robe for different seasons; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) people used buffalo horns for holding stuff; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) possessed horse (?) carts, buffalo carts and deer carts; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) people used deer milk for cheese; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) was abundant with walnuts; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) had copper but no iron; that Fu-Sang (Fusang) previously had no buddhism but a five member monk team, headed by Monk Biqiu, arrived at Fu-Sang (Fusang) from Libin-guo statelet (Kabul of Afghanistran) during the 2nd year reign of Daming Era of Liu Song Dynasty, i.e., AD 458, and propogated buddhism there. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Note that most of secondary records had errors in regards to the five monk team. Hui-shen or Hoei-shin did not take part in the AD 458 journey to Fusang, and he merely returned to China in AD 499. My speculation is that the trips from China to ancient America was frequent enough for Hui-shen to return to China on a different ship. Should Monk Fa-Shien had returned to China from India by ship at the timeframe, why would it not be possible that Monk Hui-shen and etc could have travelled to ancient America?

I picked up Prof Wei's book again and found out that Prof had listed abundant written texts, from ancient Chinese chronicles, about the existence of i) 'Deep Sea Valley' beyond Japan, ii) '[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Feather Mountain[/FONT][FONT=&quot]' island in possibly Pacific Northeast, iii) '[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Brown Bear[/FONT][FONT=&quot]' stories, and iv) the Redwood Trees. Prof Wei had citations of dozens of entries about the Redwood Tree, which was known to Chinese as the 'Fu-sang' in Chinese texts prior to BC eras. Apparently, ancient Chinese in AD eras, i.e., Monk Hui-shen of 5th century, had mutated the ancient term 'Fu-sang' to mean something different from the Redwood tree. Prof Wei Juxian validated that though America had no iron, ancient Peruvians had imported iron from ancient China for cutting the stones for the palace construction. Also, Prof Wei Juxian validated ancient Chinese texts [prior to BC eras] as to the abundance of silver and gold in ancient America that the American natives did not treasure the metals as recorded in "Liang Shu" [/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]After the nomadic rampage of 4th century, Tuoba Wei Dynasty & Southern Chinese Dynasty, respectively, renewed historical contacts with the rest of the world, i.e., Japan to the east, ancient Burma/Indochina/India/Ceylon to the south, Central Asia to the west, and Arab/Persia/Roman further away. Nevertheless, Japan's history in Fourth Century became forever "mysterious" as a result of Northern China's disintegration. With Tuoba Wei China developing the northern Silk Road, Liang Dynasty of southern China underwent a prosperous sea route exchange with the rest of the world. Monk Fa-Shien's return trip from India had been widely analyzed to infer a possible blowaway to Mexico coastline before going the opposite direction to China. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Often researched upon by scholars would be a drawing by Liang Dynasty's Emperor Yuandi, entitled "zhi [duty or post] gong [tribute] tu [picture]" [[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Liang chih-kung-t'u[/FONT][FONT=&quot]]. Liang chih-kung-t'u, whose original drawing possibly destroyed together with 140,000 volumes of books at the time of Emperor Yuandi's death, was supposed to be a recollection works of the emissaries who had visited Jingzhou the garrison city where Yuandi had stationed throughout dozens of years. The point to make here is that Liang Dynasty had apparently received delegations from 2-3 dozen statelets covering the countries mentioned earlier. The drawing's minute details about the ancient countries in today's Afghanistan and Iran and their emissaries absolutely corroborated the facts that China's linkage with Central Asia was live and frequent, yielding substantial validity to the person of Monk Hui-shen and his story of the trip to the American continent. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
Hui-shen also stated that over 1000 li distance to the east of Fusang would be a country called Nü-guo (women statelet). Nü-guo was speculated by [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Minhua Zhang[/FONT][FONT=&quot] to be the Amazon statelet in South America. Nü-guo women were said to have lighter skin, hairy body, and long hair that dangled to the floor. Liang Shu further cited a personal account stating that a Jin'an area traveller was blown to an island of women during the 6th year of Tianjian Era (i.e., AD 507).
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]a and north-sea kings would be[/FONT][FONT=&quot]

