A couple of years ago I wrote about the ridiculous linguistic evidence put forward for the claim in the book 1421 that the Chinese fleet of 1421 reached the Americas. Well, things aren't getting any better. Not only have the 1421 people people not answered any of the criticism of their argument, but the new stuff on their web site is if anything even worse than the old.
The web site now includes an interactive map of British Columbia. The red dots represent putative pieces of evidence. Click on one and in theory (but only part of the time, in practice) a description of the evidence apears below. Clicking on the northernmost dot, which looks to be around Dease Lake, produces this:
Inuit = Yin uit (people from Yin) (Martin Tai).
My previous post dealt with the problems with this equation, but its location on the map really brings out the utter incompetence of these "researchers". The vicinity of the dot is not anywhere near Inuit territory. No part of British Columbia is Inuit territory, nor any part of the Yukon except for a strip in the far north, right along the Arctic Ocean. The nearest Inuit would be about 1,000km away. On the page devoted to linguistic evidence, however, the Inuit are said to be found in Vancouver, which is about 700km South of Dease Lake, not to mention nearly 2,000km from their actual location. We're supposed to take seriously the geographical claims of people who haven't a clue as to where the Inuit live and can't tell the difference between Vancouver and Dease Lake?
P.S.: There's a web site devoted to debunking 1421. Check out 1421exposed.
Posted by Bill Poser at May 19, 2006 08:40 PM