Okay, let's unpack this. I want you to picture
the scene. It is the year 1298. Right. And we
are not in a palace. We are not on some grand
ship. We are definitely not in a library. We
are in a damp, probably rat infested prison cell.
In Genoa, Italy. And it's grim. Totally grim.
I mean, Genoa and Venice are the two great maritime
superpowers of the Mediterranean, and they are
constantly at each other's throats. And there's
just been this massive naval battle, the Battle
of Cursola, and thousands of Venetians are now
prisoners of war, rotting in Genoese jails. And
sitting there in one of those cells is this one
specific prisoner. He's 44 years old. He's a
Venetian commander. But more than anything else.
he's just bored out of his mind. Completely miserable,
stuck in this box. So he starts talking. He starts
telling stories to his cellmate just to pass
the time. And this isn't just any cellmate. This
is, I mean, it's a stroke of absolute literary
destiny or maybe just the weirdest luck in history.
The man sharing his cell is Ristichella da Pisa.
And Ristichella isn't a soldier or a merchant.
He's a professional writer. A novelist, basically.
A writer of romances, specifically. We're talking
King Arthur, Lancelot, you know, knights and
damsels in distress. That's his whole thing.
It is the ultimate odd couple. You've got this
gritty, world -weary adventurer who has seen
the literal edge of... the known world. And you've
got the fantasy novelist who is always looking
for his next bestseller. Exactly. So the adventurer
starts spinning these wild yarns about a golden
empire on the other side of the planet, about
black stones that burn like wood, about money
made from paper. About unicorns, which were probably
rhinoceroses, but still. Right. And the writer
just goes, wait, wait, hold on. Let me get a
quill. I need to write this down. And that collaboration,
that prison cell brainstorming session, it creates
arguably the most famous and certainly the most
controversial travelogue in human history. We
are talking, of course, about Marco Polo. The
man himself. But here's the thing, and this is
why I'm so excited for today's deep dive. When
most people hear Marco Polo, what do they even
think of? A pool game? A children's pool game.
Marco? You close your eyes and you splash around.
Or, you know, if they're a bit more informed,
they think, oh, that's the guy who brought pasta
to Italy. Ugh, the pasta myth. We will definitely
have to have a serious talk about that later.
Oh, we will. Spoiler alert. He didn't. But the
real story is so much more... I don't know, Indiana
Jones than that. He really is. It's a story about
a 17 -year -old kid crossing the Gobi Desert,
becoming a spy and a trusted advisor for the
most powerful emperor on Earth, Kublai Khan,
and then coming home to a Europe... that basically
didn't believe a single word he said. And that
disbelief, that's really the core of our mission
today, isn't it? It is. We aren't just here to
retell the adventure story. We're here to investigate
it. We're looking at the primary source, the
manuscript we call Il Milione or The Travels
of Marco Polo, and we're stacking it up against
modern archaeology, Chinese economic records,
and all the historical context to answer that
one huge question. Did he actually go? Did he
actually go? Because for centuries, people have
called... him a liar. The million lies. Exactly.
They've said he never made it past, you know,
Constantinople or the Black Sea, that he just
sat in a trading post drinking wine and copying
stories from Persian guidebooks he bought off
some other merchant. Which is such a wild accusation.
I mean, imagine faking a 24 year road trip. That
is a long con. It's a very long con, but the
skepticism is understandable. You know, he was
describing a civilization that was in many ways
centuries ahead of 13th century Europe. It sounded
impossible. Paper money, a postal service that
could cross a continent in days. It was science
fiction to them. So for this deep dive, we're
going to look at the skeptics case because there
are some legitimate questions. But we're also
going to look at the hard data. The boring stuff.
The really boring stuff. Yeah. The details about
salt taxes. And currency exchange rates that,
it turns out, might be the smoking gun that proves
he was telling the truth all along. It's a detective
story as much as it is a travel story. Absolutely.
But to really get it, to understand Marco and
why he was even in a position to take this incredible
journey, you have to go back a generation. This
wasn't a solo mission. Not at all. This was a
family business. So let's get into section one,
the origin story. Because Marco wasn't even the
first polo to meet the great Khan. His dad and
his uncle were the OGs here. Niccolo and Maffeo
Polo. And these guys were the real deal. When
we say merchants in the 13th century, we don't
mean guys running a little corner store. No.
