Ttt2 facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Marco Polo
A 16th-century portrait of Marco Polo. Because nobody painted him while he was alive, artists had to guess what he looked like!
Born	Marco Polo c. 1254 [[Republic of Venice|Venice]], Republic of Venice
Died	8 January 1324 (aged 69–70) Venice, Republic of Venice
Resting place	[[San Lorenzo, Venice]]
Occupation	Merchant, explorer, writer
Known for	The Travels of Marco Polo (Book of the Marvels of the World)
Spouse(s)	Donata Badoer ​ (m. 1300)​
Children	Fantina, Bellela, Moreta
Parent(s)	Niccolò Polo (father)Nicole Anna Defuseh (mother)
Relatives	Maffeo Polo (uncle)

Marco Polo (/ˈmɑːrkoʊ ˈpoʊloʊ/, Italian: [ˈmarko ˈpɔːlo]; c. 1254 – 8 January 1324) was an Italian merchant, explorer, and writer from the Republic of Venice. Between 1271 and 1295, he traveled through Asia along the famous Silk Road, a network of trade routes that connected Europe to the Far East.

Wait a minute—you might know his name from the swimming pool game [[Marco Polo (game)|Marco Polo]], where one person closes their eyes and tries to find the others by sound! While the game is named after him because he was a famous traveler who ventured into the "unknown," the real Marco Polo was much more than a game. He was a real-life teenager who left home at age 17 and spent 24 years exploring parts of the world that almost no European had ever seen before.

Marco did not travel alone. He went on this massive journey with his father, Niccolò, and his uncle, [[Niccolò and Maffeo Polo|Maffeo]]. Together, they traveled all the way to Cathay (which is what Europeans called Northern China back then) and met Kublai Khan, the powerful ruler of the Mongol Empire and grandson of the legendary [[Genghis Khan]]. Kublai Khan was so impressed by young Marco's intelligence and storytelling skills that he hired him as a special messenger and diplomat. For 17 years, Marco traveled all over the Mongol Empire on missions for the Khan, seeing places like modern-day Myanmar, India, Indonesia, [[Sri Lanka]], and Vietnam. He lived inside the emperor's palaces and saw things that seemed like magic to Europeans—like paper money, black stones that burned like wood (coal), and a super-fast postal system.

After finally returning home to Venice in 1295, Marco got caught up in a war between his home city of Venice and its rival, the Republic of Genoa. His ship was captured, and he was thrown into a Genoese prison. To pass the time behind bars, Marco told his incredible life stories to his cellmate, a romance writer named Rustichello da Pisa. Rustichello wrote everything down, creating a book now known as The Travels of Marco Polo (also called Book of the Marvels of the World or Il Milione).

Because the printing press hadn't been invented in Europe yet, every copy of the book had to be written by hand! Even so, it became a medieval bestseller. For the first time, Europeans got a detailed peek into the vast, wealthy civilizations of the East, including China, India, and Japan. At the time, many people didn't believe Marco's stories and thought he was making them up. Today, historians know that while his book has some exaggerations, Marco Polo really did make the journey. His book inspired generations of future mapmakers and explorers—including Christopher Columbus, who carried a copy of Marco's book with him when he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean nearly 200 years later!

Life Overview

Origins and Family

Marco Polo was born around the year 1254 in the Republic of Venice. If you look at a map of Italy today, Venice is a city in the northeast, famous for its canals and boats instead of roads and cars. In the 1200s, however, Italy wasn't a single country yet. Instead, Venice was its own independent country—a rich and powerful city-state that controlled a huge fleet of ships and traded goods all around the Mediterranean Sea.

Some older stories used to claim that the Polo family originally came from Dalmatia (in modern-day Croatia), specifically from the island of Korčula, or from the city of Šibenik. However, modern historians have looked closely at the records and agree that there isn't strong proof for this, and that Venice was definitely Marco's birthplace and true home.

Marco's father, Niccolò Polo, and his uncle, Maffeo Polo, were rich jewel merchants. Before Marco was even born, his father and uncle left Venice on a long trading trip to the East. Marco's mother, whose name was Nicole Anna Defuseh, raised him in Venice. Sadly, she died while Marco was still a young boy. Because his father was thousands of miles away, Marco was taken in and raised by his aunt and another uncle in Venice. Even though he grew up without his parents, his family made sure he got a great education for a merchant's son. He didn't learn much Latin (which was what scholars and priests studied), but he learned practical business skills: how to calculate foreign money, how to judge the value of precious gems and spices, and how to manage cargo ships.

