Marco Polo: history’s most famous travel writer?

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Hello, and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously.

My name is Greg Jenner.

I'm a public historian, author, and broadcaster.

And today we are packing our trunk and boarding a ship to 13th century China to learn all about medieval traveler Marco Polo.

And to help us on our way, we have two very special traveling companions.

In History Corner, she's Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Her research focuses on the intercultural relations of 12th and 13th century Asia and Europe and in literature particularly.

And luckily for us, she's the most recent translator of Marco Polo's book, as well as the author of Marco Polo and His World is Professor Sharon Kinoshito.

Welcome, Sharon.

Thanks, Greg.

I'm delighted to be here.

We're delighted to have you here.

And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, actor, and writer.

You might have seen her on loads of things on TV, including live at the Apollo, QI, Pointless, having news for you.

Maybe you've seen her stand-up tour, Reawakening, or heard her on Radio 4's News Quiz or The Now Show, and you will definitely remember her.

From our episode on Pirate Queen, Chung Yi Sao.

It's Ria Lena.

Welcome back to the show, Ria.

Thank you so much.

It's great to be here.

We're delighted to have you back.

Now, Ria, you are, I think, officially the most educated, therefore most hyper-intelligent comedian we've ever had on.

You have a PhD.

I do have a PhD, but I don't know that that makes me the most.

The most educated, perhaps.

Okay.

All right.

The only one that didn't have an ADHD enough to be able to finish three degrees.

But your PhD is in science.

It is.

I'm very science.

It's in herpes viruses, if we're going to be precise.

That is precise.

I know, and it was only one step from there to comedy, really.

How are you with history?

What's the scale?

I mean, what's the scale of comfort level?

Listen, I can nail the tutors and stewards because that's all we were ever taught at school.

Tudors and Stewarts, Tudors and Stewarts,

and then a healthy chunk of Victorian Britain.

But I come to you for all of my 12th to 13th century Chinese knowledge because I don't, they skip that.

Yeah, yeah, we're not so good on the UK curriculum with the sort of medieval world.

With the rest of the world, which is ironic given that we used to own it.

So is Marco Polo a familiar name?

Very familiar name to me because I used to play it all the time at school.

Okay,

Or in swimming.

Talk us through the rules.

The rule is that you put on a blindfold and then everyone else that you're playing with has to avoid being tagged by you, but you get clues and what you do is you say Marco and everyone has to say polo when you say Marco so that you can get an idea of where they are.

So you're echolocating.

Yes.

Cartographically, is that how Marco Polo traveled the world, Sharon?

Echolocating.

You know, I have to continue my research because I haven't been able to unearth the foundational document for the swimming pool game.

So, what do you know?

This is the so what do you know, where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject.

And you've probably heard of the name Marco Polo.

Much like Ria, you may have known he was a medieval famous traveller.

You may even have played the famous swimming pool game.

Marco Polo!

Thank you, Ria.

Now, sadly, this is a 20th-century invention, not something that Marco did splashing around in the canals of Venice when he was a little boy.

If you've traveled to Venice, oh, aren't you fancy?

You would have flown to the Marco Polo airport.

You may have stayed in the Marco Polo Hotel.

He's been the subject of a Netflix series.

If you're a diehard Doctor Who fan and you've seen the original 1960s mini sort of mini series, you'll know that Marco Polo's in there too.

He gets around this famous traveller.

But what was the real historical story behind the big name?

Did Marco Polo really go to China?

And why is there a sheep named after him?

Let's find out.

Professor Sharon, can we start at the beginning?

When was Marco Polo born?

And what was his family situation like?

Was he wealthy?

Is he born into privilege?

Well, he was born in 1254, that much we're pretty sure of, so mid-13th century, into a merchant family of Venice, but we don't know very much about his childhood, but to be fair, in the Middle Ages, even future kings leave little to no trace in the historical record.

Right.

So we know he was born in 1254, and that's it.

That's right.

Helpful.

Okay.

I'll turn to you Ria.

What do you imagine his childhood was like in medieval Venice before little Bambino Marco was splashing around in the canals?

Well I have to say that really helps place things for me because I know like Venice, I don't know how old Venice is, but it's at least as old as the 1200s, right?

Because at some point they would have had to build all those canals.

Yeah.

Right.

