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Aside from many original inventions, the Chinese were also early original pioneers in the discovery of natural phenomena which can be found in the human body, the environment of the world, and the immediate Solar System. They also discovered many concepts in mathematics. The list below contains discoveries which found their origins in China.
Chinese exploration includes exploratory Chinese travels abroad, on land and by sea, from the travels of Han dynasty diplomat Zhang Qian into Central Asia during the 2nd century BC until the Ming dynasty treasure voyages of the 15th century that crossed the Indian Ocean and reached as far as East Africa.
1513 – Jorge Álvares becomes the first European to reach China by sea, landing on Nei Lingding Island at the Pearl River Delta. [1] 1513 – Vasco Núñez de Balboa crosses the Isthmus of Panama and reaches the Bay of San Miguel, reaching the "Mar del Sur" (Pacific Ocean). [2] 1513 – Juan Ponce de León explores "La Florida" and the Yucatán.
He then led a voyage into the Red Sea, the first ever made by a European fleet. 1513: Jorge Álvares is the first European to land in China at Tamão in the Zhujiang (Pearl River) estuary. 1516–1517: Rafael Perestrello, a cousin of Christopher Columbus, leads a small Portuguese trade mission to Canton (Guangzhou), then under the Ming Dynasty.
At Damaidi in Ningxia, 3,172 cliff carvings dating to 6000–5000 BC have been discovered, "featuring 8,453 individual characters such as the sun, moon, stars, gods and scenes of hunting or grazing", according to researcher Li Xiangshi.
He was best known for his controversial book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, in which he asserts that the fleets of Chinese Admiral Zheng He visited the Americas prior to European explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492, and that the same fleet circumnavigated the globe a century before the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan.
The voyages sent the fleet to the Western Ocean (西洋), which was the maritime region encompassing today's South China Sea and Indian Ocean during the Ming dynasty. [28] More specifically, contemporary sources such as the Yingya Shenglan place the dividing line between the Eastern Ocean and Western Ocean at Brunei. [29]
Portuguese explorer Jorge Álvares becomes the first European to reach China by sea. 1513: Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the Spanish governor of Veragua (Panama), crosses the Isthmus of Panama to the shore of a sea he names the South Sea (Pacific Ocean). Balboa claims all lands draining into the sea for Spain. 1515