=== Nickname: Milione === In Italy, Marco Polo is often referred to by a special nickname: Milione (which sounds like the English word "million"). In fact, the original Italian title of his famous book is Il Milione.

Where did this funny nickname come from? There are two main theories! The most popular story is that when Marco returned to Venice, he was constantly bragging about the massive wealth of Kublai Khan. Everything in China was counted in the "millions"—millions of gold coins, millions of silk robes, millions of people in huge cities. His neighbors in Venice thought he was exaggerating so much that they started calling him Messer Marco Milioni ("Mister Marco Millions") as a joke!

However, historians have a second, slightly more serious explanation. The nickname actually belonged to his whole family, not just Marco. It was likely a shortened version of the name Emilione, which was the name of one of his ancestors. The Polo family used Milione to tell their branch of the family apart from all the other people named "Polo" living in Venice at the time. Even today, the courtyard in Venice where Marco's house once stood is called the Corte del Milion.

Early Life and Asian Travel

While Marco was growing up in Venice, what were his father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo doing? They were having an epic adventure of their own! In the 1250s, they had traveled to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey) and then set up a trading post in Sudak, a port on the Crimean peninsula by the Black Sea.

When a local war broke out between rival Mongol leaders, the road back home to Venice became too dangerous. Since they couldn't go west, the two brothers decided to keep heading east! They crossed harsh deserts and mountains until they reached Bukhara (in modern-day Uzbekistan), where they lived for three years. Eventually, a Mongol ambassador invited them to travel even further east to meet the Great Khan himself—Kublai Khan, the supreme ruler of the Mongol Empire, who lived in Khanbaliq (modern-day Beijing, China).

Kublai Khan had never met anyone from Europe before! He welcomed the Polo brothers warmly and asked them hundreds of questions about European kings, emperors, laws, and the Pope, who was the head of the Catholic Church. The Khan was so fascinated by Christianity that he gave the brothers a big job. He asked them to go all the way back to Europe as his personal ambassadors and ask the Pope to send him two things:

100 wise Christian scholars who could teach the Mongols about European science, religion, and the seven arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy).

Sacred oil from the lamp that burned at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which was thought to have magical healing powers.

To make sure nobody bothered the brothers on their trip back, Kublai Khan gave them a paiza—a foot-long tablet made of solid gold! This golden tablet worked like a VIP passport. Written on it was a warning from the Khan: anyone who saw the tablet had to give the Polo brothers free horses, free food, free places to sleep, and guards to protect them. Anyone who refused would be executed!

In 1269, Niccolò and Maffeo finally made it back to Venice. Imagine the shock when Niccolò walked through the door! He discovered that his wife had passed away years ago, and standing in front of him was a 15-year-old son, Marco, whom he had never even met!

The brothers wanted to fulfill their promise to Kublai Khan quickly, semantic problems got in the way. The previous Pope, Clement IV, had died in 1268, and the church leaders were arguing over who the next Pope should be. After waiting in Venice for two years for a new Pope to be elected, Niccolò and Maffeo realized they couldn't wait any longer—they didn't want to make the most powerful ruler in the world angry! So, in 1271, they packed their bags to head back to the Mongol Empire. This time, they decided to bring 17-year-old Marco along with them.

The Journey to China

Setting Out and the Pope's Blessings

In 1271, Marco, his father, and his uncle boarded a ship in Venice and sailed across the Mediterranean Sea to the port of Acre in the Holy Land. From there, they rode camels to Jerusalem and successfully got the holy lamp oil from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that Kublai Khan had asked for.

Just as they were starting their trek north toward Turkey, they got exciting news: a friend of theirs, Tebaldo Visconti, had finally been elected as the new Pope, taking the name Gregory X! The Polos immediately rushed back to Acre to meet him.

Pope Gregory X was thrilled about the chance to make friends with the Mongol Empire, which was the largest land empire in history. However, he didn't have 100 scholars to spare. Instead, he sent just two [[Dominican Order|Dominican]] friars (monks), named Niccolò da Vicenza and Guglielmo da Tripoli, along with official letters and crystal gifts for the Khan. They all set out together, heading into Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). Almost immediately, they ran into a war zone where the Mamluks of Egypt were invading the region. The two friars got so terrified by the fighting that they handed their letters over to the Polos, turned around, and ran all the way back home! The three Polos, however, were tough merchants. They kept going.