So it wasn't it wasn't there.

in marshy times, which is an official time period, by the way, if you didn't know that.

The marshy era.

Yeah, there's the Iron Age and the Marshi times.

But I can imagine that, okay, so

Italy in the 1200s was a fascinating place.

I know that, for example, there was a medical school in Salerno that taught both men and women.

So I think that

I think it's more modern than we would think it would be in the 1200s.

And him being born to a merchant family right there, it was a big dock, wasn't it, Venice?

And all the ships went from there to all over the world.

So I think that he was really well placed to be an explorer.

Better than, say, a sheep farmer in the Alps.

Sharon, I think Rhea's done very well there.

I think that's a very interesting summary of the 13th century of Venice.

Can you tell us any more or are we good?

Well, that's fantastic, Rhea.

Yeah, the marsh era, indeed.

Venice, in fact, was founded several centuries before by refugees who were fleeing those Germanic invasions.

And, you know, they came across a bunch of marshy little islands and they figured the barbarians are not going to follow us here.

They just built a city across a bunch of little marshy islands.

Who would have thought?

But by the 13th century, Venice was a really big, important maritime republic making its fortune.

from traveling the seas and bringing luxury stuff back to Venice and funneling through Venice to the rest of the world.

So it's of course striking for its canals and they were probably even more numerous then than they are now because a lot of the little streets in present-day Venice are just little waterways that have been filled in.

But its most famous buildings like the Basilica of San Marco was there in Marco Polo's day.

But the other things that modern tourists might know, the Doge's Palace, the Rialto Bridge, they didn't yet exist.

And they took their present form in later centuries thanks to the enormous wealth generated by all those merchants of Venice.

And you know, Venice really got its start with the First Crusade in 1099, and they developed a kind of

transport business shipping people back and forth to the Holy Land, knights and their horses, and you know along with all that merchandise, the silks, spices, the good things like that.

So we call this the Silk Road, despite it being seas, that the Silk Road is this trade network.

Wow, this is the original Silk Road.

Yeah, have you heard of it?

You heard the phrase?

I've heard of the website.

That's a very different type of website, really.

Yeah, it's again, something else that's changed over the centuries.

So that's Venice.

Sharon, tell us about Polo's family relations.

Do we know of his siblings, mother, father?

We don't know too much about his the family of his generation yet, although we know a lot, well, we know a relative

a lot about his father Niccolo and his uncle Mafeo, because they took off to the east and they actually traveled to the court of the Mongols a decade before Marco went with them.

So we know about them and then the little we know about his family comes from contracts that survive in the archives.

They're quite a litigious family, so they were, well, like all merchants, they were drawing up contracts, but they were also writing wills.

They had a few family disputes in there.

So that's what we know about the larger family.

When Marco set out, the Polos were, you know, a merchant family, but they were certainly not part of that upper crust that furnished the dynasties of doges and so forth.

So

all we know about them really is what Marco and his co-author tell us in the

prologue, the first 19 chapters of their book.

In my head, I'm thinking Marco Polo is the big exciting explorer, but the dad and uncle have already done it.

So there's already a trade network there, which is kind of interesting.

What is the court?

Where is the court?

Well, it depends on what time of year you're talking about, because remember, the Mongols are nomads.

So even though they've been conquering everything in sight, and they will, by the time Marco gets there, Kublai Khan will have set out constructing his big capital, which has various names, but basically it's modern Beijing.

But, you know, they're nomads, and so it's hard to give up that traveling life, right?

And they especially organize their year around hunting expeditions because hunting is not only fun, as I tell my students, it's the medieval equivalent of golf for privileged males,

but you know, they want to be out out on the steppe in the middle of what we would consider the middle of nowhere, as well as, you know, establishing a big capital city in someplace like Beijing.

So we don't know exactly where Marco and the Polas would have first encountered Kublai Khan, but one of the capitals is in Chinese called Shangdu, and this will give us Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Zanadu several centuries later.

Yeah.

You have to be multilingual in Marco Polo's world.

So Dadu is.

Dadu is the Chinese name.

It's basically, I think, big capital.

Marco calls it Khanbalik, which is a Turkish word meaning kind of headset, you know, the city of the Khan.

And then we call it Beijing, which as I understand in modern Chinese means northern capital.

So yeah, we have all of these different names.

