The DNA test that Dr. Lovric referred to identified several explanations for these phenomena. The research paper on Dalmatian names he relied on has not yet been translated from Croatian into English. Nonetheless, Menzies concludes, with breathtaking specificity, that the "results are part of a logical sequence of events": One of Zheng He's ships berthed on the coast; sailors and slave girls jumped ship and melted into the countryside; the fleet proceeded to Venice and Florence and returned to Dalmatia in late 1434; and on the way home, the Chinese were joined by a Dalmatian fleet, under Adm. Harvatye Mariakyr, which discovered 30 Pacific islands and gave them Dalmatian names.
In trying to establish that the Chinese visit was the "spark that ignited the Renaissance," Menzies relies on a fundamental fallacy of logic: after-this-therefore-because-of-this reasoning. The Nung Shu, the world's first mass-produced book (published in 1313), and Yongle Dadian, a massive encyclopedia consisting of 11,095 books (completed in 1421), he claims, contained information related to latitude and longitude, surveying, printing, perspective in art, gunpowder, helicopter design, the theory that the Earth revolved around the sun, and much, much more. Since the Chinese emperor wanted the Europeans to "render tribute" to him, Menzies argues, he must have ordered that the tomes be brought to Italy to educate the "barbarians." And the Renaissance masters, in turn, must have borrowed, built on or plagiarized from their Chinese mentors.