Along the Silk Road

Without the friars, the Polos traveled through Armenia, Persia (modern-day Iran), and toward the Persian Gulf. As they traveled, young Marco was wide-eyed, taking notes on everything he saw:

- Near Georgia, he saw a strange liquid seeping out of the ground that couldn't be eaten, could burn easily in lamps, and was used to cure skin diseases on camels. Marco was describing petroleum (crude oil) long before it was used to power cars! - In Persia, he admired the famous Persian carpets and fast horses, and heard legends about the Hashshashin (the original [[Order of Assassins|Assassins]]), a secret group of mountain warriors led by a mysterious ruler called the "Old Man of the Mountain." - They traveled down to the hot port city of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, hoping to catch a ship and sail the rest of the way to China. However, when they saw the local boats, they changed their minds! The boats had no iron nails; instead, the wooden planks were tied together with string made from coconut husks. Marco wrote that these ships were terribly dangerous and sank all the time.

Deciding it was safer to walk than to drown, the Polos turned back north to travel overland along the Silk Road. What was the Silk Road? Despite its name, it wasn't a single paved road, and it wasn't made of silk! It was a massive, spiderweb-like network of dirt trails, mountain passes, and desert tracks stretching over 4,000 miles from the Mediterranean Sea to China. It got its name from the super-valuable Chinese silk that merchants carried along it, along with spices, porcelain, glass, and horses.

A miniature illustration from the Catalan Atlas (1375) showing the Polo caravan traveling with camels along the Silk Road.

In a region called Badakhshan (in modern-day Afghanistan), the journey paused for a whole year. Why? Marco got very sick, possibly with malaria! The local doctors told him to move up into the high mountains, where the cool, fresh air helped him recover completely. While there, Marco marveled at the mines that produced lapis lazuli (a bright blue gemstone) and spinel (which people back then called "Balas rubies").

Once Marco was healthy, the family climbed one of the highest mountain ranges in the world: the Pamir Mountains, often called the "Roof of the World." Marco noticed two weird things up in those freezing heights: there were no birds flying around, and fires didn't burn as brightly or cook food as fast as they did at the bottom of the mountain! Today, scientists know this was because of the high altitude—the air is thinner and has less oxygen up high, which makes fire weaker! Marco also spotted giant wild sheep with massive, curling horns; centuries later, scientists named this animal the Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon polii) in his honor.

Next came one of the scariest parts of the trip: crossing the Lop Desert and the Gobi Desert. These deserts were endless oceans of sand and rock with almost no water. Marco wrote that the desert was haunted by evil spirits! If a traveler accidentally fell behind their caravan at night, they would hear creepy voices calling their name, or the sound of phantom drums and musical instruments, luring them off the trail to get lost forever. Today, we know those eerie sounds were actually singing sand dunes—a real scientific phenomenon where wind blowing over millions of dry sand grains creates loud humming, booming, or whispering noises!

Arriving at Kublai Khan's Court

In 1275—three and a half years and 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) after leaving Venice—the Polos finally reached Shangdu (often called "Xanadu" in English poetry), the magnificent summer palace of Kublai Khan.

Marco was now 21 years old. The three Venetians bowed low before the Great Khan, presented the letters from the Pope, and handed over the sacred oil from Jerusalem. Kublai Khan was delighted to see his old friends Niccolò and Maffeo again, and he immediately took a liking to young Marco.

During his 3.5 years on the road, Marco had proven to be super smart with languages. He had learned to speak four different languages (likely including Mongolian, Persian, and [[Turkic languages|Turkic]], though historians think he never fully learned [[Chinese language|Chinese]]) and could read several different alphabets.

Even better, Marco was a master storyteller! Kublai Khan used to complain that whenever he sent his usual Mongol messengers to faraway provinces, they would come back and only give boring reports about taxes and business. He said they were "fools and ignorant" because they didn't pay attention to anything else! Seeing this, when Kublai Khan sent Marco on his first mission to the city of Kunming (then called Yachi) in southwestern China, Marco carefully wrote down everything he saw: strange animals, funny local customs, what people ate, and how they dressed. When he came back and told these colorful stories to the court, Kublai Khan was completely hooked!

