Marco Polo

Explorer ... Merchant

1254 to 1324

Marco Polo is famous for his travels through Asia. He was perhaps one of the first Europeans to travel into China, which was then a part of the Mongolian Empire. While in China young Polo is said to have developed a friendship with Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty. He became famous for the book that told the story of his travels in India and along the Silk Road through China.

Marco Polo was born in Venice, Italy around 1254. In 1271, when he was about 17 years old, he traveled to Asia with his father and uncle.  When he returned to Venice 24 years later in 1295 (seventeen of those years were said to be in China), he became a popular storyteller in regard to his travels in the Far East.

In 1298, during a conflict between Venice and the North Italian seaport city of Genoa, he was captured and imprisoned by the Genoese. While imprisoned there, Polo dictated the story of his travels to a cell mate who later published the story as a book, “The Travels of Marco Polo”, which created a heightened interest in trade with China and India alike.

The book is credited with being the “spark” that promoted exploration events such as that of Columbus’s search for a shorter trade route to the Far East. This occurred as you know more than a hundred years later, when he stumbled upon, or as historians often say, when Columbus discovered America in 1492.

Although Polo's book describes paper money and the burning of coal, which was news to Europeans at that time, the book fails to mention the Great Wall of China, chopsticks, and foot binding; this has created doubt in the minds of some skeptics as to whether or not Marco Polo had really gone to China, or had he, simply dictated his book based on hearsay alone.   But in his defense, you may recall that the Great Wall familiar to us today is a Ming Dynasty (which began in 1368) structure, so it would not have been built for at least 100 years after the travels described by Polo.

On the other hand, forks were known to exist in Italy as early as the 11^th century but were not very common until the 14^th century, but practically everyone at the time did use a knife and spoon at least to assist the fingers / hands during the process of eating, so I’m wondering why Polo would not have noticed or mentioned that The Chinese had been using chop sticks to eat with for more than 2000 years at the time of his visit.

Add to that little oversight, the fact that a young Italian male somewhere between the age of 17 and 40 (he was in China for 17 years but absent from Vienna a total of 24 years) failed to notice or even mention, that some of the young ladies in China were enduring the process of “foot binding” to help make them pretty, is huge. 

Admittedly this foot binding practice was not common place until the middle of the 10^th century, and then typically only practiced by royals and the upper class, but keep in mind that he claimed at least to have become a favorite of Kublai Khan, the Mongol Emperor. So common sense certainly suggests he would have encountered at least one young lady who had endured bound feet in that royal environment, which I would expect a young man making note of oddities in a strange land to mention.  

The possibility exists that Marco Polo really did live in China for 17 years and during that time become best pals with the Chinese Emperor; at this late date I expect it will have to be classified as an unknown.  But there is something I have learned of recent date, Polo did not bring the popular food “Pasta” back from China with him to Italy, although he claimed to have tasted the Chinese version during his stay / visit there.  

Sources ...

http://library.thinkquest.org/4034/polo.html                                                                                 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork                                                                                       http://www.avivadirectory.com/trivia/267-fascinating-facts-about-chinese-foot-binding/    http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/marco-polo-pasta.htm