So Ria, Marco grew up not really seeing his dad or his uncle because they were off gallivanting around Western Asia and then suddenly one day they came back and they came back with a message for the Pope from the Mongol Emperor.

But daddy makes it up to little Marco by saying, I've come back, I've delivered my message to the Pope and actually I quite fancy going back out again.

Do you want to come?

Well, he's old enough by then.

But also imagine knowing that your dad is so close to home and then he goes, sorry, I have to just detour for a couple of months to see the Pope.

I'll be right back.

That's just...

So the Polos now, our pack of Polos, let's call them that.

So Mafeo, Niccolo, and Marco, they head back out to Mongol China in 1271.

Marco is a young, he's what, 17, 18?

He's a young man.

That's right.

And they travel to Acre, which is in the holy land of what we now call the Middle East.

And they definitely go to China, Sharon.

Because when I was a student about 20 years ago or something like that, there was a big sort of like, ooh, did he really go to China?

Was he, did he make it up?

Was he telling stories?

But he definitely went to China, right?

He definitely went to China.

Okay, case closed.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, there was a theory that he actually faked his book by cribbing from other writings, especially in Persian.

But, you know, the things he describes in Asia and in China totally correspond with what...

people who study the Asian end of things know about their material.

But on the other hand, I should say, Greg, that if you asked Marco, had he been to China, he might have looked at you with puzzlement for a you know a split second, because I think for Marco and his family, they were traveling not to China, but to the court of the Great Khan.

So they were traveling in the Mongol Empire.

When the Polos first arrived there, the Mongols ruled what we would consider now northern China, because they had conquered that from the dynasty, the previous dynasty, ruling it.

And it wasn't until the Polos had been at the court of the Great Khan for half a decade or so that Kubalai completed his conquest of what we would now call southern China, which was the Empire of the Southern Song.

So this had the effect of uniting the territories that hadn't been unified under single rule for a few centuries there, but which basically corresponds to our modern nation-state of China.

So the Polos were actually on the scene for this big turning point in world history.

Listeners, if you want to know more about the Mongols, we did an episode on Chinggis Khan, who grandfather of Kublai Khan,

Genghis Khan, I guess, more famous name, but Chinggis is what we called him.

I mean, he's there, he's quite impressed by Kubla Khan and the capital, Dadu, or Khanbalik.

Do you want to guess how long the Polos stay in this part of the world?

On this trip.

Well, let's call it a trip, but it's quite a long trip.

Well, okay, but the first trip was a decade.

So

I'm going to guess this was was long.

I'm okay, because I'm wondering about the dad and the uncle.

I'm wondering if the dad and the uncle never make it back.

So

let's go 20 years.

That's a really good guess.

It's 24 years.

Yes.

So you've done very well.

You're pretty good at this, Rhea.

You've got incredible knowledge here.

Whether it's.

Pulling it from I don't know where.

Well, I mean, they're amazing.

But yeah, they're there for 24 years.

And Sharon, we get a sense then that Marco Polo, even though he arrives as a 17-year-old, he becomes a man in China, in Mongol-controlled China.

What does he tell us about his his life in Mongol China?

Well, he tells us basically zero.

24 years, Marco.

Come on.

He's too busy having fun.

You talked about a book.

What have we got?

Well, I mean, we know his book today generally as Marco Polo's Travels.

And when you see that Travels on the title, you know, what are you expecting?

You're expecting to hear about somebody's travels.

But actually, the first versions of Marco's book were called Not the Travels, but the Description of the World.

So, of course, that title puts emphasis not on Marco the Traveler, but the world that he came to know.

So the book consists of 233 chapters, some of them really short, some of them longer, but only 19 of those 233 chapters are devoted to a kind of overview of first the dad and uncle, and then all three of them going to Asia and back.

The rest of the chapters are really about the places, sometimes in kind of, well, formulaic and kind of tedious fashion of just there's this place and then three days journey later there's this place and then five days after that there's this place.

You know, sometimes modern readers who pick up the book are a little bit surprised and maybe just a tad disappointed.

You know, I'm beginning to wonder whether his dad made him go to his room and just write down what happened today.

And he's like, today we went to place A and tomorrow we're going to place B.

Did it.

Sharon, Marco Polo...

tells us some really interesting things about

life in the Mongol court, but also kind of wider administrative aspects.

And two of the things I think that are particularly interesting would be the postal system.