17 Years in the Service of the Khan

For the next 17 years, the Polo family stayed in China, which Kublai Khan had conquered and united under his new Yuan dynasty. Marco worked as a special government official, tax inspector, and ambassador for the Khan. Because he had the Khan's trust and a golden paiza tablet, Marco was able to travel to the furthest corners of China and Southeast Asia, including places like Tibet, Burma (Myanmar), and Vietnam. At one point, Marco claims the Khan even put him in charge of the wealthy salt-trading city of Yangzhou for three years (though he was probably a mid-level tax official rather than the main governor).

The Wonders of China

To a young man from medieval Europe—where even the biggest cities like Paris or Venice had only around 50,000 to 100,000 people and muddy streets—China under Kublai Khan felt like stepping into the future! Marco wrote about dozens of incredible inventions and systems that Europeans had never dreamed of:

- Paper money: In Europe, money was made of heavy gold, silver, or copper coins. In China, Marco was shocked to see that the Emperor made money out of the bark of mulberry trees! Sheets of black paper were stamped with the Khan's red seal, and everyone in the empire had to accept them as real treasure. Marco joked that Kublai Khan had discovered the secret of alchemy (turning ordinary things into gold)! - Burning Black Stones (Coal): In Europe, people chopped down trees for firewood to stay warm and cook. In China, Marco saw people digging black stones out of the mountains that burned like logs and stayed hot all night long! Because Europeans didn't use coal yet, they thought this story was completely crazy when they read his book. - The Imperial Postal System (Yam): Kublai Khan had a communication system that worked like a super-powered Pony Express. Every 25 to 30 miles along all the main roads, there were giant post stations that looked like luxury hotels, stocked with over 400 fresh horses. Messengers wore belts covered in loud bells. When station guards heard the bells ringing in the distance, they got a fresh horse ready immediately. By jumping from horse to horse without stopping—even riding through the night with runners carrying torches—messengers could travel 250 miles in a single day, delivering news ten times faster than normal! - Fireproof Cloth (Asbestos): People in Europe believed a fairy tale about a magical fire-breathing lizard called a "salamander" whose wool couldn't be burned by fire. Marco busted this myth! He explained that he had visited mines where a fibrous mineral was dug out of the earth, crushed, and woven into tablecloths. When the cloth got dirty from food, you didn't wash it with water—you just threw it into a roaring fire, and it came out sparkling white! - Giant Cities and Public Care: Marco visited Khanbaliq (Beijing), the Khan's capital city, which was built like a giant chessboard with straight, wide streets. Even more impressive to him was Hangzhou (which he called Quinsai, meaning "City of Heaven"). With over a million people, 12,000 stone bridges, paved streets, public bathhouses, and firefighting teams watching from high wooden towers, Marco declared it "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world." He also noted that the Khan gave free grain and clothes to poor families who couldn't afford them.

The Voyage Home

By the early 1290s, the Polos had become very rich from trading gems and gifts from the emperor, and they were getting homesick. Even worse, they were getting nervous! Kublai Khan was now nearly 80 years old and in poor health. The Polos knew that many local Mongol and Chinese officials were jealous of these foreign favorites. If the old Khan died, his successor might not be so friendly—the Polos might be robbed or even killed!

Several times, Niccolò, Maffeo, and Marco begged the Khan for permission to go home to Venice for a visit. Every time, the old emperor said no! He loved their company too much and didn't want them to leave.

Finally, a lucky break happened in 1291. Kublai Khan's great-nephew, Arghun, who ruled the Ilkhanate in Persia (Iran), lost his favorite wife, Queen Bolgana. Before she died, she made a final wish: Arghun could only marry a woman from her own Mongol tribe back in China. Arghun sent three ambassadors to Kublai Khan to ask for a new bride. Kublai chose a 17-year-old Mongol princess named Kököchin (whose name meant "Blue or Sky-Colored").

Because wars had broken out along the overland Silk Road, it was too dangerous for the princess to ride horses back to Persia. The ambassadors decided they had to sail home across the Indian Ocean. Since the Polos were expert Venetian sailors who had just returned from a naval trip for the Khan in the southern seas, the ambassadors asked Kublai if the three Europeans could guide their ships! Reluctantly, Kublai Khan finally agreed to let the Polos go, as long as they promised to come back to China after dropping off the princess (a promise they never kept!).

