From The Smithsonian Online

March 15, 2013 9:17 am

Six Centuries Ago, Chinese Explorers Left This Coin Behind in Africa

The 600-year-old coin is made of copper and silver and has a hole in the center. It’s called a Yongle Tongbao and was issued by Emperor Yongle, who reigned during the Ming Dynasty between the years 1403 to 1425 AD. It was found on Manda, an island in Kenya, announced researchers from The Field Museum and the University of Illinois, and it’s a tangible piece of evidence of Chinese exploration and trade in Africa, years before European explorers reached this part of the world.
It’s easy to date the coin: it features the emperor’s name. Yongle was perhaps best know for starting the initial construction of Beijing’s Forbidden City, but he also sent huge fleets of ships, under the command of admiral Zheng He, out across the ocean to faraway lands.
UCLA‘s International Institute explains:

Upon the orders of the emperor Yongle and his successor, Xuande, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions, the first in the year 1405 and the last in 1430, which sailed from China to the west, reaching as far as the Cape of Good Hope. The object of the voyages was to display the glory and might of the Chinese Ming dynasty and to collect tribute from the “barbarians from beyond the seas.” Merchants also accompanied Zheng’s voyages, Wu explained, bringing with them silks and porcelain to trade for foreign luxuries such as spices and jewels and tropical woods.

The researchers who found the coin describe Zheng He as “the Christopher Columbus of China.” But this admiral’s fleet was much larger than Columbus’. Zheng He commanded as many as 317 ships with 28,000 crew members; Columbus had just three ships and fewer than 100 crew to command.

The Chinese expeditions started out closer to home, but a voyage that began in 1417 made it to Africa. The fleet’s treasure ships brought back strange animals—giraffes, zebras, and ostriches—to the court at home.

After Yongle’s death, though, successors soon banned foreign expeditions and destroyed much of the documentation of the Zheng He’s voyages. The coin provides one of the few tangible links between Africa and China at that time. As for Manda, where the coin was discovered, that island was home to an advanced civilization for around 1,200 years, but it was abandoned in 1430 AD, never to be inhabited again.

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Gavin McKenzie - vindicated, heh heh heh!

To quote Mr. Spock: Fascinating. Now, I'm not sure exactly what this may mean; it could be evidence of ancient trade, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Admiral Zheng He or any of his vast armada actually landed on and/or traded with the natives of Manda when he was on his journey in the 1400s that eventually led to his circumnavigating the world (well before any European did it); it could mean that someone with a penchant for old coins visited Manda at some time a hundred or more years after Zheng He came and went, and that someone might not necessarily have been Chinese. Or perhaps the coin was a family piece, handed down on a sea-faring family from generation to generation, and some WWI or post-WWII visitor lost it (quel horreur!) But when viewed as a whole along with other evidence of trade and contact between Africa and China, the discovery of this 600-some year old coin sure is interesting.

Public release date: 13-Mar-2013
Contact: Nancy O'Shea
media@fieldmuseum.org
312-665-7100
Field Museum

Ancient Chinese coin found on Kenyan island by Field Museum expedition

A joint expedition of scientists led by Chapurukha M. Kusimba of The Field Museum and Sloan R. Williams of the University of Illinois at Chicago has unearthed a 600-year-old Chinese coin on the Kenyan island of Manda that shows trade existed between China and east Africa decades before European explorers set sail and changed the map of the world.

The coin, a small disk of copper and silver with a square hole in the center so it could be worn on a belt, is called "Yongle Tongbao" and was issued by Emperor Yongle who reigned from 1403-1425AD during the Ming Dynasty. The emperor's name is written on the coin, making it easy to date. Emperor Yongle, who started construction of China's Forbidden City, was interested in political and trade missions to the lands that ring the Indian Ocean and sent Admiral Zheng He, also known as Cheng Ho, to explore those shores.

"Zheng He was, in many ways, the Christopher Columbus of China," said Dr. Kusimba, curator of African Anthropology at The Field Museum. "It's wonderful to have a coin that may ultimately prove he came to Kenya," he added.

Dr. Kusimba continued, "This finding is significant. We know Africa has always been connected to the rest of the world, but this coin opens a discussion about the relationship between China and Indian Ocean nations."

That relationship stopped soon after Emperor Yongle's death when later Chinese rulers banned foreign expeditions, allowing European explorers to dominate the Age of Discovery and expand their countries' empires.

The island of Manda, off the northern coast of Kenya, was home to an advanced civilization from about 200AD to 1430AD, when it was abandoned and never inhabited again. Trade played an important role in the development of Manda, and this coin may show trade's importance on the island dating back to much earlier than previously thought.

"We hope this and future expeditions to Manda will play a crucial role in showing how market-based exchange and urban-centered political economies arise and how they can be studied through biological, linguistic, and historical methodologies," Dr. Kusimba said.

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Other researchers who participated in the expedition to Manda include Dr. Janet Monge from the University of Pennsylvania, Mohammed Mchulla, staff scientist at Fort Jesus National Museums of Kenya and Dr. Amelia Hubbard from Wright State University. Also involved was Professor Tiequan Zhu of Sun Yat-Sen University, who identified the coin. The researchers also found human remains and other artifacts that predate the coin.

Photos available upon request.

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I noted the description of the coin (photo from article at smithsonian.com) -- it had the square opening in the center, which I believe in ancient Chinese iconography represented the four "corners" of the square plane of the earth in its earliest representations, and also the four directions and the four winds, all contained within the circle of the coin, which represented the great expanse of the heavens encircling the Earth (whether the Earth was perceived as a flat plane or a sphere, or something in-between).

So, did Zheng He imagine that he was traveling in a large circle around the outer-most edges of the plane of the Earth when he embarked on his travels, and if he veered too far off course his ship and those of his fleet would fall off the Earth? That seems to fly in the face of China's very early discovery of the properties of magnetism and its early use by their navigators to point ships in a certain direction. Indeed, herstory shows us that the Chinese, like the ancient Egyptians (pre-Muslim invasion), were not ones to throw out old knowledge and "dictum" when new knowledge and "dictum" came along. They just kept using the same symbols and incorporated the old into new concepts with a gloss of new intepretation, blending all that came before and all that was known now into a (more or less) harmonious whole. These were people who did not suffer from cognitive dissonance :)

One final note, sometimes, it is very difficult to tell ancient Chinese gaming pieces from ancient Chinese coins, and I believe there have been instances where the two have been mistaken for each other.

Some more coverage (lots of repeat articles out there!) on the discovery of this coin:

Science Daily, March 13, 2013
Smithsonian, March 15, 2013
The Chicago Tribune, March 14, 2013

Way to go, Gavin Menzies :) It's only a matter of time, methinks, before his theory is accepted seriously by a majority of historians and archaeologists.