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00:00The 13th century.
00:06In Venice, young Marco Polo is about to embark on a voyage to China.
00:13However, to this day, doubts persist as to whether he ever arrived there.
00:18The sheer scale of his adventures continues to defy belief.
00:25His account becomes the bestseller of the late Middle Ages.
00:29Today, scholars the world over are seeking facts and answers.
00:33Is there reliable proof of Marco Polo's presence at the Imperial Court of China?
00:39They are searching for clues.
00:42In Marco Polo's own words, in Chinese sources, and by applying state-of-the-art technology.
00:52Even on his deathbed, Marco Polo maintains that he is told only half of all he had seen.
00:59Otherwise, he says, no one would have believed him.
01:02In 1298, in the course of a naval war between the republics of Genoa and Venice, Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, ends up a captive prisoner in a Genovese jail.
01:20There he encounters one Rustichello of Pisa, a prolific author of chivalric novels.
01:39An imaginative writer and a well-travelled man, imprisoned and cut off from the outside world.
01:47A chance encounter with fateful consequences.
01:52Marco Polo entertains his fellow prisoner with tales of an arduous journey to faraway kingdoms.
01:58He tells of strange customs, immense riches, and of a highly civilized culture of most wondrous achievements.
02:13Rustichello is fascinated by this exotic panorama.
02:16He becomes an instant admirer of his cellmate.
02:19This man who claims to have seen all this in person.
02:22In their Genovese jail, the two men put the tale of these travels to paper.
02:27However, they will make Marco Polo a household name to this day.
02:32But what if these tales are all woven from hearsay?
02:38We meet Frances Wood of the British Library in London.
02:42In her book, Did Marco Polo Go to China?, she questions the myth of the Venetian traveller.
02:48I think I would believe that he probably didn't travel much further than Constantinople,
02:53where we know that a Polo family had business and so on.
02:57And there, that's a great sort of anthropo where he would have met many other people who had travelled further.
03:04This would make Marco Polo a plagiarist.
03:07But does this verdict hold?
03:09Those who are convinced that the Venetian did in fact reach China,
03:13have a strong argument in support of their views.
03:16What speaks in his favour is the simple fact that his descriptions of all manner of things are very precise,
03:24and that most of his observations can be confirmed by Chinese sources.
03:28The dispute surrounding Marco Polo has continued unabated for centuries.
03:35When he returned after 24 years, his tales strained the belief of even those among his contemporaries,
03:42who readily believed in miracles.
03:44They call him Il Milione, the Braggart, a mere teller of tall tales.
03:50And to this day, the place where Marco Polo's house is said to have stood is called Corte Milione, the Braggart's Court.
04:02Literary scholar Marina Munkler is about to search the Venetian archives, hoping to get nearer the truth.
04:09In her view...
04:11Doubts about Marco Polo ever having been to China are based largely on the magnitude of his descriptions,
04:17which makes it hard to imagine that one man alone could have seen all that.
04:22In Marco Polo's times, Venice had amassed great wealth as the western terminus for goods from Central and Eastern Asia.
04:31Ornamentations on the Palazzi of Venice still bear witness to the interaction with the Muslim world.
04:37But in terms of fame, none of its merchants ever got close to that of Marco Polo.
04:44Of the man himself, we know very little.
04:48But at least the date of his departure seems reasonably well established.
04:52He was a rather green young man of 17 when his father and his uncle allowed him along on a voyage to Eastern Asia.
05:00The youngster very likely felt as though he were embarking on an adventure to the end of the earth.
05:06For Niccolo Polo and his brother Maffeo, however, this is not a venture into the unknown.
05:13Years earlier, they had penetrated deep into the heart of Mongolia and had reached the court of the mighty Kubla Khan.
05:21As merchants, they had been among the first foreigners to cross the empire of the dreaded apocalyptic horsemen.
05:27They are aware of the dangers in store.
05:38The Mongols, also known as Tatars at the time, were notorious for their cruelty.
05:43And people in the west regarded them as harbingers of doom.
05:46Under Genghis Khan and his successors, they even forayed well into Europe.
06:04Their bloody campaigns forged a Mongol empire that stretched from China in the east to the Black Sea in the west.
06:11Entire peoples were subjugated or annihilated in the course of these tumultuous events.
06:17Marco Polo relates that, after a long journey, his father and his uncle reached the court of Kubla Khan in Shangdu.
06:28There, according to his account, things took an unexpected turn.
06:33The fearsome Mongol ruler had expressed a genuine interest in Christian religion and sent the Venetians home to return with a hundred learned priests.