We mean... High stakes venture capitalists. We
mean geopolitical analysts. We mean explorers.
Before Marco was even born, around 1254, these
two are already operating out of Constantinople.
And they were incredibly savvy, right? I read
somewhere that they made a brilliant business
move just before everything went south. Extremely
savvy. So they were living in the Latin Quarter
of Constantinople, but they had their ear to
the ground. They could feel the political winds
shifting. A regime change was coming. The Greeks
were about to retake. Take the city. And if that
happened, being a Venetian there would be a very
bad thing. A very bad thing. You'd likely be
blinded, imprisoned, or killed. So in 1260, they
do something brilliant. They liquidate all their
assets, houses, warehouses, stock, everything,
and they convert it all into jewels. Affordable
wealth. That's so smart. You can't run with a
warehouse full of timber, but you can definitely
sew a fortune in rubies into the lining of your
coat. Exactly. High value, low volume. They take
these jewels and head east, deeper into the Mongol
territories, to trade. But then local wars break
out behind them, cutting off their return route.
So they're stuck. They're stuck. So they just...
Keep going east. The only way out is through.
They end up in Bukhara in modern day Uzbekistan
and just stay there for three years, learning
the local languages, doing business. And that's
where they get an invitation they can't refuse.
An envoy from Kublai Khan finds them and says,
the great Khan has never met any Latins before.
He wants to see you. So they travel with this
envoy all the way to the Khan's court. And Kublai
is just fascinated by them. Absolutely fascinating.
Remember, he's the grandson of Genghis Khan.
He's ruling this immense empire. He's curious
about everything. He asks them about their kings,
their legal systems, how they fight wars, and
most importantly, about their religion, about
the pope. This is the part that always gets me.
The Mongols were so pragmatic about religion,
weren't they? It wasn't about faith. It was about,
like, collecting sources of power. It was. Kublai
basically wanted to know if the Christian God
had any juice he could tap into. So he gives
Niccolo and Maffeo a mission. He sends them back
to Europe as his ambassadors. And he has a very
specific... shopping list. A very specific one.
He says, go back to your pope and bring me 100
educated Christians. 100. He wanted a whole academic
exchange program. He wanted men acquainted with
the seven arts who could argue logically that
Christianity was the best religion. He wanted
scientists, theologians, engineers. And as a
bonus, he asked for a vial of oil from the lamp
of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. So Niccolo
Maffeo, being good merchants who want to keep
the most powerful man in the world happy, they
say, sure. thing, boss, and they trek all the
way back. They get back to Venice around 1269,
and Niccolo finds out his wife has died in his
absence. But he also finds out he has a son he
has never met, a 15 -year -old kid named Marco.
Imagine that first meeting. Hi, son. I'm your
dad. I've been in Mongolia for your entire life.
Now pack a bag, kid. We're going back. But they
hit a huge, huge snag almost immediately. What
historians call the Pope problem. Oh, right.
The longest game of musical chairs in the history
of the Vatican. Pretty much. Pope Clement the
Firth had died in 1268. The Polos arrive back
in Europe in 69, expecting to meet the pope,
get the letters, get the hundred men, and go.
But the cardinals can't agree on a successor.
There's this massive political infighting. And
it drags on. This becomes the longest sede vicante,
the longest period without a pope in the history
of the church. The Polos are stuck in Italy just
waiting. For two years. Can you imagine the frustration?
They're holding the golden ticket to the biggest
market in the world, and they're stuck in a waiting
room because of Vatican politics. Finally, in
1271, they just give up. They say, we can't wait
anymore. The Khan will think we're liars. So
they decide to head back on their own. And they
take 17 -year -old Marco with them. They do manage
to get some official letters from a papal legate
in Acre named Teobaldo Visconti, who wishes them
well, and they even convince two Dominican friars
to come along as a sort of down payment on the
hundred men Kublai asked for. Yeah, this is a
bit of a downgrade, isn't it? Yeah. We couldn't
get you 100 PhDs, but here are two friars. And
it gets even worse. As soon as their little caravan
hits a war zone in the Near East, there was a
Mamluk invasion going on. The two friars get
terrified. They bail? They completely bail. They
hand the papal letters back to the polos and
say, nope, we're out. They just run back to the
coast. So much for the great missionary expedition.