[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]Wei Chu-Hsien explained that the Mexico pottery had 23 'ya' characters inscribed because the base of the pottery was too small to fill up another two characters to make a total of 25 which would be symbolic of twenty-five clans of Huangdi the Yellow Lord. Wei Chu-Hsien cited Jinn Yu section of ancient classics Guo Yu to translate the original meaning of 'ya' as lineage, something to mean that Huangdi's 25 sons had established their independent clans. As to the reason that the pottery was excavated in Mexico, Wei Chu-Hsien cited the ancient dynastic transition of Shang-Zhou as the possible cause.
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[FONT=&quot]Wei Chu-Hsien rephrased the Shang-Zhou story as follows: Last Shang Lord King Zhouwang campaigned against 'Ren-fang-guo' statelet on Shandong Peninsula. After defeating Ren-fang-guo, Zhouwang led a few soldiers back to the capital of Chaoge for lunar new year celebration. Upon hearing of Zhouwang's return with a light force, Zhou Lord Wuwang marched towards Shang capital within six days and nights and encountered Zhouwang at the outskirts of Muye where Zhou army defeated Shang's drunken soldiers. Shang King Zhouwang committed suicide. Zhou Lord Wuwang made Shang Prince Lufu inherit the Shang heritage and then went back to the west. After Wuwang died, Zhou Duke Zhougong assumed the post of a regent for Zhou King Chengwang. In old Shang capital area, Shang Prince Lufu died. Shang Prince Lufu's son, Prince Wugeng, conspired with the brothers of Zhou Wuwang in rebelling against Zhou Regent Zhougong. Zhougong defeated the rebellion and furthermore campaigned against Shang remnants who were left by Shang Lord Zhouwang on Shandong Peninsula's Ren-fang-guo statelet. Shang remnants hence fled towards two directions, one branch to Taiwan Island and the other branch to North America via the Bering Straits. Those Shang people who arrived in North America stationed two chieftans on the east and west sides of the Bering Straits and conferred onto the two chieftans the titles of east-sea and north-sea kings. The east-se[/FONT][FONT=&quot]come the gods in revised book Shan Hai Jing. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]http://members.tripod.com/%7Ekon_artz/cultures/olmshang.htm[/FONT]
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Poul Anderson's "The Only Game in Town"

I think Poul Anderson presents a fairly plausible scenario in his 1960 short story, "The Only Game in Town" - available both on-line and in a number of anthologies, including Baen Books' "Futures Past" - for a small exploratory expedition sponsored by Kublai Khan landing in North America. If said explorers had made it back to China with news of the Bering Straight, Anderson speculates that the Mongols would have established an empire for themselves in the Americas. I found his most interesting idea to be encapsulated in the following quote from one of the time traveling characters, himself partly Native American:

"'As for the Indians—remember, the Mongols are herdsmen. There won't be anything like the unsolvable conflict between hunter and farmer that made the white man destroy the Indian [emphasis added]. The Mongol hasn't got race prejudices, either. And after a little fighting, the average Navajo, Cherokee, Seminole, Algonquin, Chippewa, Dakota, will be glad to submit and become allied. Why not? He'll get horses, sheep, cattle, textiles, metallurgy. He'll outnumber the invaders, and be on much more nearly equal terms with them than with white farmers and machine-age industry. And there'll be the Chinese, I repeat, leavening the whole mixture, teaching civilization and sharpening wits. . . .

"'Good God, Manse! When Columbus gets here, he'll find his Grand Cham all right! The Sachem Khan of the strongest nation on earth!'"

The character goes into more detail about the possible results of a Mongol conquest of the Americas, comparing the Mongols and Chinese to Imperial Rome and their Greek subjects, but that point about the "unsolvable conflict" between the hunter and the farmer really struck me as being the heart of the matter and possibly the most plausible way for the peoples of the New World, especially North America, to survive contact with those of the Old.
 
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