Широко известный в узких кругах британский ученый-флотофил Гэвин Мензис, автор скандальной теории "1421 - Китайцы открыли Америку и весь остальной мир", снова сделал это! Теперь он утверждает, что Америку открыли минойцы. Их могучие корабли (в три раза больше, чем у Колумба) бороздили, с Америкой велась активная торговля, там же добывалась медь, а еще минойцы успели посеять среди индейцев свою ДНК. И завезли в Европу курево. Надо думать, что только Санторинский взрыв остановил победоносное шествие. ............................................ It takes a brave soul to rewrite history by sailing against current thought. More than 500 years after Christopher Columbus "discovered" America, another seaman is doing just that, entering previously uncharted academic waters with claims that other "Europeans" -- the Minoans -- got there first, thousands of years earlier. Gavin Menzies, 72 years old, is drawing on his experience as a former British Royal Navy submarine commander to prove in a book he is writing that the Minoans were such supreme seafarers that they crossed an ocean and discovered the New World 4,000 years ago. Eight years after he made controversial headlines with his first American history book, "1421: The Year China Discovered America," which sold more than a million copies in 130 countries, he may spark debate anew by claiming that the Bronze Age civilization of Crete, which built magnificent palaces, devised systems of writing and developed a trading empire, got rich on vast quantities of copper mined in America. Transworld Publishers undertook his first book, in which he claimed that a Chinese eunuch led a fleet of junks to America 71 years before Columbus. The book led to invitations to lecture at universities including Harvard, to an honorary professorship at Yunnan University in China, to the sale of film rights to Sky Motion Pictures and to HarperCollins snapping up the sequel in 2008, "1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance." "Revisionist history tends to sell exceptionally well," says Luigi Bonomi, a leading literary agent who represents Mr. Menzies. "There is a huge audience eager to read new things about history." Criticism ensued, with several academics dismissing Mr. Menzies' earlier books as fiction masquerading as history. As he did back then, Mr. Menzies remains unwavering from his beliefs. He claims his latest evidence for his book, which doesn't have a publishing date or a title yet, solves the mystery of which ancient civilization mined thousands of copper mines around Lake Superior on the Canadian-American border as early as 2,200 B.C., leaving behind thousands of knives, harpoons and other objects. Vessels depicted in Minoan frescoes and the remains of one of them -- the Uluburun wreck found on the Mediterranean seabed in 1982 with a cargo of copper ingots and artifacts from seven different civilizations -- have convinced him that their ships were advanced enough for ocean travel. The frescoes and the wreck's surviving fragments, he claims, gave him enough detail to work out the number of rowers, the type and efficiency of sails and the sailing capacity. "We can make accurate estimates of the length, width and draught of the ships and hence their seagoing capability," he explains in a phone interview from his home in central London, sounding resolute. "The ships could sail into the wind as well as before it, and lower sail very quickly in the event of an unexpected squall." He also claims to have DNA proof that the Minoans carried a rare gene found today among Native Americans around Lake Superior and scientific tests matching the region's "uniquely pure" copper to the Uluburun ingots. Pointing to evidence of indigenous American plants being transported to other civilizations -- including nicotine traces found in ancient Egyptian mummies and maize-cobs carved on their temples -- he says that the Egyptians with their flimsy vessels weren't great seafarers and that only the Minoans, with whom they traded, could have undertaken trans-Atlantic travel. One would expect that if the Minoans carried tobacco from the Americas to Egypt, evidence of American tobacco should exist around Crete. "There is such evidence in the form of a tobacco beetle found buried beneath the 1450 B.C. volcanic ash of a merchant's house in Akrotiri, the Minoan town...This tobacco beetle, Lasioderma Serricorne, was indigenous to the Americas. It should be remembered tobacco didn't grow in Europe in 1450 B.C.," Mr. Menzies says. Despite his confidence, Mr. Menzies is bracing himself for ill-winds and a storm over his new theories. Although he has yet to finish his Minoan book, some academics are again skeptical ahead of having a chance to read the evidence. Although Professor Carl Johannessen, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon and co-author of "World Trade and Biological Exchanges before 1492," is intrigued by Mr. Menzies's latest research and applauds his previous efforts as "a powerful search for ancient knowledge," he says, "I am convinced that the Minoans were not the first or the only sailors crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans." Meanwhile, Susan Martin, an associate professor of archaeology at Michigan State University who specializes in Lake Superior's prehistoric archaeology, says, "There is no evidence of any exploration or exploitation of the mineral resources by anyone other than Native American users." Professor John Bennet, a Minoan expert at the University of Sheffield, argues that, while it is theoretically possible that Minoans reached America, their ships were too small to carry sufficient supplies and cargo for regular long voyages. And Cemal Pulak, an associate professor at Texas A&M University who led the Uluburun excavation, says that such ambitious seafaring wouldn't have been feasible. Although the vessels were sturdy, they didn't have decks to endure storms and rough seas, he explains, adding that the Uluburun copper came from Cyprus. Undeterred, Mr. Menzies counters that the Minoan ships were three times the size of Columbus's, that ancient artifacts found at Lake Superior match those from the Uluburun wreck, and that indigenous Americans had no knowledge of mining or smelting copper artifacts. Rewriting history is easier said than done. Only dictators and Hollywood films do it with ease. Certainly, Mr. Menzies isn't the first person to challenge America's earliest history. The Mormons have claimed that the Jaredite people from the Middle East discovered America 4,000 years ago, and others have argued that Leif Eriksson, the Norse explorer, got there first, half a millennium before Columbus. Every year since 1934, America has set aside a public holiday to remember Columbus. The Minoans are likely to have to wait a while for their own remembrance day. скрыть ");document.close(); ............................................ Мензис велик и прекрасен - будем надеяться, он еще неоднократно порадует нас своими эпохальными открытиями!