1434 Read online

  On his return from the Far East, Admiral Mariakyr, having learned of a new land in the West, decided to sail there with his fleet to Semeraye (South America); he lost his life in medieval Parané (Patagonia). This voyage was recorded in medieval Glagolitic script.

  Recent DNA studies have confirmed that in some Adriatic islands (Hvar, Korcula) and on the adjacent coasts (Makarska) certain families have East Asian genotype.

  Up until the twentieth century some of these Adriatic islanders had surnames of non-Slavic and non-European origin, for example, Yoshamya, Yenda, Uresha, Shamana, Sayana, Sarana, and Hayana. In 1918 when the Austro-Hungarians were defeated, the islanders were obliged to Slavicize such foreign surnames, but they persist to this day in nicknames and aliases.

  Medieval Dalmatian-colored symbols for maps were the same as those used by the Chinese: black = north, white = west, red = south, blue and green = east.

  Adriatic islanders have until recently used a non-European nomenclature for America and the Far East based on translations of Chinese nomenclature.

  American cactuses (chiefly Opuntia) in medieval Dalmatia, at Dubrovnik and elsewhere, were said to have been brought by early ships from the Far East.

  Dr. Lovric’s e-mail referred to Professor Mitjel Yoshamya’s research in Croatian, published in Zagreb in 2004. The lengthy paper covers the spread of old Dalmatian names across the Pacific before the Spanish explorers; Sion-Kulap (Pacific): Skopye-Kulapne (Philippines), Sadritye-Polnebne (Melanesia), Sadritye-Zihodne (Micronesia), Skopye-Zihodne (Japan), Artazihod (Korea), and Velapolneb (New Zealand). Goa was the main Dalmatian base for Far East trade. (These old Dalmatian names were used on German maps of the Pacific until Germany was defeated in World War II, after which they were expunged and replaced by Spanish, French, and Portuguese names). I hope that young scholars will translate the whole of Professor Yoshamya’s manuscript into English, since only excerpts have yet been translated.

  As will be seen when we reach Venice, tens of thousands of Asian slave girls and women were brought to Venice. Doubtless many of these would have escaped as the fleets berthed at the islands en route to Venice, and this will be shown up in the mitochondrial DNA.

  The first step in setting up a DNA research program for Venetian and Dalmatian people was to see what existing DNA research had already been carried out. Dr. Lovric, who works in the Department of Molecular Genetics, kindly provided me with the information. There were a dozen local DNA reports of people on Adriatic islands, which were all summarized in Lovorka Bara, Marijana Perii et al., “Y Chromosomal Heritage of Croatian Population and its Island Isolates.”7 As may be seen in the abstract, Professor Bara et al. state: “In one of the Southern Island (Hvar) populations, we found a relatively high frequency (14%) of lineages belonging to P* (xM 173) cluster, which is unusual for European populations. Interestingly, the same population also harboured mitochondrial haplogroup F that is virtually absent in European populations—indicating a connection with central Asian populations, possibly the Avars.”

  Then at paragraph 3 on of their report:

  Worthy of note is the finding of considerable frequency haplogroup P* (xM 173) in the population of the island of Hvar. According to Wells et al (44—see footnotes) this lineage displays a maximum in central Asia while being rare in Europe, Middle East and East Asia. Its presence in Hvar recapitulates our finding of MtDNA haplogroup F on the island of Hvar and in mainland Croatian population that is virtually absent in Europe but, again, common in populations from central and Eastern Asia (51—see footnotes). There are several possibilities for the occurrence of the ancestral lineage of M 173. One is the well documented alliance of Avars (a Mongol people) and Slavs (Croatians) that followed Avar arrival to the Eastern Adriatic in 6th Century AD. The other is the expansion of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th to 18th Century AD when refugees from the Western Balkans frequently immigrated to the islands. Lastly, the ancient Silk Road linking China with Western Asia and Europe could be a possible path of P(xM 173) lineage too. Any of these migratory patterns could have introduced the mutation to the investigated population.

  As may be seen, the distinguished professors do not include a fourth possibility: that the inheritance of Chinese and Asian (Mongol) genes came by sea from sailors on ships sailing from Alexandria to Venice. Looking at a map reveals this is by far the most likely method. The Avars settled near the Drava River on the Hungarian border—why should they then decide to migrate westward across some of the most rugged mountains on the planet to reach Hvar? Why choose the most extreme island, the farthest out in the ocean, on which to settle?

