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Maps Suggest Marco Polo May Have "Discovered" America
An anonymous reader writes in with news about maps attributed to Marco Polo that seem to show the coast of Alaska. "For a guy who claimed to spend 17 years in China as a confidant of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo left a surprisingly skimpy paper trail. No Asian sources mention the footloose Italian. The only record of his 13th-century odyssey through the Far East is the hot air of his own Travels, which was actually an "as told to" penned by a writer of romances. But a set of 14 parchments, now collected and exhaustively studied for the first time, give us a raft of new stories about Polo's journeys and something notably missing from his own account: maps. If genuine, the maps would show that Polo recorded the shape of the Alaskan coast—and the strait separating it from Asia—four centuries before Vitus Bering, the Danish explorer long considered the first European to do so. Perhaps more important, they suggest Polo was aware of the New World two centuries before Columbus."
...he built the first American Swimming pool. You can guess where this is going.
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So the Italians win the latest round, the North American Discovery trophy moves back to Italy.
So what they're saying is that he knew about the new world before it was mainstream. Typical hipster.
There has been much research suggesting Marco Polo was a liar. a quick Google search showed this site: http://website.lineone.net/~mc... Many scholars believe that he may have just traveled to India and talked to travelers from China. They point out that Marco Polo never pointed out major inventions like paper, that were unseen in Europe but common in China.
Leiv Eiriksson?
I am not sure how any European can claim to be the first to discover America when the continent was populated by humans for thousands of years.
We will be the last ones to rid ourselves of the ridiculous idea that Columbus "discovered" the new world. Read historical accounts of the guy!!! He was a crook looking for gold. The vast majority of the wayfaring sailors of the time knew the Earth WAS NOT FLAT. And there is plenty of evidence to show that the Vikings knew that the Western Hemisphere existed. There is absolutely no reason why we should keep acknowledging this idiot.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
Of course there is good evidence that Native Americans killed them all off somehow....
Ignore the barbaric, idiotic vikings...
So I guess the yanks no longer own it. Time to hand it back!
A guy who is reported as traveling in China in fact was getting into America 200 years before a guy who bumped into America when trying to reach India using a shortcut which in fact was much longer.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
From the quoted article: "One reason the parchments have languished since then is their idiosyncrasy. They tell of people and places absent not just from Polo’s narrative but from known history. And they’re an awkward fit for the era’s known map styles—Portolan sailing charts, the grids and projections of Ptolemy, and the medieval schematics known as mappae mundi" Looks like this too will ultimately be attributed to bored late-Medieval period pranksters.
he saw (old) Chinese maps...It does not mean he actually was there. It is rumoured that the Portuguese "discovered" so much of the world because of the very same reason.
If the journey were reversed, Columbus would have discovered the Azores. The first exploration by Europeans [who recorded their discovery] of continental North America in 1497 was led by John Cabot. He was always thought of as the discoverer of America until the early C19th (why would a bunch of British immigrants credit a Spaniard?).
Then came the War of 1814, burning of the White House, etc. and a wave of anti-British sentiment. Suddenly, the US's founding father became good ol' Christopher.
Because discovery imply being unknown before. If you are already inhabiting the body (carabic, australia, americas) this is already known to you. So naturally discovery implies the perspective of somebody for which it was previously unknown. Combine that with the fact most of the history here around is seen from the european perspective at worst, eurasian at best, and it is immediately understandable why this is seen as a discovery.
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What about all the people discovering new planets, new species, new galaxies?
Who really cares about some guy that ran into some land that had already been discovered and had people living in it?
Hell, there have been all sorts of artifacts found from Egypt and China in the US from eons before this supposedly discovery.
Old news are old.
n/t
Just because one group of people knows about something, doesn't mean another group can't discover it as well. It would be much like if aliens visited Earth. They could discover Earth, and humanity. Doesn't matter we were already here, it is still a discovery to them.
If the Chinese did explore the Americas well before Columbus, they would have done better to have brought back some chili peppers?
While he was enjoying the view, he remarked, "Ah, Van Nuys.."
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Poloshopped
Table-ized A.I.
Hmm, it always grates against my soul when people use names without checking whether it is usage; I'm probably just being pedantic.
So, historically things like last names were not commonly used the way we do now; I don't recall when they came into use. So, you would call people by their personal names + perhaps a description - 'John the Baptist', 'Leonardo da Vinci', 'Genghis Khan' etc. The last is not really a name as much as a title: 'Great Khan' - his name was Temüjin, but still you see him referred to as 'Khan', as if it were his last name. Sigh. And then, of course, Marco Polo. I suspect it is a resonably safe guess that 'Polo' is not the correct way to refer to him - he should be called 'Marco'.
Until something is found predating L'anse aux Meadows, the Europeans to find the Americas were the Norse.
Marco Polo did never ever discover anything. What he ever did is traveling under Mongol Protection accompanied by small Mongol Warrior detachments using their knowledge of the countryside.
