A few million people "discovered" it thousands of years before he "discovered" it.
A "few million"? I'm afraid that number is greatly exaggerated
Seeing as how in 500 bc there was still less than 100 million people world wide...
I do believe he's referring to native over millennia.
Originally Posted by
Alidar Jarok 
Skepticism is also very healthy for historians (as one of my history professors put it, if we don't question what we read, we're simply just a weird brand of English major).
Zawee Hawas being a prime example, you even SUGGEST the Sphinx is much older than he says, and NOT in the image of Chephren, he'll chew you out....even though the evidence of water erosion, which only could have happened thousands of years earlier, is apparent.
I don't think they're arrogant so much as stubborn. They spent so many years building up and defending their arguments, that they don't want to see these ideas destroyed (there are several examples of famous people I've learned about in both history and anthropology that took their ideas to the grave in spite of the general opinion moving against them). As for Zahi Hawass, he's certainly one of the most famous Egyptologists today (you'll see him in pretty much any History channel program about Egypt, for example) and he does tend to have a very dominating personality, but I don't think he's the only type of historian out there (I've seen all types, some far more open-minded than others).
Anyone read Charles Pellegrino? He's been known to work simultaneously in entomology, forensic physics, paleogenetics, preliminary design of advanced rocket systems, astrobiology, and marine archaeology. As well as a Star Trek novelist. A real polymath. His book on Santorini as Atlantis, Unearthing Atlantis, is a key historical text for me. Anyway, in that book, he tells a story of travelling into the Egyptian desert with an unnamed archaeologist, and discussing ideas on dating with him (more on that in a moment), the archaeologist was so upset that everything his 'beliefs' were based on might be wrong, that he threatened to kill himself and leave Pellegrino to die in the desert with no way back. Took some talking down, apparently.
My curiosity was piqued, and I undertook some research of my own, and I'm fairly convinced that dating systems between 2000 - 700 BC are fairly screweed up across the board. Each historian/archaeologist concentrates on one region and doesn't look at the wider picture of, say, the Eastern Med as a whole. It seems apparent to me there's some discrepancy as to 'when' events happened as numbered in the current calendar, but because the dates aren't considered outside the discipline of the people numbering them, they don't make a lot of sense. The point being these academics will defend their entrenched methodology and numbering, especially if an 'amateur' like me was to write an article on it. Their belief in what they do is even more zealous than the fiercest Christian.
But I digress.
The whole Zheng He thing has been put under a cloud by the Menzies book. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. I wish our ancestors had been more meticulous with the bookkeeping. Or the bookburners less zealous. Or the government officals less careless. Whatever.
To the OP, there are some good book and docos out there about the Vikings, have a look at them.
On a side note to that, Vikings worked as mercenaries in India in the 700s-800s, iirc, and not far from where I live in Australia, there's an Aboriginal rock carving of a boat that look suspiciously like a longboat. One wonders.