  Second, if they had followed this bizarre route, their genes would be seen in the populations between where they settled on the Drava and Hvar; they are not. The same could be said for the Ottoman invasions down the Danube. Why should they choose a remote place out at sea to settle when they had the fertile Danube plain? The amount of Asian DNA, 14 percent, is remarkable; well-documented Danish invasions of Britain reveal a comparable 7 percent. Also, in my view, the fact that both Asian men (Y chromosome) and women (mitochondrial) settled on Hvar means men and women from Asia arrived together. Mongol armies invading from the East would have taken women where they found them. They would not have brought their wives and concubines along. Quite the opposite prevailed on Chinese junks, where female slaves and sailors lived side by side.

  There are no Dalmatian accounts of Asian people trekking overland across the Dinaric Alps to Hvar, but there are local accounts (collated by Professor Lovric) that prior to the sixteenth century Ottoman invasions, foreign sailing ships manned by “Oblique-eyed yellow Easterners” visited the coast. Hvar, as may be seen from the map, is smack on the direct route from Alexandria (via Corfu) to Venice. In my submission, the DNA results are part of a logical sequence of events. Zheng He’s squadron arrives in the Mediterranean in late 1433 or early 1434. One or more of his ships berths at Hvar when sailors and slave girls jump ship. The other ships proceed to Venice, where they unload the slaves. Officers then travel on to Florence, where they meet the pope in 1434. The squadron returns via Dalmatia in late 1434, when a Dalmatian fleet joins them for passage back through the Red Sea–Nile canal to China. On arrival in China the Chinese fleet is impounded: Admiral Harvatye Mariakyr takes his seven ships into the Pacific and “discovers” thirty Pacific islands, to which he gives Dalmatian names. He brings his fleet back home in the late 1430s/early 1440s with a Chinese map of the Americas and sails for America in the early 1440s. If this scenario is correct, the DNA of Venetians should reflect that of the people of Hvar, as should the DNA of indigenous Native Americans where Admiral Mariakyr’s fleet visited (and left Glagolitic inscriptions recording their voyages around New England and Nova Scotia).

  This DNA research will be pursued, and results will be posted on our website. We hope the Glagolitic manuscripts will also be translated.

  Now to return to Zheng He’s squadron leaving Hvar for Venice, a few days voyage to the north. Here the Chinese would have found excellent repair yards, which would have been of the greatest importance to them, for their ships had by now been away from their home bases for nearly three years. The Chinese were lucky—Venice had been building and repairing galleys for hundreds of years.

  To develop trade between Alexandria, Cairo, and Venice, Venice built galleys and manned them with skilled seamen. The Arsenal, the greatest medieval dockyard of Europe, was the key to Venetian maritime supremacy. By 1434, Venice could put thirty-five large galleys to sea along with three thousand smaller craft manned by 25,000 sailors. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the ship workers’ guild had more than 6,000 members out of a total Venetian population of 170,000. The Senate passed stringent laws to control shipbuilding. The number of galleys built for export was restricted. Any foreigner wishing to place an order first had to obtain authorization from the Great Council.

  Galleys were built on a “conveyor belt” on which ships were towed past a succession of stations, where
they acquired ropes and sails, armaments and dry provisions.8 When Henry III of France visited Venice, the Arsenal’s shipwrights assembled a galley weighing six thousand pounds in the time it took the doge and his royal visitor to eat their way through a state banquet. Galleys were built to standard specifications so that replacement parts could be stored in Venetian yards down the Adriatic and across the Mediterranean.

  Financial incentives were given to shipbuilders and owners to keep the Arsenal productive with experienced shipwrights on the job. Bankers were discouraged from charging exorbitant interest. The public bank had authority to grant soft loans: in the event that it was necessary to accelerate construction, costs could be subsidized. Almost every citizen had a stake in maritime commerce with the East—even the galley oarsmen had the right to trade on their personal accounts. A single voyage to Alexandria or Cairo could enrich a vessel’s entire company.