Everything else I call bunkers.
When Columbus pulled into harbor that day in 1492, he had to wait for a berth as the docks were crowded with Vikings, Chinese, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Micronesians, and extraterrestrials.
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Really you should read something about, and not just the simple BS you learned in 3rd grade about how all white people are evil and he really did not discover anything. If you actually read something about him you will realize that he was a great guy. Sure he had his problems, but overall he was better than 90 % of the others out there. When Eurpoeans found America it was inevitable that the natives were going to get the short end of the stick, but being that as it may he was the one guy you wanted to 'discover america' He did not come over to 'exploit' the new world, unlike most of the hangers oners that he brought over. Actually he was brought back to Europe in Chains because he was not doing enough to further the interests of the elite (read exploit natives). So lets celebrate Columbus, and all explorers on Columbus day. America has been discovered many times by many different ethnicities, and they should all be celebrated. Fuck even the Native Americans are not native to America. They came across on the bearing land bridge and supplanted some other indeginous people or animals.
-Fun Fact. Christopher Columbus had red hair when he was young. That means that two Europeans who discovered America by contemporary accounts were red heads.
That just goes to show you most people are faggots and will happily make fun of people for not knowing the stuff they do not know on a level that is different from the level they do not know stuff on. Knowledge is gay. What is important is good looking hair, a large penis size, and not being part of one of the hated races(white people)
Marco Vater Polo the III Discovered Europe for the first time, the primitive Europeans little appreciated the irony there in.
Of course Europe had been discovered seven thousand years before, before even the evolution of the modern indigenous tribal Europeans by enlightened peoples from the Americas who brought the light of the world to these dark an and twisted savages. Realizing the Europeans were not yet ready for advanced development they retreated quietly back to their homelands across the seas.
I found it when I went back in time in my time drone 200bc
I'm going with Phoenicians at about 350 BC as the first westerners in the Americas.
People had been crossing over from Asia for thousands of years when Marco Polo was in China. It shouldn't be a surprise that some knowledge of the other continent was circulating.
Actually, there is strong evidence that the Native Americans discovered America.
Native Americans might argue that. And they would have a point.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
"While in Egypt, Musa explained the way that he had inherited the throne after the abdication of the previous ruler. He explained that in 1310, the emperor financed the building of 200 vessels of men and another 200 of supplies to explore the limits of the sea "
The story suggests that 13th century Malian emperor Abu Bakr II led an expedition that reached the mouth of the Amazon river before disappearing forever into the rain forest.
This part of the US wasn't added until 1959.
...(I know that's not generally done) two things are apparent: 1) The "discovery" should be credited to the Chinese, not this Polo character, and 2) the supporting evidence is all very shaky, especially the provenence behind the maps.
Malaria. Went the other way than Small Pox did for the Spanish.
but it has never been clear what maps he showed the Queen of Spain. If he had a map from Marco Polo that showed a large chunk of something East of Asia that was not Spain, I think this would have been a compelling argument to go check out what was to the West of Spain.
Leif Ericson out of Europe for "first discoveries" (although it was another man who actually told him about it). Since the Baffin Island camps at least lasted until the 17th century ... a MUCH more solid claim than any of the southerners.
for folks coming from the East, the date keeps getting pushed back, however long before the Sphinx existed at this point of knowledge although rather later than when Australia was settled.
The "Greenland" the Vikings discovered was Labrador, hence being green. For whatever reason, people interpreted it as being a different island.
A small minority of researchers, including Ivan van Sertima formerly of Rutgers University, and Malian researcher Gaoussou Diawara, claim that Abubakari II successfully traveled to the New World.[3][4] [5]
The consensus among mainstream archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians, linguists, and other modern pre-Columbian scholars is that there is no evidence of any such voyage reaching the Americas, and that there are insufficient evidential grounds to suppose there has been contact between Africa and the New World at any point in the pre-Columbian era.[6] A BBC article titled "Africa's greatest explorer", summarizes the controversy from the perspectives of the scholars and historians in Mali.[7]
The first tip off that it's probably bullshit is the 400 ships claim. How many times has any empire ever commissioned hundreds of ships for a singular task? This guy is just puffing himself up.
And second, the "disappearing forever" means there conveniently is no need to have credible witnesses.
Re: "No Asian sources mention the footloose Italian."
I have seen in a documentary, original, Chinese documentation mentioning Marco Polo. The Chinese had a durable bureaucracy that was professional and educated. The manuscript was created in the correct era too, which is to say during the reign of Kublai Khan.
I cannot provide the source references as it was about 10 years ago (or more) that I saw it. That's kind of a bummer but I know I saw it.
"... they suggest Polo was aware of the New World two centuries before Columbus."
I'm not sure Columbus was ever "aware of the New World"; he probably always thought he had reached the East Indies. On the other hand, it's a well-known fact that the Vikings or the Norse "discovered" the Americas no later than the 11th century.