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Mosaic of Marco Polo
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
In the year 1271 Marco Polo, age 17, set out from Venice with his father and uncle on a journey across Asia. Marco’s account of his 24-year odyssey would reveal a world never before described. Traveling by caravan, the Polos followed ancient trade routes through lands that still evoke Marco’s amazing finds.
Though he revealed little of himself in his widely translated book, The Description of the World, Marco is idealized as a learned explorer on a mosaic in Genoa, Italy, pictured here.
These photos and captions were published in a 2001 National Geographic magazine series on Marco Polo.
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Grand Canal, Venice, Italy
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Venice’s busy Grand Canal retains the aura of the Middle Ages, when the Polo family, successful traders, set sail toward China for a meeting with Kublai Khan. Kublai and other descendents of Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, controlled much of Asia and made passage safe for intrepid merchants.
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Kurdish Wedding Party, Iraq
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
A blizzard of shaving cream falls on a Kurdish wedding party in northern Iraq. Marco found the Kurds inhospitable, describing them as a people who “rob the merchants gladly.” Before reaching the Kurds’ homeland, the Polos passed near the Caspian Sea, where Marco noted a “fountain which sends up oil,” the first European description of a petroleum field.
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Tailor, Baghdad, Iraq
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Marco liked fine muslin, still a cloth of choice in Baghdad, where a man is being fitted here. Marco may have visited Baghdad, but more likely he merely heard about it and other parts of Iraq from travelers; he often reported hearsay. -
Cheshmeh Genu, Iran
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
“Good … for the itch,” wrote Marco, likely grubby and saddlesore when he reached a hot spring in southern Iran. It could have been Cheshmeh Genu, where some 700 years later locals still wash and soak in mineral-tinted water. Marco surprised European contemporaries by reporting that the three Magi of Christian fame were buried in the Iranian town of Saveh.
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Mountains, Iran
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Climate extremes assaulted Marco as he neared the Persian Gulf in Iran. Crossing 8,000-foot (2,438-meter) passes like this one exposed him to cold “one hardly escapes by wearing many clothes.”
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Woman, Minab, Iran
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Marco descended from the mountains to a “great heat,” taking notice of black-skinned Muslims, like a masked woman in Minab.
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Northern Alliance Officers, Afghanistan
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
The “valiant” fighting spirit Marco noted in Afghanistan lives on. Ahmad Shah Massoud of the Northern Alliance leads officers in worship and in war against Taliban forces.
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Opium Smoker, Afghanistan
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
In the Wakhan Valley—the long finger of Afghanistan that reaches across to China—an elder surrenders to opium, now officially banned. -
Taklimakan Desert, China
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
More than two years into his journey, Marco Polo reached the towering dunes of China’s Taklimakan Desert, riding camelback as visitors still do. Marco spent 17 years in China, returning with tales to astound the Western world.
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Tajik Children, China
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Ganged up against the cold, Tajik children, members of a Muslim minority in western China, review tattered notes before school opens in a Pamir mountain village in Xinjiang. Marco followed the Silk Road through this well-trod region. “From this country,” he wrote, “go out many merchants … through all the world doing trade.”
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Snowstorm, China
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
A freak snowstorm in arid western China enchants factory workers on a break near Kashgar. China presented Marco with many marvels: “black stones”—coal—that burn, cities larger than any in Europe, wine made from rice, and the discovery that asbestos comes not from a salamander, as medieval Venetians believed, but from a mineral.
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Temples, Myanmar
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Crossing into a Buddhist realm, Marco provided an early account of Asia’s great monasteries and temples. His interest extended to Myanmar (Burma) and its capital of Pagan, with “the most beautiful towers in the world.”
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Fake Money, China
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Paper money fascinated Marco as much as gems and spices did. He marveled at the “alchemy” that permitted the Great Khan to print paper money equal in value to gold and silver. He also noted the practice of burning fake money to honor the dead, a custom still alive in China.
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Yellow Hat Monks, China
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Monks of the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism flock together prior to morning prayers at the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe in Gansu Province, a region populated by “idolaters,” the Christian Marco wrote. Monks intrigued Marco with their fasting, their shaved heads, their “moon calendar,” and the way they “lead life hard.”
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Silkworm Cocoons, China
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
“Each day there come … more than a thousand carts loaded with silk,” wrote Marco about how the prized cloth poured into Kublai’s capital on the site of modern Beijing. Countryside silkmaking has changed little since Marco’s time. Villagers still cook silkworm cocoons until they are soft enough to yield threads.
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Bound Feet, China
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Hobbled by age and custom, women whose feet were bound in childhood sit down to gossip in Yunnan Province. A traditional status symbol for rich families, foot binding escaped Marco’s notice. Scholars suggest that he would have rarely seen upper-class women out in public.
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Pulling in Nets, India
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Strength in numbers enables villagers to pull in nets on the west coast of India, where people have “all things different from ours,” wrote Marco Polo. Eluding pirates and cannibals, the great traveler, homeward bound, uncovered both the material and the spiritual riches of South Asia.
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Sadhu, India
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Tales of plentiful pearls, exotic spices, and ascetic holy men, like the present-day sadhu shown here, appear in pages on India in Marco’s book from the late 1290s, The Description of the World.
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Christopher Columbus’s Notes
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Marco’s written words may have inspired Christopher Columbus, who wrote notes 200 years later in the margins of a Latin translation of The Description of the World.
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Adam’s Peak, Sri Lanka
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Mountains throw off blankets of clouds at dawn in a view from Adam’s Peak, a pilgrimage site mentioned by Marco on the “Isle of Seilan,” now Sri Lanka. Some believers, Marco reported, came to visit what they held to be the grave of Adam. Others saw signs of the Buddha. Pilgrims still climb the steep, 7,360-foot (2,243-meter) pinnacle.
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Brihadishwara Temple, India
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
“Most worship the ox,” wrote Marco about the Hindu faithful in India. He probably witnessed such outpourings of devotion as when a priest at Brihadishwara temple in Thanjavur bathes with curried milk a statue of Nandi, the mount of the god Siva. Marco marveled that Hindus refused to eat beef and smeared their homes with cow dung.
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Drying Cloth, India
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
India’s commercial prospects impressed the merchant from Venice. Marco extolled the cotton of Gujarat, still a money earner as fields bloom with drying cloth.
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Naked Sadhu, India
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
“We go naked because we wish nothing of this world.” Thus Marco quotes a holy man similar to this sadhu in Bombay (now Mumbai), who has not worn clothes in 46 years. He owns only a bowl and a feather duster. “It is a great wonder how they do not die,” Marco wrote.
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Palazzo San Giorgio, Genoa, Italy
Photograph by Michael Yamashita
Shortly after his return to Venice in 1295 Marco was captured at sea, possibly by pirates. One tradition suggests he was imprisoned in Genoa’s Palazzo San Giorgio, shown here in watery reflection. Marco devoted his prison time to composing his book. On his deathbed in 1324, the legendary adventurer reflected that he had many more stories to tell.