  Venice was equally committed to training her naval officers, pilots, and ratings. The admiral and fleet navigator of Venetian armadas were usually graduates of the Venetian naval college at Perast, a port in the Gulf of Kotor in southern Dalmatia near Hvar. The port had an international reputation9: Czar Peter the Great of Russia sent his first officer cadets there. The armadas’ in-shore navigation was handled by professional pilots, trained at Porec on the north Dalmatia coast. The cream of these mariners, the pedotti grandi, would steer an armada into the lagoon at the end of its journey from Alexandria.

  For centuries Dalmatia has been renowned for her seafarers. The names of her illustrious officers crop up time and again in tales of epic battles—from Coromandel to the Spanish Main. Venetian galleys were built almost entirely from Dalmatian wood—pine for planks, resin for caulking, oak for rudders, keels, and straits. Roughly half the crew of each galley would be Dalmatian.

  Venice brilliantly exploited her maritime assets. With the acquisition of ports on the Dalmatian coast, she gained abundant timber. Centuries of history and tradition had bred skillful and hardy seamen. Journeying north from Alexandria, Zheng He’s fleets would have found numerous ports, first in Crete, then across the Ionian Sea to the Adriatic. It was an easy journey, even in the calms of summer when the Chinese oarsmen—fifteen to an oar—would eat up the miles. The Chinese could have expected to be guided by experienced local pilots.

  Cairo’s contact with Europe was through Venice, which had entered a commercial treaty with the Mamluks giving them exclusive trading rights. The two cities were joined by their pursuit of a monopoly on east-west trade.

  The link with Cairo opened up additional possibilities of trade with China and new ways of reaching that distant land. A stream of merchants and Franciscan missionaries left Venice for China. Oriental adventures were relayed via chroniclers including the Polos; Giovanni da Pian del Carpine in his Historia Mongalorum (1247); William of Rubruck who wrote Itinerarium (1255); Raban Sauma (1287) and Odoric of Pordenone (1330); and Jordan de Sévérac’s Mirabilia (c. 1329). The Jews had their own traveling merchants, notably Jacob of Ancona prior to Marco Polo. Venice was intimately acquainted with China. Her merchants, the Polos in particular, made fortunes trading exotic Chinese silks and drappi tartareschi. Popes and emperors were buried wrapped in Chinese silk.

  Small wonder, given their centuries of trade with China, that Venetians were the first Europeans to obtain world maps from their trading partner. Di Virga’s map of the Eastern Hemisphere was published in 1419, and Pizzigano’s map of the Caribbean appeared in 1424. Today, you can see on the wall of the Doges’ Palace a world map published prior to 1428 that includes North America. As the roundels on the walls testify, this map was created from evidence brought back from China by Marco Polo and Niccolò da Conti. The inscription relating to da Conti says: “ORIENTALIS INDIAS HAC TABULA EXPRESSUS PEREGRATIONIBUS ET SCRIPTIS ILLUSTRAUNT EN NARATIS MERCANTORIAM AD JIUVIERE SAECOLO XV NICOLAUS DE COMITIBUS. EDITO ITENERARIO LUSITANE POST MODUM VERSO NOVAM LUCEM NAUTIS ALLATURO.” My translation: “Oriental India [viz China and the Indies in fifteenth-century terminology] as drawn in this way is clearly a result of the foreign travels and illustrated writings not least the narratives of the merchant of the fifteenth century, Niccolò da Conti. Publication of this itinerary sheds new light on the [travels of] mariners.”

  This map was probably completed before 1428 (inauguration of Doges’ Palace) but destroyed by fire in 1486; the original maps (of which a copy was given to Dom Pedro) were hung on the walls. According to Lorenzetti, the map was repainted by Ramusio in 1540 after the fire—the same Ramusio who had said that Fra Mauro’s world map was copied from one in the Camolodensian Monastery on the (current) Island of the Dead in the lagoon. Giovanni Forlani’s map shows Oregon and the Bering Straits before Bering or Vancouver. Zatta’s map shows Vancouver Island also before Cook or Vancouver and places on it “Colonia dei Chinesi” (Chinese Colony).

  By 1418 Venice had become the richest state in Europe. The city’s mule caravans could tramp unmolested through Venetian territory to the Brenner Pass.10 As the seaport nearest the heart of Europe, Venice exploited her access to Lake Constance, which was the principal trading center for merchants from France, Germany, Austria, Poland, and Russia.