06:43To ensure their safe passage, the Khan had allegedly provided them with a set of so-called courier tablets.
06:50Prior to their departure, Marco's father, Niccolopolo, shows one such golden tablet to Marco.
06:57Niccolopolo tells his son how he and his brother Maffeo time and again had made use of it on their long journey home.
07:04In his travels, Marco Polo gives a detailed description of these tablets and quotes their inscription.
07:10By the power and grace of the great God, and by the grace he vouchsafes on our empire, the name of the Khan be blessed,
07:16and let all such as disobey suffer death and utter destruction.
07:20So the bearer of such a tablet was treated as a personal courier or ambassador of the Grand Khan,
07:29travelling under his official protection.
07:31The Mongols called this passport a paitsa.
07:35For the Polos, it would have been a priceless possession.
07:39But what became of their set?
07:43Venetian state archives may hold a first clue.
07:55A document from the Polo files, dated 1310, does indeed mention the courier tablets of the Grand Khan.
08:05In his testament, Marco's uncle, Maffeo, bequeathed to his nephew half a gemstone and three golden tablets,
08:13manifestly stating that they had once belonged to the Grand Khan of the Tatars.
08:18Yet a further document confirms the existence of the tablets, the dowry list of Marco Polo's daughter, Fantina.
08:26We know that this kind of golden tablet served as ambassadorial passport within the Khan Empire, meaning they did exist.
08:37Why else would they be mentioned in a testament or a dowry list?
08:45Spring 1271. For the first leg of their voyage, the Polos board a crusader ship bound for the Holy Land.
08:54Its destination, the port of Accra.
08:57Here they met, as Marco would later claim, the newly elected Pope, Gregory X.
09:03Marco tells Rustichello that the head of the church had supplied them with everything they would need to accomplish their mission.
09:10A letter of recommendation addressed to the Grand Khan,
09:13and permission to present him with a few drops of oil from the lamp said to have burned above the grave of Christ.
09:19However, concerning the 100 priests requested by the Khan, there would be only two monks to accompany them.
09:28A 14th century manuscript highlights the importance of their mission and the issuing of the papal order.
09:33But did all this really happen?
09:36There isn't a pope at the time, and they cross with someone who might, who then does become pope.
09:41But of course, as you said, there's no proof of any of this.
09:44There's no record.
09:45And the Vatican is full of letters to and from Mongol leaders, but nothing which seems to fit with the Polos.
09:53But I think it is part of the question of self-presentation, that they rather, kind of, they make themselves grander.
10:05But seemingly, the story is not garnered from thin air.
10:10Marco Polo even provides the names of the two monks.
10:14And there is another source which confirms that a certain William of Tripolis lived in Palestine at that time.
10:24A monk who was fluent in Arabic, and who had comprehensive knowledge of Oriental matters.
10:29In other words, an ideal choice for the venture at hand.
10:33The travelers set out for Armenia, where they find themselves in the midst of a local war.
10:42Fearing for their lives, the monks turn back.
10:45The Polos, however, continue their journey, facing 8,000 kilometers of danger and hardship along the Silk Road to the court of Kubla Khan.
10:56They have been traveling for months now.
11:03The nearer they get to China, the more intimidating everything around them becomes.
11:09Granted, there is the Pax Mongolica, a kind of official protection for merchants.
11:16But what is this worth out here?
11:18Bandits regularly prey on caravans plying the trade routes, attacking and plundering.
11:24The constant pervasive threat produces an atmosphere both sinister and uncanny.
11:37But there are also moments of sheer magic and amazement.
11:41Yet they always intermingle with fear spawned by the gruesome legends told and retold around flickering campfires.
11:53Two and a half decades later, Marco Polo was to relate them in his sober, matter-of-fact style, often almost impassively.
12:00He tells of bandits who would call upon the devil to darken the skies, only to emerge from a cloud of black dust, charging side by side against traders or merchants too poorly armed to mount forceful resistance, who would be plundered and often killed.
12:16But then, Rostichello as narrator steps in.
12:26It seems as though his professional sense of drama repeatedly places Marco Polo in the midst of the action.
12:32Making it difficult to decide where a mere account ends, making it difficult to decide where a mere account ends and where Rostichello's imagination takes over.
12:39At the end of this particular episode, his hero manages to escape.
12:45Rostichello does expressly speak of our book as though they were co-authors, which in a way they actually were.
13:03There are many passages in the travels where Marco Polo figures as a kind of presenter, but he in turn is presented by Rostichello.