Yeah,

I have to say I did not expect to be this excited about the wider administrative

organization.

Welcome to the Nerd show.

And you gave me a notebook and pen.

I'm writing this down.

That's it.

You know, this is what we knew you were coming in.

We thought we'd go fully nerd.

Sharon, the postal system and paper money are two things that Polo is particularly intrigued by.

These aren't brand new inventions, but these are things the Mongol dynasty are renowned for.

So can you talk us through them?

Right.

Okay.

The postal system.

Yeah.

And so your American listeners would recognize this as a medieval model for the Pony Express.

But actually, yeah, the Mongol system was called the Yam,

and it had many precedents in the ancient and medieval worlds, China, Persia, and elsewhere.

But of course, the Mongol Empire was vaster than any of those, so the distances we're talking about were much greater.

Horses, or sometimes just runners, depending on the terrain, would be posted at stations every,

we don't know, maybe three miles or so.

And, you know, by relaying like this, they could cover, let's say, 10 days' journey for normal travelers in a day and a night, Marco tells us.

So obviously, such networks were intended most of all to transmit political and military intel with lightning speed.

But they had other uses as well, such as bringing fresh fruit to the con from far-flung places just in time for snack time, right?

Fresh fruit.

And actually one of Kubal Icon's predecessors, you know, he boasts about having regularized a lot of this postal service, but we need to send out inspectors to make sure bureaucrats are not abusing the system by staying, you know, using it for their personal travel.

Yeah, so we've got something like 1,400 waystop stations and there'd be 50,000 horses in the network, we believe.

And as you said, Sharon, they can deliver a message in 36 hours to the furthest extent of the Mongol Empire.

36 hours.

So that's 72 hours to have a craving for a Kiwi.

Send the message to the far reaches of your empire and get it back again.

I'll be honest, as a woman who gets cravings, that's still a long time to wait.

Also, you arrived with a Kiwi fruit today.

I did arrive with a Kiwi.

That's why I said foremost in my mind as I was halfway through a Kiwi.

How degraded would the message have been after 1,400 way stops?

They were sealed, Sharon, if I remember rightly.

There was a sort of integrity, there was a sort of security integrity system, wasn't there?

Yeah, I think those messengers were not oral messengers, but rather, you know, would have had a written text to deliver.

And we have anecdotes of, especially the runners, were equipped with bells.

So if you were in the station, you know, waiting to

receive the baton, you would hear that guy coming and you would get prepared to run your leg or to do your leg of losing the journey.

Yeah.

Tell us about paper money, because Marco Polo is particularly fascinating because paper money is not in use in Europe, is it, at this time?

Oh, no, I mean, paper.

Really?

You know, the Euro was a huge advance for those of us that are old enough because before, you know, if you crossed from France to Germany to Italy, you'd have to be changing all your money, right?

So in Europe, even more fragmented in Marco Polo's time, each city had its own currency.

So the idea that you had.

Each city, that's a nightmare, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

So the idea that you had money that was good, you know, over the vast stretch of empire is just mind-blowing.

But also mind-blowing is the idea that anyone would look at a piece of paper and think that you could buy anything with it, that it had any worth at all.

Apparently some of the early examples of the paper recorded their value and other information in several languages so that it could circulate.

And interestingly, Marco tells us that the paper was made from the bark of the mulberry tree.

This is distinctive because, you know, the mulberry tree is also the tree grown to feed silkworms.

Amazing.

Famously, Marco Polo tells us that the punishment for refusing the paper money was death.

Hang on a second.

But I thought you could, I thought as a business, you had a choice who you could do business with.

Now they're just saying, you will do business with me and you will take this money.

Isn't it soft and silky, by the way, from the mulberry tree?

And I will be taking these kiwi fruits with me.

Exactly that.

Let's move on to something even shinier than paper money, which is jewels.

Ooh.

Shiny, shiny jewels.

Marco Polo listed three techniques for unearthing natural diamonds in India, interestingly enough, outside of China.

Can you guess what these techniques might have been?

I'll give you a clue, Rhea.

One of them involves eagles.

What?

The big flappy birds.

Sorry, three techniques for getting

diamonds.

One of them is take it off of someone else who's already got some.

That's definitely a technique.

Sure.

The second one is dig for them where they're made in the earth.

That's a very sensible technique, yeah.

And then the third one is train your eagle

to pick them out of magpie nests.