In 1292, they set sail from the southern Chinese port of Quanzhou (which Marco called Zayton) in a fleet of 14 giant Chinese wooden sailing ships called junks. These ships were huge compared to European boats: they had four masts, up to twelve sails, watertight compartments inside the hull so they wouldn't sink if they hit a rock, and crews of hundreds of sailors.

The ocean voyage to Persia took two terrible years. Sailing through the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca, and across the Indian Ocean, they faced deadly tropical storms, diseases like scurvy and malaria, and pirate attacks. Out of roughly 600 passengers and crew (not counting the sailors), only 18 people survived the trip! Fortunately, all three Polos and Princess Kököchin made it alive.

Along the way, the fleet stopped for five months on the island of Sumatra (in modern-day Indonesia) to wait out the dangerous monsoon storm winds. Marco wrote about meeting fierce tribes, drinking sweet wine tapped from palm trees, and seeing a weird, armored animal with a single thick horn on its nose wallowing in the mud. Marco thought he had found a real-life unicorn! He was super disappointed, writing that unicorns weren't graceful white horses that liked gentle maidens like in European fairy tales—instead, they were ugly, grumpy beasts with hair like a buffalo and feet like an elephant! Of course, what Marco was actually looking at was a Javan rhinoceros!

The ships also stopped at Sri Lanka, where Marco saw giant rubies and sapphires, and along the coast of India, where he watched pearl divers jump into the ocean while "shark charmers" stood on the beach casting spells to keep the sharks from biting them!

When they finally reached the port of Hormuz in Persia in 1294, they found out two pieces of big news: first, Kublai Khan had died back in Beijing at age 78; second, King Arghun of Persia had also died while they were at sea! Instead of marrying Arghun, Princess Kököchin ended up marrying Arghun's son, Ghazan. Marco wrote that when the Polos said goodbye to the princess to head back to Europe, she cried because they had become like fathers to her during the long voyage.

From Persia, the Polos traveled overland through Tabriz to Trebizond on the Black Sea, where local rulers actually robbed them of a large part of their fortune! Still, they hid their most valuable gems inside the linings of their ragged coats, caught a ship to Constantinople, and finally sailed into Venice in 1295.

They had been gone for 24 years and had traveled roughly 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers). According to a famous Venetian legend written down by historian Giovanni Battista Ramusio, when the three men knocked on the door of the Polo family mansion, their own relatives didn't recognize them! They looked like wild Mongol travelers in dirty, padded sheepskin coats, and they had been away so long that their Italian sounded funny and broken. To prove who they really were, the Polos threw a big dinner party for the whole family. At the end of the meal, they brought out their old, ragged traveling coats, took out sharp knives, and sliced open the seams—pouring piles of rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds onto the dinner table! Immediately, everyone remembered who they were!

Prison, the Book, and Later Life

War and Imprisonment

Marco Polo didn't get to enjoy a quiet retirement right away. At that time, the Republic of Venice was fighting a fierce naval war against its biggest trade rival, the Republic of Genoa. Using some of his Asian treasure, Marco paid for a war galley (a warship powered by oars) armed with a catapult, and joined the Venetian navy as a commander.

In September 1298, probably at the massive Battle of Curzola off the coast of Croatia (or during a smaller battle near Laiazzo a bit earlier), the Venetian fleet was crushed! Marco's ship was captured, and he was taken in chains to Genoa as a prisoner of war.

Locked up inside the Palazzo San Giorgio prison in Genoa for nearly a year, Marco quickly became a celebrity among the prisoners and guards. Everyone wanted to hear his wild stories about the Great Khan and the riches of the East! Luckily for history, his cellmate happened to be Rustichello da Pisa, a talented writer who was famous for writing adventure stories about [[King Arthur]] and the Knights of the Round Table!

Rustichello realized that Marco's real-life adventures were way better than any fairy tale. While they were stuck in prison together in 1298 and 1299, Marco dictated his memories (and asked his father in Venice to mail him his old travel notebooks), while Rustichello wrote them down in Franco-Italian—a mix of French and Italian that was the popular language for adventure books across Europe at the time. Because Rustichello was a romance writer, he added exciting battle scenes and dramatic introductions to make the book even more fun to read!

=== Final Years in Venice === In August 1299, Venice and Genoa signed a peace treaty, and Marco was set free! He returned home to Venice and discovered that his prison book—originally called Devisement du Monde ("Description of the World"), and later known as The Travels of Marco Polo or Il Milione—was already becoming famous across Italy and France.

