he NEVER made it to china

so not surprised by this - history is full of con men who took advantage of teh fact that it was next to impossible to verify their claims. But the chinese were excellent record keepers and if they dont mention the guy then dollars to doughnuts he wasnt there.





-only uneducated minds are not open to any ideas other than their own.

Statement: "he got many, many details right that he couldn't have known without being there."

Response: "SIMPLY NOT TRUE. he could have easily traded stories with sailors that had actually been there."

I'm not sure that many sailors would be interested in the intricacies of salt production. There are many details that Polo got right that were unlikely to have been gotten from listening to sailors. Most sailors are not great cultural anthropologists and don't often travel inland. Most sailors would stay close to the ports and would probably spend most of their time getting drunk and laid. I don't think they were organizing field trips 1000 miles inland into a closed society at war.

And if all of these things were common knowledge among sailors, then why did none of the educated people on the ships (captains, pilots, doctors, etc.) write about them? Polo brought back advances in cartography - are you telling me that those were of no interest to ship's captains and pilots? (It's ironic - armchair historians fault Polo for missing some details but ignore that everyone else missed all the details.) And there wasn't a heavy sea trade between Europe and Asia yet, hence the need for overland caravans. The salient point is that Polo was reporting things that no one else at the time was reporting. You are inventing these sailing historians and cultural anthropologists to support your theory even though there is no evidence that they existed. If they did, then we might presume that someone besides Polo would have talked to them at some point and gotten this information. But no, it was just Polo that gave Europe its first glimpse into this exotic society, getting many details right that no one else even guessed.


Response: "i've never been to france, but i could give you enough facts and information to convince you that i had been"

You're joking right? You're comparing a 21st century knowledge of France, with a 13th century European understanding of China? Do you think that the paltry knowledge a 13th century Italian could get about China is even comparable to the vast wealth of knowledge we in the modern Western world know about France and can easily access with the click of a mouse? Without even trying, we probably learn more about France by the time we're 12 than most 13th century scholars could even hope learn about China, ever. Please tell me that you understand how ridiculous that makes you sound.


Statement: "Sure, he got some things wrong."

Response: "because he had ZERO first hand knowledge of the place"

You are using your conclusion to prove support your conclusion. The status quo is still strongly in support of Marco Polo and only a slim minority holds your position. Therefore the burden of proof lies with you. You offer no proof, just a few circumstantial tidbits. Lots of early writers make mistakes like these.


Statement: "He embellished a little?"

Response: "they're called lies"

Only if you want to paint it with negative connotations. Many early historians embellish. Herodotus, Josephus, etc. And I don't think that Polo was trying to be an historian or cultural anthropologist. He was trying to make some money and get some fame. Being sensationalist and embellishing things a little fit that goal. He was writing a fantastical travelogue for people that would never see the place he was describing. He didn't have to worry about fact checkers. But that doesn't prove that he wasn't there. It just proved that he wasn't a perfect historian or cultural commentator. But that describes many historians of the time, let alone traders writing travelogues. This was a pre-scientific culture with very different ideas about "facts" and "proof."


Statement: "He reported hearsay?"

Response: "BINGO, now you're getting it..."

But saying that some of what he wrote was hearsay does not prove that everything he wrote was hearsay. Herodotus and Homer wrote things that were based on hearsay. It doesn't mean that that everything was lies.


Statement: "He misunderstood what he saw?"

Response: "sigh, off track again. he never saw anything to misunderstand"

Again, you are using your conclusion to prove support your conclusion. Anytime you encounter support of an idea you don't like, you just reassert your conclusion. You are using a closed tautology. Your epistemological method has more in common with conspiracy theorists than with historians.


Statement: "These are easier explanations that yours"

Response: "actually, NO. the easiest explanation is that he never made it to china, but he ran into some sailors that did. OR he traded stories with people that traded stories with those that did."

Again, this assumes the conclusion. Your "simple" conclusion raises some difficult questions. (You seem to be trying to clumsily apply Occam's Razor, but forget that it is predicated on "all things being equal" and it is dangerous to apply if you ignore evidence you don't like.) About how he got so many specific details right, details that no one else seemed to know about. The simplest explanation is that he went there, and later wrote a book based on memory of years ago, using some creative license and flawed memories.

To address some other's notions that it is suspicious that there are not Chinese records of Polo: Besides being an "argument from silence" (which is dubious at best,) I would point out that he was a guest of the Kahn, not China. China was occupied by the Mongolians. This was a kingdom at war being occupied by a brutal army. He was a guest of the brutal occupying army. He was an insignificant trader. He may be a hugely important cultural icon to us, but to them he was just another barbarian.


Look, you can believe what you want. There are people who believe aliens built the pyramids. There are people who believe that Elvis is still alive. There are people who believe that Africans founded the Olmec culture. There are still people who believe that the earth is flat. (I'm not making that last one up - there really are.) There will always be people that believe crazy ideas. And they will think that THEY are the ones with all the proof and everyone else is wrong. That is nothing new. Granted, your Marco Polo conspiracy theory is maybe not as crazy as those, but it does have a lot in common with them - you use your conclusion to prove your conclusion, you ignore inconvenient data, you shift the burden of proof, you provide smug, empty comebacks instead of actual data or evidence, etc.

I'm not saying that your theory is impossible. Just that it is in conflict with the preponderance of the little evidence that we have. The opinion of most scholars is that Polo most likely went to China and recorded his travels in a mostly honest fashion. If you want to disprove that, then the burden of proof lies with you. But circular arguments, confirmation bias, and "because I say so" isn't going to help.

Whatever man, believe what you want. But don't be surprised when you get labeled a kook.