I like that.

That's a very smart.

I think that those are my three highly informed decisions.

Ask me how many diamonds I have.

How many diamonds do you have?

I have none.

Oh, okay.

None of those worked for me.

Sorry.

Sorry to hear that.

Sharon, is Rhea about to be a very, very wealthy person with her diamond industry?

I mean, what was the Marco Polo technique that he tells us about?

These three different ways.

I think she was pretty close.

So Marco Polo tells us...

Yes!

Marco Polo tells us about the way diamonds were collected in the province of Motopali.

on the east coast of India.

So the diamonds were located in the mountains, so you let the rain wash them to the surface.

Then, in the dry season, you can go in and collect them in the gorges and the caverns.

So, on the one hand, you can just pick them up.

But on the other hand, in the caverns, there are poisonous snakes there that function as a deterrent.

So,

but more interestingly, they took pieces of meat into the cavern and they threw them in so the diamonds would stick to the meat.

Then, eagles come and grab the meat.

So you can either chase the eagles off and grab the diamond-studded meat,

or if the eagles had already eaten the meat, just wait for the diamonds to come out the other end.

Oh, hang on.

So it was raining diamonds?

So just because birds famously can't control themselves.

Right.

Right?

They don't have sphincters.

No.

So you could either throw the meat in and then fight the eagle for the meat.

This diamond sticky meat.

I don't know what meat that is.

Yeah, what's it?

What's it diamond sticky meat?

Is it caramelized?

Does someone put it in a sort of delicious juice juice which is just kind of sticky?

No, it's definitely raw.

It's raw meat.

It's raw meat.

Sticky bloody meat.

Okay.

Diamond sticky bloody meat.

Diamond sticky meat.

Diamond sticky meat.

And then you let the eagles fly and be themselves, but every so often just falls out of it.

Just falls out of the sky.

You know what?

Maybe that's why in today's society it's considered lucky if a bird poos on you.

Maybe, because then you're getting a free engagement ring.

It used to be, Diamond.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend, but you do have to wait for them to come through an eagle's digestive tract first.

Well, there is a coffee that goes through a cat's digestive tract.

Yeah, and we've done a coffee episode if people want to listen to that.

So there we go.

It's all synced up.

Wow.

Honestly, at this point, it is easier to just go and take them off of somebody else.

I'm not endorsing that.

I'm not endorsing that as a method.

I'm just saying it just strikes me as easier.

Yeah, arguably that's not mining, that's theft.

But sure, sure.

Okay.

Well, we didn't pick up.

up, we didn't say mining, did we?

We didn't say how we were mining.

We didn't say mining.

Okay, fair enough.

Technically, none of those are mining.

Sharon, I think at the top of the show, we mentioned Marco Polo sheep,

which sounds delightful.

What's that about?

Well, you know, Marco surprisingly often waxes lyrical about a region's animal life.

And in the Pamir Mountains, the highest place in the world, he finds very large wild sheep with huge horns from which, as he tells us, shepherds made big bowls that they eat from.

So today, these sheep are drawing the attention both of big game hunters on the one hand and environmentalists on the other.

And we know them as Marco Polo sheep.

Oh, that's fantastic.

I thought they had a hole in the middle.

Yes.

I mean, that's amazing.

So we call them Marco Polo sheep because he wrote about them.

That's, that's, so this is him noticing these things and then modern day scholars going, oh, yeah, the sheep that Marco Polo talked about.

He also, he talks about luxury goods that were very valuable back in Europe and in the wider world, that were from the animal kingdom.

Rhea, if I say to you, ambergris and musk, do you know what those two things are?

Will vomit.

It is amber.

Will vomit.

I didn't know there was a song, but yes.

There is now.

Ambergris doesn't smell.

It's funny that we use it for perfumes, I guess, because it doesn't smell nice, but it is this horrendous, yellowy kind of gelatinous gelatinous, maybe.

Well, I don't know if that's quite the right term that can wash up.

But if you find any on a beach,

like that sells for good money.

It's quids in, isn't it?

Yeah, it's tens of thousands of pounds.

Yes, it's whale phlegm.

And so ambergris was very luxurious, used in perfumes, as you say.

Musk was extracted from the anal glands of certain types of deer, I believe, Sharon.

Is that that correct?

Yeah, deer and

oxen, I guess.

