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Zheng He’s fleets, as were tables of declination of the sun.
    Thanks to Tai Peng Wang, who brought the matter to my attention, and to the work of Xi Feilong, Yang Xi, and Tang Xiren, who have recently discovered the star maps of Zheng He’s voyages, we know which stars Zheng He’s fleet actually used to determine latitude and longitude on their passage to India. They sailed with the monsoon winds, starting across the Indian Ocean from the northwest tip of Sumatra at Pulau Rondo, now called Banda Atjeh, on October 10, 1432, determining latitude and longitude as follows: “Gauging the vertical positions of the given stars above the horizon in the east, west, northand south, they reached Sri Lanka.” Using Vega, Sagittarius, Gemini, and Poseidon, they arrived at Calicut (11° N, 76° E) on December 10. See the TPW paper “Zheng He’s delegation to the Papal Court at Florence” on the 1434 website.
    Finally, how accurate were Zheng He’s navigators? Two answers produce the same result: their measurement of declination at 22°23'30'' (correct to within two miles) and the accuracy of the eye, which can be judged to within a quarter of a degree—the full moon appears large but its diameter is under half a degree (thirty miles).
    It is my submission that Zheng He’s navigators were able to calculate latitude to within half a degree, or thirty miles, and longitude to within two seconds, or three degrees. When the fleets arrived in Venice and Florence, their methods of calculating latitude and longitude were transferred to Europeans. In due course, Columbus and Vespucci used them to reach the New World.

6
CAIRO AND THE RED SEA–NILE CANAL
    T he best place to understand the importance of the River Nile to Cairo and Egypt is from the Windows on the World on the 36th floor of the Ramses Hilton. Every time I visit Cairo, I make a point of quaffing lager there surrounded by swifts and swallows twittering at sunset. To the west, highlighted by the setting sun, are the plateau and the Pyramids. The Moqattam Hills are to the east. North and south, the great river storms out of Africa, traveling in a great curve past the Hilton to the green smudge of the delta up north.
    Between the Pyramids and the Moqattam Hills rests the large, wide valley over which modern Cairo sprawls. This valley was once more than eight hundred feet below the sea and some thirty to forty miles across. The enormous river gradually dried up thousands of years ago and became heavily forested and rich in game—elephants, hippopotamus, antelope, and all manner of deer and birds. The river, then as now, teemed with fish. Beautiful sunshine for most of the year coupled with the endless flow of water made life easy for hunters. 1 This is why Egypt has one of the oldest civilizations in the world, comparable to that of China along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers or Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates.
    Over the centuries the silt brought down through Africa by the mighty river has gradually been deposited on the eastern and westernbanks of what is now modern Cairo. As the river narrowed, the ports have moved steadily north.
    The first Europeans here were Greeks, who built a city at Heliopolis, about four miles south of the Ramses Hilton on the east bank of the Nile. The Romans built Babylon, north of Heliopolis; the Arabs built Al-Fustat/Misr (Cairo) still farther north, and in the late Middle Ages the port moved north of where the Hilton stands now—first to Maks and then to Bulaq, which is now opposite Cairo’s main railway station. As the ports migrated, so did the entrance to the Red Sea–Nile canal from the river. By the 1420s, the entrance was below what is now the Hilton. Looking to the northeast from the Windows on the World, one can still see its outline. When it was filled in 1899, the walls on either side were left, allowing it to retain water. Today the tramway passes right over this