Did Marco Polo really go to China?
The Great Wall, tea and chopsticks are missing from his book. Yet his figures on salt and money match Chinese records.
▶ Start the storyProbably yes, and the best evidence is in the details. Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant who travelled the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His book says Kublai Khan made him a foreign emissary and sent him on diplomatic missions through the empire and Southeast Asia. His book was dictated in a Genoese prison to a fellow inmate, Rustichello da Pisa, who added tales of his own and other anecdotes.
The sceptics' case is that the book leaves out things you would expect: the Great Wall, tea, Chinese characters, chopsticks and footbinding. The historian Frances Wood went furthest: in 1995 she argued that at best he never got farther east than Persia, and more probably only to Constantinople and the Black Sea colonies, collecting hearsay from travellers.
But there are strong answers. The Great Wall we know today was built by the Ming about two centuries later, and Polo's Mongol masters ruled both sides of it. His details on currencies, salt production and revenues are accurate and unique, supported by archaeology and Chinese records compiled after he left, so they are unlikely to have come second hand. His claim of many Christian churches in Zhenjiang is confirmed by a Chinese text, and his story of the princess Kököchin is confirmed by sources in both Persia and China. After Stephen Haw's book, the historian Peter Jackson said the controversy had surely been settled.
Sceptics say
- No Great Wall, tea, chopsticks or footbinding in the book
- Place names hard to identify
- Wood: perhaps only as far as the Black Sea, collecting hearsay
Defenders reply
- Today's Great Wall is a Ming wall, built two centuries later
- Accurate details on currency, salt and revenues
- Zhenjiang churches and Kököchin's journey are confirmed elsewhere
Quiz me
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Recap
The absence of famous things like the Great Wall is weaker evidence than accurate, unique details about salt and money that match Chinese records.
💡 A trick to remember it · Missing wall, matching salt: what he left out is a puzzle, but what he got right is the stronger clue.
Surprising fact · Polo told an astronomer about a star shaped like a sack with a big tail, most likely a comet seen in China in 1293.
Sources (1)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (17 claims) cites at least one of these.