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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."

9 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. And then... by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...he built the first American Swimming pool. You can guess where this is going.

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    1. Re:And then... by itzly · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, that was his brother, Water Polo.

  2. That's the Italian way for you by marcello_dl · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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  3. You discover countries... by having flags! by fantomas · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oblig. Eddie Izzard clip... no flag, no country!

  4. It's fake by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Poloshopped

  5. Re:Native Americans anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Are you really this stupid? We're not in 16th-century Spain. We're now on that exoplanet, we set up schools there, and in those schools we are teaching that the planet was "discovered" by the non-indigenous population. And the only reason the indigenous population doesn't have the power to refute that is because we killed them all. Sorry if the accurate portrayal of history is "tedious" but it's necessary if you fuckers are ever going to learn to live in peace with the rest of the globe.

  6. Get in line by paiute · · Score: 3, Funny

    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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  7. Re:So the Italians win the latest round ... by halivar · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh yeah? Then explain why the first bible is in King's English, why don'tcha?

  8. I solved the mystery by slashmydots · · Score: 4, Funny

    Actually, there is strong evidence that the Native Americans discovered America.