Exploration: Did China discover The American continent before Columbus?

Xinhua newsagency reports that according to Efrain Hallax, a researcher at Panama's International Maritime University (UMIP), Chinese admiral Zheng He discovered the American continent 72 years before Christopher Columbus.

Hallax said that Zheng carried out seven trips between 1405 and 1434, exploring the islands of the Pacific Ocean until he arrived to what is currently Chile's Tierra del Fuego.
"Zheng He retired after his 7th trip and his navigation maps which are the testimony to those trips were sold by his generals to Portuguese and Genoese navigators, who later used them for their exploration trips," Hallax said, adding that Zheng He's navigation maps were taken to Portugal as contraband by merchants in that century.

Some of Zheng's maps are currently in England and Italy but they are not made public to protect the official history of the arrival of Columbus, Hallax said.

England take part in a conspiracy theory? How 'ludicrous'