13:13So, without Rostichello, Marco Polo would be practically non-existent in the book.
13:18As a traveller, Marco Polo was far from unique. Scholars have listed at least 33 men who, in the 13th century, had set forth to China before him.
13:33But his report dwarfs all others by the wealth of its details.
13:38In 1253, a Franciscan friar, William of Rubruck, had set out from Constantinople for Central Asia and the Empire of the Mongols.
13:49He left a vivid description of his impressions.
13:53To be the first among Tatars was as if I had entered a new world.
13:58On one occasion, literally hordes of barbarians came galloping towards us.
14:03Afterwards, I really thought that we'd escaped the devil by a mere hair's breadth.
14:09Rubruck definitely portrays himself as the colourful hero of his own story.
14:13With Marco Polo, there is always the impression of a remote collector of facts,
14:17which is paradoxically what later caused sceptics to doubt his veracity.
14:22I don't think the data-oriented exposition in Marco Polo's book can be taken as a clue that he was not there in person.
14:30I rather think that he refrained from putting forth his personal experiences because he was striving for objectivity.
14:39I don't see this as an attempt to conceal that he had merely worked with excerpts from other sources.
14:45Most of the facts in his account can be verified,
14:48and there is no other European source from this era which provides us with more data.
14:55For instance, how many days does it take to cross a particular desert?
15:04Where do you find food, water, adequate lodgings?
15:08Pick up The Travels of Marco Polo and you'll easily find a practical answer.
15:13Its author has an eye for even the tiniest detail.
15:16For travellers from the west, he writes, the Taklamakan, so hostile to life, is the last great obstacle to the Middle Kingdom.
15:25If you try to cross it from one end to the other, he tells Rustichello, the journey would take a whole year.
15:31Only by navigating the narrowest stretch could a traveller on horseback manage the crossing in about 30 days.
15:38And he tells Rustichello of wondrous sounds rising at night like the voices of spirits,
15:47filling the air with strange music reminiscent of drum rolls that drive travellers almost out of their minds.
15:55It was, Marco says, as if the spirits were calling his name,
16:10and often they had lured travellers into the desert, misguiding them to become lost forever.
16:16The Singing Dunes. In China, they call them Ming Sha Shan.
16:30When the wind raises millions of grains of sand and whirls them about,
16:35it creates a disturbing, sonorous effect.
16:38A fascinating spectacle of nature.
16:41To the people of Marco Polo's times, it must have sounded like melodies from another world.
16:46At the western end of the Taklamakan, the Silk Road divides.
16:54The Polos follow the southern route.
16:57Thirty days later, they reach Dunhuang, an oasis as well as an important city.
17:04In his account, however, Marco Polo barely mentions it.
17:09This is the hub of several trade routes,
17:14and the gateway to China proper.
17:17Nearby are the Buddha Caves of Dunhuang,
17:20a mysterious site from where Buddhism once spread to the Middle Kingdom.
17:25Along the Silk Road from India,
17:27the new faith was carried over thousands of kilometers eastward.
17:31Monks had carved hundreds of caves into the sandstone as places of worship,
17:35and adorned them with innumerable paintings and statues to honor the founder of their religion.
17:41So why, Francis Wood wonders, does Marco Polo seem almost unaware of the magnificence of the place?
17:48Dunhuang is world-famous.
17:53It's an amazing site in the desert, this wonderful long cliff,
17:59which has got about 700 little caves carved into it.
18:02It's the most dramatic site.
18:04He just mentions the name of the place and then talks about some Muslim customs.
18:08Not a word about the cliff, the Buddhas, anything like that,
18:13which does seem to suggest that it might not have been a personal visit.
18:19Up to this point, Marco Polo's descriptions of places and cities are in line with the caravan trail to Dunhuang.
18:27But then there's a leap in his narrative as though he had strayed from the plausible route.
18:32Here he makes another sudden sally northwards rather pointlessly to Karakoto.
18:38Now, I mean, this is a very kind of mysterious move
18:42because Karakoto was the capital of the Tanguts.
18:45The Tanguts had been wiped off the map in 1227,
18:48so why anyone would go there is difficult to understand.
18:52Then he comes back on to Dunhuang.
18:54And there's another vexing detail in the pages that follow.
18:58Why is there not a single line about China's Great Wall,
19:02which stretches along the Silk Road once you leave Dunhuang?
19:06If you come along the Gansu corridor,
19:09you have a flat plain between mountains
19:11and then this great yellow wall in the middle.