Back in Venice, Marco became a wealthy merchant again. He never left Venice for another giant trip, choosing instead to finance other younger merchants' expeditions from the comfort of his home. In 1300, at the age of 46, he married Donata Badoer, the daughter of a respected Venetian noble merchant family. Together, they bought a big house in the district of San Giovanni Grisostomo and had three daughters: Fantina, Bellela, and Moreta.

Death and Famous Last Words

[[File:Testamento di Marco Polo.jpg|thumb|left|Marco Polo's real Last Will and Testament from 1324, written on sheepskin parchment. It is still kept in a library in Venice today!]]

In January 1324, when Marco was almost 70 years old (which was very old for the Middle Ages!), he became seriously ill. On 8 January 1324, a priest-notary came to his bedroom to write down his Last Will and Testament.

In his will, Marco left money to churches and monasteries in Venice, left most of his fortune to his wife Donata and his three daughters, forgave several people who owed him money, and officially set free his Tartar (Mongol) servant, Peter, who had come all the way from Asia with him and served him loyally for decades. Marco also gave Peter a sum of money so he could live comfortably as a free citizen of Venice.

According to a famous story recorded by the chronicler Jacopo d'Acqui, while Marco was lying on his deathbed, his friends and family gathered around him and begged him to take back the "lies" and exaggerations in his book so that he wouldn't go to heaven with a sin on his soul. Looking at them, the old explorer famously replied:

"I have not told half of what I saw, because no one would
have believed me!"

Marco Polo died later that day, between sunset and midnight on 8–9 January 1324. Just as he asked in his will, he was buried in the church of [[San Lorenzo, Venice]], right next to his father Niccolò. (Sadly, when the church was rebuilt in the late 1500s, his stone sarcophagus was lost, so we can't visit his exact grave today).

Did Marco Polo Really Go to China? (Historical Debate)

Because The Travels of Marco Polo is full of crazy-sounding descriptions (and because Rustichello added some fairy-tale exaggerations), some people have doubted Marco ever since the Middle Ages. Even in modern times, a few historians—most famously a British scholar named Frances Wood in her 1995 book Did Marco Polo Go to China?—suggested that maybe Marco only traveled as far as the Black Sea or Persia, and just copied down stories he heard from other Persian and Arab merchants!

What made these skeptics suspicious? They pointed out a few strange things that are missing from Marco's book:

- The Great Wall of China: Why didn't Marco ever mention the most famous landmark in China?! - Tea: Drinking tea was huge in China, yet Marco doesn't talk about it once! - Chopsticks: People in Europe ate with their fingers and knives; why didn't Marco mention that people in China ate with two little wooden sticks? - Foot binding and Woodblock printing: He never mentioned the custom of binding women's feet, or the fact that the Chinese printed books using wooden blocks instead of writing them by hand. - Chinese records: His name hasn't been found in the official Chinese royal history books (the Yuan Shi).

How Historians Proved He Really Went!

Despite those questions, almost all modern historians and experts agree that Marco Polo definitely went to China! Professor Hans Ulrich Vogel and other scholars spent years checking Marco's book against ancient Chinese records and proved that his story is real. Here is how they explained the "missing" things and proved he was there:

Why no Great Wall? The giant stone Great Wall of China that tourists visit today wasn't built yet! It was built hundreds of years after Marco Polo died, during the Ming dynasty. During Kublai Khan's time, the old walls from a thousand years earlier were just crumbling piles of mud and dirt that nobody cared about—especially since the Mongols ruled both sides of the wall anyway!

Why no Tea or Chopsticks? Remember, Marco didn't hang out with ordinary Chinese farmers or scholars. He lived in the royal court of the Mongols! The Mongols were nomadic horse riders who preferred drinking fermented horse milk (kumis) and eating roasted meat with knives and their hands, just like Europeans did! Also, foot binding was only done by upper-class Chinese women kept indoors, not by Mongol women.

Secret Details Only an Eyewitness Could Know: Professor Vogel proved that Marco's descriptions of how Chinese paper money was made, the exact sizes of the bills, and the exact taxes collected from salt production in Yangzhou match ancient Chinese government records down to the tiniest detail! No Persian merchant sitting by the Black Sea could have known those secret government numbers.

