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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 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.
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.
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
So the Italians win the latest round, the North American Discovery trophy moves back to Italy.
Nope that trophy still belong to the Norsemen. (If we are going to continue to insist on not counting the native Americans, that is). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
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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The evidence is so good, that sofar, we don't have any evidence about them ever being in the Americas in the first place.
It's "Discovery by a civilized man", so Norsemen mustn't count.
Essentially, to discover a continent you apparently need:
1 - To be white.
2 - A cup of tea. (ideally, with biscuits)
3 - A towel.
It takes a special kind of racism to imply that honesty and resilience are purely English traits.
"Native"? The only native people are Tanzanians! ;-) Or some Africans, anyway.
Ezekiel 23:20
I must say though, individually I do hate some more than others, but that is based upon personal experience so go get yourself a dictionary.
Oblig. Eddie Izzard clip... no flag, no country!
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.
It's "Discovery by a civilized man", so Norsemen mustn't count.
Essentially, to discover a continent you apparently need: 1 - To be white. 2 - A cup of tea. (ideally, with biscuits) 3 - A towel.
The Norsemen did indescribable things to civilized men with towels and cups of tea.
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
The first English monarch postdates Jesus by about 9 centuries. There was no "English King of that era".
The Knights Templar started about 11 centuries after Jesus, and they were French.
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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.
Nice hypothesis.
Too bad there were no "English" people at around 30 AD as the Angles and Saxons only invaded about 400 years after that followed by the Norman (some Norse blood in there too) invasion in 1066.
So are you saying they had a time machine too?
Mostly, they were their ancestors.
So are you saying they had a time machine too?
Even better, they had a TARDIS.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
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'.
Why give credit to a guy who's obviously abused the bottle all weekend and just hasn't come back down yet? ;-)
It reads more like the rambling of someone embarking on an impressive psychotic episode.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Until something is found predating L'anse aux Meadows, the Europeans to find the Americas were the Norse.
The northmen only lacked the tea :)
They where around their time likely the most civilized people in Europe/Scandinavia, if count bathing and washing etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They explained this on the "History" channel.
It was aliens.
(you know, I think I prefered it when they were the Hitler Channel, and 95% of their shows were WW2-related)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Most civilized in northern Europe and Gaul/Germania maybe, southern Europe's had cradles of civilization for several thousand years...
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.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Well, in the south civilization regarding hygiene etc. broke down just like everywhere else in 'christian' countries :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If we are going to continue to insist on not counting the native Americans, that is).
Since I'm not a native American descendant (my grandfathers are all Italian and Spanish - all but a gran-gran-grandfather from Portugal), from my point of view, yep - Columbus, the Norwegians and perhaps Marco Polo are the ones to give the trophy.
We are the prevalent civilization. It's harsh, it's rude, it's politically incorrect, but it's true nevertheless.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
But, the angles and Saxons fought for the land and the slaves. Who? The Pict's. Who were already there. So that shows what, a community already established. People have always migrated. To be with and where the food was. Or to see what's over the next hill. Or to capture that darling next door.
No, the trophy still is property of the local indigenous population.
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The problem with that is the indigenous population you are thinking of most likely killed off another group of people before Columbus got there.
Nope, I'm pretty sure that trophy is a permanent statue in Siberia.
I'm going with Phoenicians at about 350 BC as the first westerners in the Americas.
Oh yeah? Then explain why the first bible is in King's English, why don'tcha?
Really so if we "discover" life in another star system what would you say to that? Or if other beings "discovered" us? The use of the word discovered is legitimate in the case of Columbus.
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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.
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.
I think the reason the "Native Americans" don't count is because they didn't return to their point of origin to share their discovery....
So, since Marco Polo failed to tell anybody about the Alaskan coast in any way that the world understood for many hundreds of years, can he really get any more credit than the Vikings?
It's "Discovery by a civilized man", so Norsemen mustn't count.
Essentially, to discover a continent you apparently need:
1 - To be white.
2 - A cup of tea. (ideally, with biscuits)
3 - A towel.
To discover a continent you need to find a continent your culture wasn't previously aware of.
So early Native Americans discovered the Americas while coming over from Siberia.
A long time later the Thule (ancestors of the Inuit) also came from Siberia and discovered North America.
Then the Norse discovered the Americas from Europe, but that knowledge wasn't really preserved even among Norse culture.
Meaning the Americas were still available to be discovered by Columbus when he sailed over.
The reason we generally consider Columbus to discover North America is because most of us are culturally white Europeans and for us his was the discovery that stuck around.
If you consider an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon jungle, have one of those tribesmen go on a long journey and find Rio De Janeiro. Within his tribe I'd say that tribeman had discovered Rio De Janeiro.
I stole this Sig
Malaria. Went the other way than Small Pox did for the Spanish.
Of course we think we are the civilized part of the world.
We destroyed every other candidate in the last centuries!
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Oh, there is all kinds of "special" in that post. To call that racisim, is to completly ignore the insanity of that babble and actually take it serious. The guy isn't right in the head.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
What were they doing in England then?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I don't want to excuse the "History" channel's many transgressions (and there are many) but they did air a well received documentary on the subject a couple of years back. Search the intertubes for "WHO REALLY DISCOVERED AMERICA". Most of the theories presented are speculative, though some are supported by circumstancial evidence. No aliens involved (this time).