19:13It's unmissable and it's the most dramatic site.
19:16You would have certainly wondered what on earth it was,
19:19but there is no mention of it.
19:21This is one of the most imposing structures ever built.
19:26For more than 2,000 years, China's rulers ordered their subjects
19:29to construct and renew this gigantic line of defence.
19:33At first they used clay, rebuilding long stretches with massive stone bit by bit in later years.
19:40That Marco Polo should have overlooked it entirely seems rather improbable to a modern mind.
19:45But then there are other contemporary travel accounts that fail to mention the wall with a single word.
19:52Even the first proper map charted in 1385 and covering the whole of China does not record it.
19:58The Great Wall of China? A complete blank.
20:02This 16th century map is the first ever to outline the Great Wall in its course.
20:16So Marco Polo did not overlook the gigantic wall of stone as we know it today.
20:21In his time it was a derelict line of crumbled clay which, after centuries of neglect,
20:26had long lost any meaning to the people who lived nearby.
20:32Three hundred years would pass before work resumed on the Great Wall.
20:36The question, why his account more or less skips the sights of Dunhuang, however, remains unanswered.
20:47The Polos have finally reached China.
20:50Yet there are still 2,000 kilometres ahead before they reach their destination,
20:54the court of Kubla Khan in Shangdu.
20:57By then the Grand Khan had proclaimed himself the first Mongol Emperor of China.
21:12In a series of hard fought campaigns, the grandson of Genghis Khan had succeeded in subduing all opposing Mongol tribes.
21:21For the first time in 300 years, the empire is once again united under a single ruler.
21:26Kubla Khan becomes the founder of the Yuan dynasty.
21:29He is the most powerful man on earth.
21:38Rustichiello writes, asserting he would always adhere to the truth.
21:43That when the Venetians arrived, the Khan had called for a magnificent welcoming spectacle
21:48and ordered the entire court to participate.
21:51This, Rustichiello continues, was regarded as an exceptional honour for the Polos.
21:57Three years after leaving Venice, they have finally reached their destination,
22:02an all-important moment, one would suppose.
22:05But Marco, now in his 20th year,
22:08amits to relate a single personal impression of his first face-to-face encounter with the Emperor of China.
22:14Whatever he might have felt or thought, he kept to himself.
22:17His story is the stuff of epics, and film producers readily pounced on it.
22:27Wake up! Wake up!
22:28Numerous stars have portrayed Marco Polo as a dashing hero, an adventurer who overcomes any danger,
22:36gains the friendship of the Emperor, and returns home laden with riches.
22:40But in his account, Marco Polo declines to seek centre stage.
22:50For him, the true hero of his tale is the great Kubla Khan.
22:54According to Marco, on New Year's Day, more than 100,000 magnificent white horses were presented to the ruler.
23:03An incredible number that makes even the loyal Rustichiello doubt his cellmate's sincerity.
23:08But Marco's admiration for the Khan is boundless.
23:11To him, he is a ruler who defies comparison, be it in terms of power or of wealth.
23:15Each year, on the 28th of September, Marco says, the Khan would celebrate the date of his birth
23:22by donning garments covered entirely with small plaques of gold.
23:27In attendance were 12,000 nobles and knights from throughout the realm,
23:31wearing gowns to match those of the Emperor in fashion and colour,
23:35displaying belts of gold indicating their rank.
23:38Some of these garments, Marco insists, were embroidered with gemstones and pearls
23:42worth more than 10,000 Byzantine florins.
23:47Marco Polo offers a very detailed description of the Khan for whom he has a near sacred reverence.
23:54We read of festivities, of ceremonies, of imperial hunts.
23:59And he dedicates long paragraphs to dress regulations,
24:02the bestowing of belts and the significance of certain brocade garments.
24:06All this is confirmed by Chinese sources.
24:08Since the 19th century, scholars have scrutinized ancient Chinese documents for traces of Marco Polo.
24:19But there is only one name which bears a phonetic similarity to the Venetian surname, Boluo.
24:25This attribution, Boluo equals Polo, is still in dispute.
24:29But in 2010, Chinese historian Pang Hai struck upon something that might substantiate the identification of Boluo with Marco Polo.
24:39Pang Hai had dug deeply into the Yuan Shi, the chronicles of the Yuan dynasty.
24:47The Yuan Shi relates that a certain Saman, a confidant of the Khan,
24:51had issued a warrant ordering the arrest of another young courtier named Boluo.