So now it's just the three of them, Niccolo,
Maffeo, and teenage Marco, setting out on this
insane journey. And it is insane. It's not a
luxury cruise. They sail to Acre, then they ride
camels down to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. The
plan was to sail to China from there, right?
That was the plan. But when they get to Hormuz
and they actually see the ships, Marco is horrified.
He calls them wretched. He says they were built
without nails, just stitched together with coconut
fiber tine. And they were covered in pitch, but
they had no decks. They were just open to the
elements. He looks at these things and basically
says, there is no way I'm getting on one of those
death traps. So they decide to walk. They decide
to take the overland route, the Silk Road, through
Persia, Afghanistan, over the Pamir Mountains,
the roof of the world, and across the Gobi Desert.
And this is incredibly dangerous. I mean, we're
talking about bandit country. Oh, yeah. Marco
himself writes about an attack. They were in
a sandstorm, and a band of robbers, he calls
them marauders, attacked their caravan in the
confusion. And he says they only escaped because
of the dust and the dark. They managed to get
away to a nearby town, but many of the people
traveling with them were killed or enslaved.
This is his education. He's a young man, barely
out of his teens, and he's seeing people murdered
and sold into slavery right in front of him.
This is what forges him. It takes them three
and a half years to get to Kublai Khan's court.
Three and a half years. He leaves Venice a boy
of 17. He arrives in China, a man of 21. He has
grown up on the road. And when they finally arrive
at the Summer Palace in Chengdu, the legendary
Xanadu Marco isn't just some merchant's kid anymore.
He's a survivor. He's worldly. Which is the perfect
lead -in to Section 2, life in the court of the
Khan. This is where the story really takes off.
Because Kublai Khan seems to just immediately
take a shine to Marco, right? There's this incredible
bromance that develops. Why? What did the Khan
see in this Venetian kid? I think it's a combination
of things. First, you have to understand the
political context. Kublai was a Mongol ruler
trying to govern a massive ancient Chinese civilization.
And he didn't really trust the local Chinese
officials. Not entirely. The Chinese scholar
bureaucrats, their loyalty was always complicated.
Their first loyalty was to Chinese culture, not
necessarily to their Mongol conquerors. So Kublai
had a policy of appointing foreigners to high
positions. The perfect independent contract.
No local ties, no family allegiances. Exactly.
Their only loyalty was to him, the man who gave
them their power. And Marco fit that bill perfectly.
But he also had a specific skill set. Languages.
The text says he knew four of them. We're not
sure which ones, but probably Persian, which
was the lingua franca of the Silk Road, and Mongolian,
maybe some Turkic languages. Interestingly, not
much Latin. And it's debated if he ever really
learned to read Chinese characters. Right. But
he could communicate verbally with almost anyone
in the vast multicultural empire. And this made
him incredibly useful to the Khan. So Kublai
starts sending him out as his personal emissary,
his special envoy. He does. But there's another
reason Kublai liked him so much. It was Marco's
personality. He wasn't boring. He wasn't boring.
Marco noticed that when other officials returned
from missions, they'd give these dry bureaucratic
reports. The tax revenue from this province is
X. The rice harvest was Y. Smuse fest. Kublai
was bored stiff. He wanted to know about his
empire. What do the people do? What are their
strange customs? What weird animals live there?
So Marco becomes a storyteller. He becomes a
journalist. He goes on these missions to what
is now Myanmar, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka,
Vietnam. And he comes back with fascinating details.
He comes back with stories. He entertained the
Khan. He made himself indispensable not just
as an administrator, but as the emperor's eyes
and ears on the strange and wonderful fringes
of his own domain. And this brings us to the
marvels. The stuff he saw that just must have
blown his European mind. It's like a 13th century
man visiting the 21st century. The technological
and social gap was immense. Let's start with
the big one. Paper money. This is huge. For a
European, money was gold or silver. It had to
have intrinsic value. A coin was worth the metal
it was made from. Right. Marco gets to China
and sees people using pieces of paper made from
the bark of the mulberry tree as currency. He
describes the whole process in incredible detail.
