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A-sailing into cloud-cuckoo land.

Historians can be a funny bunch and, at the moment, none is funnier than Gavin Menzies.

Menzies has just come up a with a new theory on world exploration that puts the Europeans well and truly in their places.

According to the revisionist, the world was explored and mapped by the Chinese decades before Magellan, Columbus or even Jimmy Cook hit the shores of the undiscovered lands.

Apparently the world's great explorer was one Admiral Zheng who zipped about the oceans with a fleet of rather large junks.

Now when I say large, it is alleged that these beauties had nine masts and measured 122 metres in length by 27 metres wide. To put it into perspective, our boy Menzies reckons the Chinese were coasting the coasts 600 years ago in teak vessels the size of modern aircraft carriers.

It gets better.

When they discovered Australia - several hundred years before Cook - the Chinese built small villages and mined for precious stones and metals.

Our good historian says there's plenty of evidence of Chinese culture in Australia - such as plants, carved stones and kangaroos in the emperor of the time's zoo in China.

Now, I suppose it could be plausible - were it not for the fact that we have never heard of this before - if it were not so extreme. Wooden ships the size of carriers? I ask you...

And you'd sort of expect such a big historical revamp would have made the news somewhere in this fair land some time before now.

But we'll leave the last words on the theory to those who should know a bit about Admiral Zheng - the Chinese themselves.

Now, these guys have been studying Zheng for hundreds of years and it is reported they are a tad embarrassed about the suggestion he toured the world before anyone else.

One leading museum curator from China said there was not a lot of evidence about Zheng other than theories. No relics, no boats, nothing.

Actually, I have a theory. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandad Jonah Ahab, better known as 'land-ho' to his relatives, actually discovered Europe before it was there.

He was in his giant skin bathtub one day with a couple of female friends when all of a sudden a giant wind blew and ...

If there is something that has really got up your nose, let Grumpy Old Coot know at grumpy@webwombat.com