24:56The charge, Boluo had violated the standing order that within the imperial palace women and men must walk separately.
25:03When the Grand Khan hears of the arrest, he orders Boluo to be brought before him.
25:13Having heard his case, the Khan not only pardons Boluo, he even entrusts him with an important mission and sends him away to a distant province.
25:28Once there, Boluo shall act as the Khan's official collector of taxes.
25:32The Khan held a protective hand over Marco Polo.
25:48Saman felt deeply humiliated.
25:51He turned to alcohol and soon died an embittered man.
25:55His death caused considerable discontent among high officials.
25:58Marco Polo standing at court and even his life were endangered.
26:04This was the reason why the wise Khan had sent him to a distant province and out of harm's way.
26:09In Marco Polo's account, we read nothing about the arrest of its protagonist.
26:15The corresponding passage merely mentions the courtier's general envy and a mission to a remote corner of the empire.
26:22By checking the place names of the itinerary, historians have concluded that in 1282,
26:27Marco Polo's destination must have been Yangzhou.
26:32When we retrace his stages on the route to Yangzhou, it becomes obvious that Marco Polo must have used the post road.
26:42This indicates travel on horseback, a privilege reserved for high-ranking officials,
26:47which, in turn, reveals that he must have held a corresponding title.
26:52Yangzhou is situated on the banks of the Grand Canal of China, or the Emperor's Canal as it was called in Marco Polo's time.
27:07Back then, being the hub of the salt trade, Yangzhou had grown into one of the wealthiest cities of the empire.
27:15According to Marco Polo's own words, he spent three years in Yangzhou.
27:19At the foot of the Venetian statue, Hans Ulrich Vogel meets historian Panghai, a native of Yangzhou.
27:26He has been searching for proof of Marco Polo's stay in his hometown.
27:31Sifting through documents concerning administrative affairs in medieval China,
27:36Panghai has uncovered a number of striking similarities.
27:40For him, there is no doubt that Marco Polo held a high official post in Yangzhou's tax and salt authority.
27:56No one before had ever listed the 27 districts of the Yangzhou province as precisely and correctly as he did.
28:04Chinese sources confirmed that this administrative division was in practice for three years only,
28:09exactly matching the time span Marco Polo claims to have spent in the region.
28:17But could he really have held such an exalted position?
28:21As a matter of fact, a European in the service of Kublai Khan was no exception.
28:29China's ruler is known to have drawn on foreign experts, most of whom remain nameless and have left few traces.
28:39And there is one irrefutable proof that there were, in fact, quite a number of them.
28:51In 1951, excavations in Yangzhou unearthed a set of gravestones bearing Christian symbols.
28:58In the 15th century, they had been reused as building material to construct the new city wall.
29:07On one gravestone, archaeologists discovered the name of a child, Caterina Ileone, who had died here in Yangzhou in the year of our Lord, 1342.
29:16Her family hailed from Upper Italy, as did Marco Polo.
29:23The inscription tells us that Caterina was the daughter of one Domenico Ileone, a merchant from Genoa.
29:30Clearly, Ileone had somehow settled in Yangzhou and was conducting business.
29:37This shows that in certain regions, it was conceivable to encounter an Italian engaged in trade with the Chinese.
29:44From foreign merchant to state official in the service of the powerful salt authority, a leap that is all the more credible, as Marco Polo reveals intimate knowledge of its workings.
30:04To this day, scholars are amazed at the Venetians' detailed description of the salt making process.
30:13In Xiangshan, 200 kilometers from the former seat of the Imperial Salt Authority, they still produce large amounts of China's white gold by exposing sea water to the sun.
30:24But there are hints that somewhere in the region, another, even older technique of producing salt is still in use.
30:33A technique mentioned by Marco Polo.
30:36Tips from the locals point Hans Ulrich Vogel towards Dashu, the village of the salt men.
30:43Until quite recently, a salt man's work day began with a prayer in the temple.
30:48Jiangbo was one of them.
30:49Every morning, they would perform the traditional ritual to ask the gods for their blessing before beginning their day's work.
31:04Jiangbo tells of their prayers and how, to his regret, the times have changed so much that the salt output of the village has dwindled to a near standstill.
31:13Most of the old simmering equipment has been scrapped.
31:18Zhu Xianghao, the salt god, may have outlived his usefulness, but is still accorded a daily bowl of fruit in time-honored reverence and to invoke his protection over the village.
31:35Marco Polo is familiar with all this.
31:38He describes in detail the leaching process, exactly as it is still practiced by the salt men of Dashu.