Like how they stamp it with a cons vermilion
seal. Exactly. And how if it gets worn out, you
can trade it in for a new one. To him, it was
like alchemy. He understood that the Khan's authority
was so absolute that he could literally create
value out of thin air. It was a level of centralized
economic control that Europe wouldn't see for
centuries. And then there's the black stones
that burn. He sees people digging these black
rocks out of the ground and using them for fuel.
He writes they burn better than wood and hold
a heat all night. And again, you have to put
yourself in his shoes. Venice was powered by
wood. China had such a large population that
they had a deforestation problem even back then.
Coal was the solution. It powered their public
bathhouses, their industries. Marco saw it as
a miracle. He also marveled at the postal system.
The Yam. It was basically the Mongol Pony Express,
but on a continental scale. Relay stations every
25 or 30 miles with fresh horses ready to go.
He said there was something like 200 ,000 horses
dedicated to the system. A message could travel
hundreds of miles in a single day. For a merchant
like Marco, who was used to information traveling
at the speed of a donkey, this was revolutionary.
Okay, so he's describing all this amazing and
accurate stuff, but we have to address the elephants
in the room. Or maybe the Mongols in the room.
The errors and exaggerations, yes. This is where
the skeptics start to sharpen their knives. The
big one is the siege of Shangyang. It is. In
the book, Marco, or Rusticello, claims that the
Polos were instrumental in helping the Mongols
win this long, drawn -out siege. The story is
that they introduced the Mongols to European
-style catapults, these giant mangonels that
could throw huge stones and break down the city
walls. It's a great story. It makes the Polos
look like war heroes, like military geniuses.
But the timeline is completely wrong. The siege
of Xianyang ended in 1273. And we know Marco
and his family didn't arrive in China until 1274
or 1275. He missed it by at least a year. And
we know from... very specific Chinese and Persian
records that the engineers who built those siege
engines for the Mongols were actually Persians
named Ismail and Ala al -Din, not Niccolo, Mafeo,
and Marco Polo. Was he just lying? Oh. Or was
it, you know, an embellishment? It's probably
an embellishment. Maybe his father and uncle
had offered some advice during their first trip,
or maybe it was a story he heard and just inserted
his family into it to make them sound more important.
This kind of self -aggrandizement is pretty common
in medieval travel writing. Then there's the
other big claim, that he was the governor of
the city of Yangzhou for three years. Yeah, that
one's almost certainly a mistranslation or an
exaggeration. The text says he ruled the city.
But there is absolutely no record of a foreigner
named Polo in the very detailed Chinese administrative
lists of governors for that period. So what was
he doing there? He was probably there and he
likely held a position of some importance. The
current theory is that he worked in the salt
monopoly. The salt tax. A huge source of revenue
for the empire. So a significant job, yes. A
powerful official, maybe. But the actual governor
of a major Chinese city. Almost certainly not.
OK, so he's maybe puffing up his resume a little
bit. We've all done that. But he did stay for
17 years. That's a huge chunk of his life. It's
a lifetime. And eventually they start to getting
nervous. Kublai Khan is getting old. He's in
his late 70s. He's suffering from gout. He's
drinking heavily. His health is failing. And
the polis know that their special protected status
comes from him personally. Right. If he dies,
his enemies at court. The ones who resent these
privileged foreigners might turn on them. They
could lose their fortune or even their lives.
They need an exit strategy. But Kublai won't
let them go. He likes them too much. He's like
that boss who won't let you quit because you're
the only one who knows how to fix the printer.
