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Maps Suggest Marco Polo May Have "Discovered" America

Posted by samzenpus on from the he-saw-it-first dept.

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."

4 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Big Old Liar by Quato · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Big Old Liar by CRCulver · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Whether Marco Polo was in China or not continues to be hotly debated by scholars. Only two years ago, the German historian Hans Ulrich Vogel published a major new work presenting evidence for Marco Polo's sojourn in China on the basis of economic data.

      I've often found unconvincing the argument that Marco Polo did not go to China because he did not mention certain habits of the Chinese that dazzle Westerners. As an American by birth and upbringing but long resident in Europe, it amuses me that American visitors immediately express amazement at certain customs here that I've grown so used to that I don't even notice anything special about them myself, and I'd be unlikely to include them in any rambling oral account I told about life in Europe.

  2. Re:And then... by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...he built the first American Swimming pool

    My brothers and I would call out instead: "Marcus...Welby...Marcus...Welby..." to avoid being too conventional.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  3. Re: So the Italians win the latest round ... by neoritter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Bathing in Europe broke down because of the black plague. Up until that point the public baths built by the Romans were still in wide usage. People incorrectly associated bathing with the Black Plague and of course decided to cut it out as much as possible from their lives.