31:55Salt is leached from mineral-bearing soils by adding water.
31:59When the concentration of a solution is high enough, it is poured into large pans and boiled until the salt particles crystallize.
32:06Just the way Marco Polo described it more than 700 years ago.
32:11The annual salt tax from a single district, he says, was worth almost six million sagi in gold, around 27 tons by today's standard.
32:20The data that Marco Polo has left us concerning the imperial salt authority is surprisingly detailed, precise, comprehensive and systematically chronicled.
32:32When we compare this with Chinese sources, we find that he corresponds almost 100%.
32:41And the most amazing fact is that these sources date from an era long after Marco Polo's time, so he could not have made use of them for his account.
32:49He must have had an insider's knowledge, meaning he saw all this with his own eyes.
32:53As a tax official, and as the ever-curious wanderer between two worlds, Marco Polo experiences the China of the Grand Khan as a country replete with a spirit of revival and invigoration.
33:09Wherever he goes, new buildings are under construction. Old ones are being enlarged or renovated.
33:16The Venetian is awed by the achievements of Kubla Khan. He sees a highly civilized state with an administration honed to perfection and a road system unrivalled anywhere else.
33:26Time and again, scholars stumble upon seemingly marginal details in his account.
33:30On either side of public roads, wherever possible, the Khan demands that trees be planted three paces apart, that they may serve to indicate the road surface when covered with winter snow, and to afford summer shade to travellers and their horses.
33:48Observations like these leave little doubt that their author had first-hand knowledge of such matters.
33:54While scrutinizing documents of the Yuan dynasty's postal system, historian Dang Bo Hai has found three sources that confirm the details related by Marco Polo.
34:07They expressly state that Kubla Khan was the first ruler to order the planting of trees along the post roads.
34:13Many foreign travellers were abroad throughout the Yuan Empire, but it is only with Marco Polo that we find the kind of marginal details and footnotes that match historical documents.
34:29The Imperial Palace in today's Beijing, built along the lines of its predecessor from the times of Kubla Khan.
34:36Back then, the ruler ordered an entire city to be built from scratch as a symbol of his power, and in 1264 made it his new main residence.
34:46To Marco Polo, its checkerboard layout is a masterpiece of town planning and a most magnificent sight to behold.
34:55Adorned with paintings, marble, silver and gold, the likes of which Europe has never seen, he is enraptured.
35:02To control his vast empire, the Grand Khan must rely on dispatches from his roaming officials.
35:09These he sends on countless missions to report on anything that might have a bearing on the affairs of state.
35:17It is on his tours of inspection that Marco Polo memorizes his huge wealth of details, thus becoming one of the foremost authorities on what, back then, was modern China.
35:28The hinterland of Khan Balik, the Khan's city, as Beijing was then called, would comprise 200 individual cities, he relates.
35:39From there, people flock to the capital and bring their produce and merchandise.
35:44No fewer than a thousand carriages and pack horses loaded with raw silk arrive daily.
35:49It appears that Marco Polo had developed a passion for China's imposing stone bridges.
35:57In his account, the Lugochao Bridge in Beijing takes pride of place.
36:02Back then, it was 16 kilometers from there into the capital.
36:06The river, spanned by the bridge, would take merchants and their goods all the way to the sea.
36:10In the 17th century, a flood wreaked havoc with the Lugochao. It had to be rebuilt.
36:18But the measurements Marco Polo quotes still apply.
36:22300 paces long and eight paces wide.
36:25There's no other bridge in the world like it, he would tell Rustichello.
36:29We still find construction elements from Marco Polo's time.
36:42For instance, these parapets, which he describes in great detail.
36:48He talks of stone pillars, each one topped by the statue of a lion.
36:53Between the columns, a horizontal stone slabs, he explicitly states, that prevent people from falling into the river.
37:02Marco Polo, it may be important to add, is the only non-Chinese author who left such an elaborate description of this particular bridge.
37:13In the harbor of Chuen Chou, Marco Polo makes special note of the unusual construction of the pylons of the local bridge.
37:24Both ends are tapered, like the bow of a ship, facing upstream and downstream.
37:30Because, he writes, at very high tides there is upstream flooding from the sea to the interior.
37:35Scholars say only someone actually present would be interested in information such as this.
37:44To the Venetian, the empire of the Mongols is a land of wonders.
37:50One being paper money, still unheard of in Europe.
37:54With a piece of paper such as this, Marco tells Rustichello, he had bought goods everywhere without the slightest problem.