He keeps saying no until a perfect opportunity
arises. And this brings us to Section 3, The
Long Way Home. This is such a great setup. It's
like something out of a movie. A Mongol princess,
Kukuchin, Needs an escort. She needs to be sent
from China to Persia to marry the ruler there,
the Ilkhan Argun. But the overland route, the
Silk Road, is blocked by wars between different
Mongol factions. It's too dangerous. So they
have to go by sea. And who are the most experienced
sailors in the Mongol court? The Venetians. The
Venetians. Kublai finally relents. He realizes
this is the safest way to get the princess to
her destination. And it's a way to grant the
Polo's wish. So he gives them a fleet of 14 massive
Chinese junks. This is around 1291. They set
off on this epic sea voyage. And it is absolutely
terrifying. The journey takes two years. They
sail through the South China Sea. They get held
up in Sumatra for months waiting for the monsoons
to change. They cross the Indian Ocean. The death
toll is just staggering. Marco says that 600
people started the voyage, not including the
regular crew. This is the princess's entourage,
the ambassadors, the servants. And by the time
the fleet finally reaches Hormuz in Persia two
years later, only 18 of those passengers are
still alive. 18 out of 600. It's a horror story
at sea. Disease, storms, scurvy, maybe pirate
attacks. We don't know the details. But the three,
Polos Niccolo, Maffeo, and Marco. They all survive.
They are just indestructible. They deliver the
princess. Fun fact, the guy she was supposed
to marry had actually died while they were at
sea, so she ends up marrying his son instead.
And then the Polos finally make their way back
to Venice. They arrive in 1295. They've been
gone for 24 years. And there's this fantastic
legend about their return, isn't there? Oh, it's
a great story. They show up at the family home
and they look like hobos. They're dressed in
these ragged Mongol clothes. They speak Venetian
with a funny accent. Their own relatives don't
recognize them. They think they're imposters.
They do. So the Polos, to prove who they are,
throw this huge banquet. And at the end of the
meal, they bring out their tattered traveling
coats, take knives, and rip open the seams. And
out pours a river of gemstones. Rubies, sapphires,
diamonds, emeralds. The fortune they'd sewn into
their clothes before they left China. It's the
most Venetian way to prove your identity imaginable.
Look at my net worth! We're back, baby! But Marco's
adventure isn't over, because just a few years
after he gets home, he's back in trouble. Vaness
goes to war with Genoa again. Marco, now a wealthy
and experienced man, commands a galley in the
Venetian fleet. He probably paid for it himself
with those gems. Very likely. And he gets captured.
And he ends up right back where we started our
story in that Genoese prison cell. With Rasticello
di Pisa. And we really have to talk about Rasticello
because he is the filter through which we get
this entire story. He's the co -author. Romance
novelist. Romance novelist who writes in a sort
of Franco -Italian dialect, the language of chivalry
and courtly literature. So you have Marco, the
pragmatic merchant, dictating his story. Probably
in very dry terms. The city of Suzu has 6 ,000
bridges. They produce much silk. And Rusticello's
sitting there thinking, this needs more flair.
This needs more drama. Exactly. He's spicing
it up. The opening of the book, the prologue,
is lifted almost directly from one of Rusticello's
King Arthur novels. He addresses emperors and
kings, dukes and marquises. He's setting a very
specific romantic tone. It's a marketing tactic.
He's packaging Marco's travelogue like a bestseller.
He is. And it worked. The book became a sensation.
It was copied by hand and translated into numerous
languages. It was the most influential account
of the East for centuries. But because of Rusticello's
style and because the content was so unbelievable,
many people just assumed it was fiction. They
called it Il Milione. Which brings us right to
the heart of it. Section four, the deep dive.
Did he actually go? Because even today, there
are respected scholars like Francis Wood, who
wrote a whole book arguing that he probably didn't.
Right. So let's lay out the skeptics case. It's
compelling and it relies heavily on emissions.
The things Marco didn't mention. OK, what's exhibit
A? The Great Wall of China. I mean, that's a
big one. It's the most famous landmark in the
country. How do you spend 17 years in China and
not notice the Great Wall? A very fair question.
Then there's tea. He's there for nearly two decades
and never once mentions the national drink. Or
chopsticks, how people eat. Or foot binding,
the custom of binding women's feet to keep them
small. Or even in Chinese writing. He talks about
languages, but he never describes the character
-based writing system. The skeptics say these
omissions are just too glaring. So what's their
theory? That he just got as far as a trading
post on the Black Sea and cobbled the rest together
from stories he heard from Persian merchants.
That is precisely the theory. That he was a great
listener, but not a great traveler. Okay, so
let's hear the rebuttal. Because this is where
it gets really, really interesting, the aha moments.