Proof of Princess Kököchin: Most importantly, both an official Chinese encyclopedia from the 1400s (the Yongle Encyclopedia) AND a famous Persian history book written by Rashid al-Din Hamadani independently recorded the exact same trip of the three ambassadors taking Princess Kököchin by ship from China to Persia in the 1290s! Even though those books didn't mention the Polos' names (because to the Chinese, the Polos were just minor passengers helping the main Mongol ambassadors), it proved 100% that Marco's story of the voyage home was completely true!

Legacy: How Marco Polo Changed the World

[[File: Fra Mauro Map (inverted).jpg|thumb|right|The famous Fra Mauro map of the world (1450). Mapmaker Fra Mauro used Marco Polo's book to draw Asia and Japan! (Note: Medieval maps often put South at the top!)]]

Marco Polo wasn't the very first European to reach the Mongol Empire—brave Christian friars like Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and [[William of Rubruck]] had visited earlier in the 1200s. However, nobody read their boring Latin reports! Marco Polo's book was written in an exciting language that regular people could enjoy, and it changed history in huge ways:

Inspiring Explorers and Mapmakers

Before Marco Polo, European maps of Asia were basically blank spaces filled with imaginary monsters and religious myths. Using Marco's book, mapmakers created masterpiece maps like the Catalan Atlas (1375) and the Fra Mauro map (1450), putting real Chinese cities, rivers, and islands on European maps for the first time!

Marco was also the first European to ever write about Japan, which he called Cipangu (from the Chinese word Rìběnguó, meaning "Sun-Origin Country"). Although Marco never visited Japan himself, he heard rumors in China that the Emperor of Cipangu lived in a palace with roofs and floors made of solid gold!

That story of golden roofs lit a fire in the imagination of a later Italian sailor from Genoa: Christopher Columbus! Nearly 200 years after Marco died, Columbus bought a printed Latin copy of The Travels of Marco Polo and wrote 366 handwritten notes in the margins of its pages! When Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, he wasn't trying to discover America—he was trying to find a shortcut by sea to Marco Polo's Cipangu (Japan) and Cathay (China) to meet the Great Khan! Even when Columbus landed in the Caribbean islands, he thought Cuba was part of China and sent messengers inland to look for Kublai Khan's golden palace! Other famous explorers like Vasco da Gama and Amerigo Vespucci were also inspired by Marco's book.

Things Named After Marco Polo

Today, more than 700 years after his journey, Marco Polo's name is still everywhere around us:

- The Swimming Pool Game:' The classic game [[Marco Polo (game)|Marco Polo]] is played by kids in pools all over the world! One player closes their eyes and yells "Marco!" while the other players have to yell back "Polo!" to help the blindfolded explorer find them. - Animals: The Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon polii), a subspecies of argali sheep with the longest horns of any sheep in the world, was named after him in 1841. - Airports and Bridges: If you fly to Venice, Italy today, your airplane will land at Venice Marco Polo Airport! In Beijing, China, a famous medieval stone bridge with hundreds of carved stone lions that Marco praised in his book is called the Marco Polo Bridge (Lugou Bridge) by Westerners. - Outer Space: There is a crater on the Moon named [[Marco Polo (crater)|Marco Polo]], and an asteroid floating in space named [[29457 Marcopolo]]! - TV, Movies, and Games: His life has been turned into movies, novels (like Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities), a Netflix television series called Marco Polo, an episode of the sci-fi show Doctor Who, and he even appears as a Great Merchant character in the Civilization video games and in the adventure game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves!

See also

- Silk Road - Ibn Battuta – A famous Moroccan explorer from the 1300s who traveled even further than Marco Polo! - Rabban Bar Sauma – A diplomat from Beijing who did the exact opposite of Marco Polo: he traveled from China all the way to Europe in the 1280s to meet the Pope and the Kings of France and England! - Zheng He – A famous Chinese admiral who sailed giant treasure ships across the Indian Ocean in the 1400s. - Chronology of European exploration of Asia

References and Further Reading for Kids

- The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo and Rustichello da Pisa (c. 1300) - Marco Polo: His Notebook by Susan Roth (2008) - Who Was Marco Polo? by Joan Holub (2007) - Bergreen, Laurence (2007). Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu. London: Quercus. ISBN: 978-1-84724-345-4. - Vogel, Hans Ulrich (2012). Marco Polo Was in China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues. Brill. ISBN: 978-90-04-23193-1. [[Category:13th-century Venetian people]] [[Category:14th-century Venetian people]] [[Category:Merchants from the Republic of Venice]]