38:00The Mongols produced it from the bark of mulberry trees.
38:06And he adds that anyone refusing to accept such a paper as legal tender is liable to face the death penalty.
38:15As a specialist in medieval Chinese finance, Hans Ulrich Vogel knows the contemporary sources referring to paper money.
38:24Some 20 years before Marco Polo, a monk compared its texture to cotton.
38:32Marco Polo again provides an additional detail.
38:35He describes the process used to produce the paper for their currency using mulberry fibre.
38:45Frankfurt, Germany.
38:46Lab experts at Goethe University have been asked to examine a priceless specimen of Chinese paper money issued in the 14th century to ascertain its basic raw material.
38:58Since the monetary system of the Yuan dynasty had worked so well, it was adopted by its successors more or less unchanged.
39:06It is the first time a detail from Marco Polo's account is subjected to scientific scrutiny.
39:21Will he be faulted on his claim that the Chinese used the membrane between the bark and the wood of the mulberry tree?
39:27A tiny sample, 1.5 millimeters thick, almost invisible to the eye, is removed from one edge of the note and prepared for analysis.
39:44The result is conclusive.
39:46The membrane shows an irregular structure and permits light to pass through unevenly, a defining feature of mulberry fibre.
39:54So, can it really be that Marco Polo might have lifted all this from other sources, or assembled it from hearsay, as skeptics continue to assert?
40:09He goes on to state the size and the street value of particular notes, their equivalent in gold, of a 3% surtax for exchanging withered notes, and he mentions inflation.
40:21Scholars have put his data to the test, comparing them with information from eight other sources.
40:32Marco Polo has dedicated an entire chapter to China's paper money.
40:37And if we analyze its content against what other Western, Arabian and Persian authors have written, we see at first glance that it was Marco Polo who gave the most detailed, precise and comprehensive data about old paper money that has ever reached us.
40:54Marco Polo experiences China as a modern country, a land of prosperity.
41:01Details about local peculiarities and mundane curiosities are as noteworthy to him as the consummate organization of the vast empire.
41:12However, the wealth of details in his account are oddly counterbalanced by much of what he omits.
41:20For instance, there is not a single line about printing, then still unknown in Europe, nor of Chinese script, the curious custom of binding the feet of noble women or the ceremonial ritual of preparing tea.
41:32Such omissions still divide scholars into believers and detractors.
41:39Yet even Frances Wood, although she remains skeptical that Marco Polo ever did go to China, acknowledges the importance of his account.
41:46The good side about the whole controversy is that it does allow people to carry on working, looking, looking in different ways and looking at medieval, the medieval world and that it's really provoked a lot of study, which is great.
42:01And I think what is important is that Marco Polo's book really brought China to Europe.
42:09And really that's all I've ever wanted to do in this book and any other, is to bring China to Europe so that people can understand it better.
42:21In Marco Polo's day, not only far away China is a blank spot on the map of his European contemporaries.
42:28Next to nothing is known about the countries east of Persia.
42:32Marco Polo is the first who endeavors to fill the gap.
42:35No one before has traveled so widely, seen so much and brought back stories that often border on the bizarre.
42:45One day in jail, he confides a tale from the province of Tibet.
42:50He describes the most curious custom the locals would transact with traveling merchants.
42:55Initially, even trustee Rustichello is reluctant to believe this story.
43:00Under no circumstances would a Tibetan man marry a virgin.
43:06According to Marco, a girl was obliged to have had sexual intercourse with a number of men, lest she be regarded as worthless.
43:13Therefore, Tibetan mothers would approach men of passing caravans to sleep with their daughters, assuring obliging men they could enjoy the tryst as long as they wished.
43:22All that was expected in return was a modest trinket, which, strung up and worn as a necklace, would testify to the girl's amorous skills.
43:31In the eyes of Tibetans, the girl with the most trinkets would make the most desirable bride and be blessed by the gods.
43:38This rather frivolous tale has been credited to the fertile imagination of Rustichello, who lets the episode end on that note.
43:48In some versions of the travels, however, it is missing altogether.
43:52There are about 150 versions of the original manuscript. Some vary greatly in their content, as well as in their wording.
44:04For instance, in the Latin translation by Pipino da Bologna, a Dominican monk, the premarital custom is viewed very differently.
44:18In Pipino's words, it is a despicable habit that originated from idolatry.
44:22Pipino certainly altered many aspects of the text to accord with the mores of his Dominican order.
44:35He intervened with the basic structure of the account and edited a number of passages, such as the one about the so-called Tibetan guest prostitution.
