Chinese Knew North America More Than 4000 Years Ago!

Secondary data are often considered to be more reliable if compiled some time after an event. The person speaking of the event was not a witness, not a participant, perhaps lived centuries afterward. Yet, secondary data can explain contradictions and can seem objective. It may be. But secondary data is usually loaded with interpretation. Suppose a person quotes Rafaela Gonzales’s dairy, which is verified to have been written by her in 1985. She says she climbed Guadalupe Peak that year, and no reason exists to disbelieve the statement. But the person quoting, the interpreter, claims this was the first time a person climbed the mountain. Disproving the interpretation is easy and starts with a suspicion: the date of 1985 is late for anyone “first” climbing a rather small “mountain” in a well-explored place like Texas. Next, earlier diaries can probably be found from the ranching families who lived there from the early 1880’s and the much earlier Spanish explorers. Anyway, there is a USGS survey marker very near the summit which bears a documented date much earlier than 1985. Also, a stainless steel pylon (about six feet high) was there long before 1985. Still there, it commemorates an early airline mail route. Somebody had to have put it there. All of these considerations are verification tests relying on commonly accepted logic.

The “suspicion” above is also more or less an interpretation. Something like: “Even if Chinese explorers were in West Texas a handful of thousands of years ago, they probably were not led by a woman.” This kind of interpretation is based on the fact that before the present day, very few women were explorers. They either were not allowed to be or were doing other things. And this is a form of negative evidence. An exception could exist.

Thus, statements of any kind, even “objective” observations, may be laced with interpretation. So can conclusions and inferences. Consider this interesting phenomenon the next time you and another driver and the policeman talk after a fender-bender.