  For more than 150 years before Zheng He appeared, Venetian bankers had been using a cashless giro system, crediting one merchant and debiting another.11 Italian bankers led by the Bardis and Peruzzis pioneered international banking the length and breadth of Europe. Almost every citizen of the Venetian Republic was involved in some aspect of trade12—shopkeepers in retail markets, porters and fish traders in wholesale markets, dockers to load and unload, shipwrights in the Arsenal, oarsmen in the galleys. There were few beggars and hardly any unemployment.

  Essential to the Contis, the di Virgas, the Corrers (the family of Pope Eugenius IV’s mother), and the Contarinis were the great oared galleys that left the Rialto for Alexandria, Beirut, Cairo, Flanders, and London. The galley routes to Alexandria and the East resemble the spokes of a vast spider’s web.13 The Magistrates of the Waters issued detailed sailing orders with which merchants were required to comply. The following order, issued to a galley departing for Aigues-Mortes in Provence, underscores the importance of the silk trade.

  The galley will load cloths and spices of Venice up to the 13th of January next; she is to leave Venice on the 15th of the same month. These terms may not be extended, suspended or broken under penalty of a fine of 500 ducats. No silken goods may be loaded or shipped on this galley, anywhere in the Gulf of Venice or outside it, apart from veils, taffetas and Saracen cloth. If the master of the galley loads or permits the loading of any silken goods, he will be suspended for a period of five years during which time he may not command any of the galleys of the state or private persons.14

  The Magistrate of the Waters tightly controlled the movement of ships and where they were permitted to load and unload. Each type of good had its designated loading wharf—stone barges at the Incurabile, timber ships at the Misericordia and the Fondamente Nuove. Zheng He’s junks from Alexandria would have tied up at the Riva degli Schiavoni. Venetian merchants submitted to this discipline knowing that it benefited all. The dominant families appointed agents in Crete, Alexandria, Cairo, and every important harbor to facilitate their international trade.

  Today, the area around Saint Mark’s Basilica still swarms with boats unloading passengers, vegetables, fruit, and wine. I have been to Venice innumerable times since first visiting as a young officer on the HMS Diamond fifty years ago. My most vivid memory was a sultry August evening twenty years ago, after Marcella and I had attended vespers at Saint Mark’s, the finest Byzantine building in the world, the epitome of medieval Christian art, and the symbol of Venice’s trade with Alexandria and the East.

  For more than one thousand years this glorious cathedral has been the most important building in Venice. Here Crusades were blessed, including the one financed by the blind old doge Dandolo, who implored Saint Mark to deliver Byzantium to Venice. Here Venetians met to pra
y for deliverance in times of danger or to thank God in victory. Generation after generation of Venetian merchants have poured their wealth into the city’s fabulous cathedral.15

  Built in the shape of a Greek cross, the cathedral overlooks the lagoon, allowing one to enjoy the view from either land or sea, in changing light as the day progresses. The finest artists have endowed the exterior and interior with masterpieces of marble and mosaics. The west façade is a blaze of green, purple, gold, and blue marble collected from across the Venetian empire.

  Within, worshippers see the residue of wealth in the gold ceilings. The basilica is at its best by candlelight at vespers, from a pew beneath the central dome. From here Jesus appears to ascend to heaven, carried by four angels surrounded by the apostles and the Virgin. Every inch of the vast ceiling, walls, and floors is encased in mosaics. Treasures lie sprawled before one. An altar of solid gold is studded with rubies and emeralds. Panels depict scenes from the lives of Christ and Saint Mark. Chinese silk and ceramics, Byzantine reliquaries, cut Persian glass, crystal goblets, and silver swords from Tartary fill the museum. All of this resulted from centuries of seaborne trade.

  The wealth of fifteenth-century Venice is captured in the speech delivered by the dying doge Tommaso Mocenigo:

  This city now stands out in the way of business to different parts of the world. Ten millions of ducats were earned yearly by ships and galleys and the profit is not less than two million ducats a year. In this city there are three thousand vessels of one, two hundred amafore with seventeen thousand seamen. There are three hundred large ships with eight thousand sailors. Every year there go to sea forty-five galleys with eleven thousand sailors and there are three thousand ship carpenters and three thousand caulkers. There are three thousand weavers of silk and sixteen thousand weavers of common cloth. Houses are estimated to be worth seven million five hundred thousand ducats. The rents are five hundred thousand ducats. There are one thousand noblemen whose income is from seven hundred to four thousand ducats.16