Let's start with the wall. The Great Wall, the
massive stone fortification that we see on postcards
today snaking over the mountains, that was built
by the Ming Dynasty. Which came after the Mongols
were kicked out. Centuries after Marco Polo,
in Marco's time during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.
The wall was mostly a collection of much older
dilapidated earthworks, mounds of dirt. And more
importantly, the Mongols controlled the territory
on both sides of it. Exactly. It had no military
or strategic purpose anymore. It was a ruin.
So he didn't mention it because it wasn't the
Great Wall yet. It just wasn't that impressive.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. One point for
Marco. What about foot binding? Two things on
that. First, foot binding was a custom primarily
of the Han Chinese elite. Marco spent most of
his time in the Mongol court and with other foreigners.
The Mongols did not practice foot binding. In
fact, they thought it was grotesque. So he was
kind of in a social bubble. He was hanging with
the ruling class, not necessarily observing all
the customs of the conquered people. He was.
But here's the crucial part. In one of the alternate
manuscripts of his book, the Toledo Manuscript,
he does make a comment about the dainty walk
of Chinese women, noting how they take very tiny,
mincing steps. So he saw the result, even if
he didn't understand or describe the cause. Precisely.
He noticed the effect. Okay, what's next? Tea.
Tea. That one's a bit trickier. Tea was certainly
popular in southern China, but in the north,
in the Mongol court, their preferred drink was
kumis, which is fermented mare's milk. It's an
acquired taste. And interestingly, other European
travelers of that era who definitely went to
China, like the missionary Oduric of Cordonone,
also fail to mention tea. It's a weird omission
for all of them, but it's not a smoking gun against
Polo specifically. Okay, so we've defended against
the omissions, but you mentioned there's killer
evidence, positive proof that he was there. Yes.
And this comes from the work of the German sinologist
Hans Ulrich Vogel, who decided to ignore the
adventure stories and focus on the boring stuff.
The numbers, the economics. Exactly. The stuff
Rusticello probably wanted to cut out of the
book. Marco describes, in painstaking detail,
the production of salt in various parts of China.
Salt was a state monopoly and a massive source
of revenue for the Khan. Okay. He provides specific
figures on the revenues from the salt tax in
cities like Changlu and Yangzhou. He describes
the specific shapes and sizes of the paper money
and the official seals used on them. He talks
about the exchange rates between paper money
and cowrie shells used as currency in the province
of Yunnan. These are very, very specific details.
Incredibly specific. And here's the bombshell.
When Vogel compared Marco's figures and descriptions
to internal Yuan dynasty administrative documents,
Chinese government records that were unknown
in the West until the 20th century, they matched.
The numbers lined up. He knew things about the
internal administration of the salt monopoly
that no foreign merchant just passing through
could possibly have known. You couldn't get this
information from a Persian guidebook. You had
to have been there, on the inside, talking to
the officials who ran the system. That gives
me chills. That's the receipt. That's the proof
of purchase for the whole trip. It is the strongest
piece of evidence we have. It's what has convinced
most modern historians. Is there anything else,
any mention of him in the Chinese records? There
is a tantalizing clue. The official history of
the Yuan dynasty mentions a court official by
the name of Boluo. Polo? Boluo. Close enough.
It's a plausible Chinese transliteration. For
a long time, scholars dismissed it as a common
Mongol name. But recently, research has shown
that this particular Balua was involved in an
incident and was moved to different posts at
dates that align surprisingly well with Marco
Polo's own accounts of his movements. So it could
be him. It could be him. It's not definitive
proof, but it's another piece of the puzzle that
fits. Okay. So the verdict from the historical
community today is he went. Overwhelmingly, yes.
The consensus is that he went. He may have exaggerated
his own importance and his storyteller may have
added some flair, but the core of the journey
is true. He was there. Which brings us to our
last section. Legacy, myths, and Il Milione.
We've established he went, but we still need
to bust that big myth we mentioned at the start.
The pasta myth. Let's do it. I feel like we're
about to break a lot of Italian grandmothers'
hearts. Marco Polo did not bring pasta to Italy.
