@Silvio: went by ship to North America 2500 years ago. Huh - what kind of ship would that have been?

The 1421 book is a good quick read.

True or not; it is interesting to speculate What if

What if in 1421 era china sent colony after colony to north and south america and took the rich grass land and gold and silver of Inca and Aztec?

What if the Khan's had done so 300 years before?

Both era's might have found the huge grass lands of North and South Ameria a prize. Both era's courts might have seen the distance as a bad or good thing. Umm What if?

Here is a BBC radio talk on the Ming voyages.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015p8c2

The Ming Voyages
Duration:

45 minutes

First broadcast:

Thursday 13 October 2011

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Ming Voyages. In 1405 a Chinese admiral, Zheng He, set sail with an enormous fleet of ships carrying more than 27,000 people. This was the first of seven voyages of discovery which took Zheng and his ships all over the known world, from India to the Gulf of Persia and as far as East Africa. They took Chinese goods, evidence of the might of the Ming Empire, to the people they visited; and they also returned to China with treasure from the places.