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.
Native Americans also came over from Europe.
That is one of the explanations but there are many others, like: oops the muslims do it, so we don't do it.
Or the fact that bathes where places where people became "sexual active" with other married or non married partners.
Etc. etc. there are plenty of explanations ... all make sense and likely none alone was the reason.
Especially: hygiene is many things. The plague was mainly possible because the sewer systems broke down and where not maintained. The plague is distributed by rats and flea ... not by not bathing, or by bathing.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
There's something to be said for a discovery that's remembered by someone 100 years later or even just 10 years later. That's one thing that these attempts to steal credit from Columbus don't have. They don't have any lasting impact.
It's like that Indian kid with his email program and the Huffington Post. It had no influence or lasting impact because no one knew about it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Wandering around like Mongols isn't civilized.
That's not to say that there weren't genuinely civilized (if brutal) parts of the Americas. But a lot of it wasn't.
Ignoring the differences demeans the cultures that actually accomplished something.
Plenty of "Indians" have reason to look down on other "Indians". They weren't all just one homogenous mass.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
Or just a very successful troll.
Well of course the plague was distributed by the fleas on the rats. But diseases spread where people congregate. Bath houses were one of those places. Around the same time you also saw the academic centers break down as well, due to similar reasons.
I'm pretty sure that the G.P. intended that post as humorous. I didn't LOL, but I smiled. The weird thing is that people seem to taking it as straight.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Mkay, heh, you just sit there and read your book and believe what you are told to, do not ask questions out of fear it may make waves, and go quietly into that good night. It is your right.
Taking your point, but it's not even certain to be correct. There's minor evidence that the transition to human was sufficiently geographically spread to include to include not only Africa, and parts of Asia and Europe. Certainly the Neanderthal and Denisovian genes entered the gene-pool as we were becoming human, and the Denisovian genes apparently entered in Asia, while the Neanderthal genes probably entered in either Europe of the Middle East. This can be inferred from the populations where the respective genes are currently situated. And this, in turn, implies that the transition to humanity was a rather gradual process. I'm sure there were points of inflection, and several significan changes along the way, but the gene pool is sufficiently continuous (with local features) that it *must* have happened on a time scale that allowed the gene pool to become relatively homogenous across all three continents. (I'm not sure about Austrailia, but I think that the current aborigines were already fully human before they arrived.)
OTOH, it is worth remembering that just Africa alone holds greater human genetic diversity than the entire rest of the world. So that where most of the speciation happened.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The vikings DID tell people. There was a failed attempt at a real estate deal. It's mentioned in the sagas, so it made it all the way into popular culture. But it was pagan literature, so the Church ignored it, and the Christian world, in general, didn't hear about it. (For that matter, I've never read "El Cid", but I'm rather sure he existed.)
FWIW, there have also been repeated stories of individuals who returned from the "new world". Most dating from long before Columbus. There's a story about an Irish saint, I believe that there's a similar (though less religious) story from Portugal. Etc. Nobody took them seriously enough to check, because doing so would be quite dangerous.
What Columbus did was start the first economically successful trans-oceanic contact. (Even that was on a hope until gold was discovered.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Was the 43AD Roman invasion of Brittan really about vanity, or was it more than just mother Mary?
Actually there are several pieces of evidence that the Norse travelled widely in Northern America. Not convincing, and not proof, but quite suggestive. They also suggest that the particular people who left the evidence weren't killed, though there's no evidence that they ever returned home.
Do remember that the wandering Norse were usually second sons of the noble class, or members of their household. They didn't have much to come back to, so settling down in a tribe of natives wouldn't have been such a bad deal. And they had presents to win friendship with. Iron knives, e.g. Lief Ericsson's party did fairly well for months before the locals decided that this was just too many strangers camping on THEIR hunting grounds. (Or whatever really set them off. The explanation in the saga isn't any more the cause than Jenkin's ear was the cause of the "War of Jenkin's ear". It was just the final straw.) Lone wanderers wouldn't have caused that kind of problem, and would have seemed quite interresting.
That said, wandering around alone *is* dangerous. You wouldn't do it unless your boat was too damaged to trust for the trip back. But that's *not* an unreasonable supposition.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Wait. Are you saying the Romans invaded England because that's where the food (Picts) were?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Whoosh
England was considered part of Brittan, so where exactly would the vanity be in Roman invasion of Brittan?
The trolls eat well today.
Come on guys, the OP clearly has broader knowledge than the incoherence of his rant would imply. Whether the first post was a classic troll, or an example of Poe's law, half of these posts are just an attempt to rile up the audience.
No good deed goes unpunished...
A side effect of being able to shape history to one persons liking and record the truth obfuscated behind metaphor and controversy.
"... 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.
Exactly, over the polar cap in the original migration that has archaeological evidence dating upwards of 16k years back in the US, so where did the Mayans actually come from, and when did they develop math skills and apply them to astronomy, and why did the Catholic church destroy their written records.