He did not. Not even close. We have legal documents
from Italy from the 12th and early 13th centuries
before Marco was even born that mentioned pasta.
The Arabs introduced durum wheat and the technique
of making dried pasta to Sicily centuries earlier.
And in his own book, when Marco describes a noodle
like food he saw in China, he compares it to
lasagna, which shows he already knew what that
was. He knew what it was. He wasn't introducing
a new concept. So where did this story come from?
Why does literally everyone believe it? You're
not going to believe this. It was an advertisement.
Yes. In the 1920s, a trade publication in Canada
called the Macaroni Journal ran a feature story
to popularize pasta. They invented the story
of Marco Polo discovering noodles and bringing
them back to Italy. It was pure marketing. That
is incredible. A piece of 1920s ad copy became
one of the most famous facts in food history.
And it stuck. But his real legacy, his real impact
is so much bigger than noodles. It's about exploration.
It's the maps. It's the maps. Before Polo, European
maps of Asia were filled with fantasy. Here be
dragons, the Garden of Eden, the lands of Gog
and Magog. Biblical stuff. Right. Marker provided
data. He gave place names, distances, descriptions
of trade routes. This information was incorporated
into world maps like the Fra Mauro map, which
fundamentally changed how Europeans saw the world.
And it directly... inspired a certain Genoese
sailor about 200 years later. Christopher Columbus.
Yeah. Columbus owned a personal, heavily annotated
copy of Marco Polo's book. We still have it.
It's in a museum in Seville, and the margins
are filled with his handwritten notes. He was
obsessed. He wasn't looking for a new world.
He was looking for cafe. He was looking for the
land of the great con that Marco described. He
was. When Columbus landed in Cuba, he thought
he was in Japan. He was carrying a letter from
the king and queen of Spain. addressed to the
Great Khan. He was asking the native people where
he could find the golden -roofed palaces of Quinzai.
He thought he was walking into Marco Polo's book.
He did. So you can draw a direct line. A prisoner's
stories, written down by a romance novelist,
inspire the voyage that leads to the European
discovery of the Americas. Without Polo, the
Age of Discovery would have looked very, very
different. That is a massive butterfly effect.
It connects the whole world. So as we wrap up
this deep dive, what's the big takeaway here?
I think it's about how we understand truth and
history. Marco Polo was a merchant. not a historian.
He was pragmatic. He saw the world in terms of
products, logistics and profit. But his story
was told by a writer who was looking for flair,
for romance, for a good yarn. And you get this
hybrid of hard fact and fantastic storytelling.
For centuries, people focused on the flair and
called him a liar. But now with modern tools,
we can dig underneath the story and see the bedrock
of truth. He really was a witness to a world
that Europe couldn't even comprehend. I have
one final thought, a final piece of evidence
I found that I think is just the coolest, most
poetic proof that he was there. What for? The
sack -shaped star. Ah, yes. Pietro de Bono. Exactly.
So after Marco gets back to Venice, he has a
conversation with this well -known philosopher
and astrologer, Pietro de Bono. And in this conversation,
Marco describes the sky as he saw it from the
southern hemisphere, probably when his ship was
near Sumatra. A sky that is completely invisible
from Europe. Totally invisible from Venice. And
he draws a picture for Pietro of something he
saw. He describes it as being shaped like a sack
with a large tail. And astronomers have looked
at this. And they've realized he was almost certainly
describing a comet that was seen in China and
Indonesia in 1293. A comet that was not visible
from Europe. He also describes what we now call
the Magellanic Clouds, those dwarf galaxies you
can only see from the south. And this detail
is not in his book. That's the key. It's not
in the book. He wasn't bragging about it to sell
copies. It was just a quiet conversation he had
with a scientist. Hey, you know, the sky looks
different down there. It's the casual, unsensationalized
detail that rings the most true. For me, that's
the final proof. It's the detail he didn't embellish
that proves he went the distance. He didn't just
see a different part of the Earth. He saw a different
part of the sky. And that is the perfect place
to leave it. History is a puzzle. It's about
sources and translation and perspective. And
sometimes you have to look at the star charts
to find the truth. Thanks for listening to this
deep dive. We'll catch you on the next one.