44:43In the Franco-Italian version, this passage is told with an unmistakable wink of the eye, whereas Pipino adds a commentary stating that this custom was utterly abhorrent.
44:59So, pious Pipino adapted the text to suit his Christian morals. Marco Polo, too, is a man of the late Middle Ages and their prevailing beliefs.
45:10But his account shows him to be surprisingly open-minded and ever curious.
45:16His attitude towards Buddhism, for example, is one of explicit tolerance, and he admires the policy of Kubla Khan,
45:23who had elevated the teachings of Buddha to be the prominent faith in his empire, whilst tolerating the worshipping of other gods.
45:32Marco remains a faithful Christian, enjoying the Khan's individual protection.
45:36But finally, he senses that the time has come to depart.
45:41The Grand Khan is now an old man, and since no one could predict which turn events might take after his passing, Marco's father and his uncle strongly argue for their departure.
45:50This coincides with the arrival of three barons from the far west of the empire, who had arrived to ask the Khan to send a princess as a bride for their ruler, Argun.
45:58Their names, as Marco relates them, were Olatai, Apuska, and Koya.
46:05He tells Rustichello the Khan had chosen young princess Kokucin, and asked the Venetians to escort her on a ship's passage to Persia, and thus began their return journey home.
46:14So, is the story of the bridal escort the final touchstone of Marco Polo's credibility?
46:24It was only in 1913 that his account was translated into Chinese.
46:30Since then, Chinese historians have scrutinized the archives, among them the National Library in Beijing.
46:36And, in a 15th century encyclopedia, they found what they had been seeking.
46:43The Yongleodadian confirms the courtship of a Persian delegation, and lists the envoys' names.
46:51They are Olatai, Apuska, and Koya.
46:56The Yongleodadian may not mention the name of Marco Polo, but all the others are there.
47:01And there's also a later Persian chronicle by one Rashid al-Bin, which states the return of the delegation to Persia.
47:14So, it all fits together, and combines into a very plausible order of events.
47:19This shows that Marco Polo's account is consistent with the facts,
47:23and it's more clear evidence that he actually had been in China.
47:31The voyage home was to take four years.
47:34Shortly after his return, Marco Polo falls into the hands of the Genovese,
47:39and, with the help of his cellmate Rustichello, begins to compose his account.
47:44Two years later, Marco is released.
47:47Rustichello, alas, vanishes from the records.
47:51Marco marries into a wealthy family, and sires three daughters.
47:53But to his dying day, he is denied recognition by his contemporaries for his achievements as well as for their wondrous account.
48:01Priests urge him to renounce his fabrications.
48:06Finally, facing his death, it was time, they say, to admit that his travels were a mere concoction, invented as a bid for fame.
48:13To the Venetians, Marco Polo remains, il milione, the braggart.
48:20Yet, even on his deathbed, he maintains that he is told merely half of what he had seen.
48:26Otherwise, no one would have believed him.
48:29He dies in 1324 in his 70th year.
48:38He leaves a small fortune, the account of his travels, and a sober last will and testament.
48:44It contains not even a vague reference to his adventures.
48:52Marco Polo.
48:53His name became synonymous with the quintessential traveler who returned with fascinating tales of places that hold the lure of exotic encounters and make us yearn to visit faraway countries and cultures.
49:06But he also left a work of broad horizons presenting the world of Asia to the eyes of the West.
49:13What's more, 168 years after Marco Polo's death, Christopher Columbus set sail, determined to discover the sea route to exotic Asia.
49:23On his desk in his cabin, a copy of the travels of Marco Polo, filled with annotations highlighting the most promising destinations.
49:31Places where Aurum in Copia Maxima is said to be great amounts of gold.
49:38In his time, few believed Marco Polo, but his account heralds the age of great European discoverers.
49:45To his dying day, Columbus would believe he had come ashore on some islands off mainland China, in the legendary realm of the great Khan.
49:56Where, all the while, Marco Polo had actually already been there.
50:01He had already been there.
50:02He had already been there.
50:03I hope for you.
50:04He was still waiting for you to live in the Mental Survey International.
50:05He was still waiting for you to live in the Palpatine.
50:06He was still waiting for you to see you.
50:07Oh, yes.
50:08And we were still waiting for you to see you, in the moon of the world of David, the sisters in the world.
50:09The first time he did, we were still waiting and we came to see you.
50:13And it wasn't just sitting here, and we got to see you there.
50:21He enjoyed making sure that you are leaving.
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