And it's no accident that Marco Polo really pays attention to these because the polo seem to have traded in musk.

And after they returned to Venice, a good part of their increased fortune, we think, came from their trafficking in musk.

So an animal secretion, again, valued in the making of perfume.

So he is careful to tell us everywhere these animals are found.

And at one point, he tells us way more than we need to know about how to extract it from the dead animal.

Been a bit of a sausage fest so far.

You know, I'm aware that we've really only talked about men so far, Marco, Mafeo, Niccolo, Kublai Khan.

Marco Polo does write about...

the women he encounters on his his 24 years.

He talks about the women of Tibet as particularly interesting.

Do you know why, Rhea?

The women of Tibet.

Yes.

I'll give you a clue about their romantic and sexual lives.

Well, okay.

This, I don't know if this is in Tibet.

I do know that there is, and I'm fascinated by it, a village that is matriarchal.

And it's in that area of the world.

It's a matriarchal society.

The women have houses, and the men sort of go, can I sleep here tonight?

And she decides whether or not he can.

And they can either have, some of them like one man for their whole, you know, lifetime, and they father all of their children.

And some of them go, all right, tonight, but next week, Harry's coming.

And they rotate around.

So is there, did he discover this matriarchal society?

Please say yes.

Ah, it's a great guess.

Did he, Sharon?

That's a great guess.

Yeah, he describes a couple of regions in Tibet.

In one, he tells us no man would marry a virgin.

So when visitors passed through, just what you said, Rhea, mothers would bring their daughters to sleep with them.

And afterwards, they demanded a little tokens that the daughter could wear around her neck as proof of her experience.

And it was those women that, you know, had a necklace of 20 or more of these tokens that were really prized as wives and held in high esteem.

This is what I'm talking about.

These women need to be on the speaker circuit or get them a TikTok account.

Yeah.

Something.

That is brilliant.

Finally, understanding that the more you know, the better you will be.

Exactly there.

So instead of notches on the bedpost, these I guess are nomadic people without beds.

So I guess.

And presumably without eagles, otherwise you'd be like, is she a virgin or does she just have really good eagle?

Fair point.

And his final mission at the end of these 24 years is to escort a bride quite a long way, Sharon.

Is this a sort of fairy tale occasion?

Is this a big royal wedding?

Is it Harry and Meghan, Mark II?

So Kubulai's great-nephew, who is the Ilkhan, the sub-con of Persia, sent a request to Uncle saying, you know, my chief wife is died.

I would like another bride from her same tribe.

Can you send me one?

So Kubalai assembled a huge escort wedding party.

And we can just imagine the polos jumping forward to ask to be included in this imperial party because this was a chance for them to sail back in the direction of Venice anyway after so many years with the great Khan.

So they ended up as part of the retinue of this young princess, Kukuchin.

Now, sadly, by the time they arrived in Persia after taking the maritime route, the sea route around the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the groom had died.

So the bride was given instead to his son.

But the Polos, you know, having gotten that far all the way back to Persia, were able to continue on their way back to Venice, where they arrived in 1295, so about 24 years after they had first left.

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Subject to change.

Marco has delivered the bride safely, not to the right husband, but never mind, to a husband.

And then they sailed home and they...

50% of the right husband.

Yeah, I mean, same surname, right?

Same family.

And they get back to Venice in 1295, and I'm thinking warm welcome, right?

He's been away 24 years.

In 1295?

In 1295, remember he's born in 1254, so he's an old man now.

He's getting on a bit.

Was it a warm welcome, Sharon?

Was it, you know, street party, parades, trumpets?

He's 41.

I mean, I'm 42, so I'm feeling the age.

Oh, you feel that same child?

Yeah, for me, that's.

He really isn't.

I just want you to feel better about yourself.

Thank you, but I feel like I'm decaying quickly, and I feel like I'm decaying.

And have you spent 24 years in the Mongolian Empire?

No, you have not.

What have you done with your life, Greg?

Fairly, honestly.

Have you written 233 chapters of there was this and then there was that?

I've written seven books.

Does that count?

Yes.

Nice one.

Sharon, talk me through the welcoming, the big arrival.

Do the polos get off the boat and everyone's like, where have you been?

Well, I hope they got a warm welcome at home.

Yeah.

But in fact, you know, Marco stepped very quickly into Venice's political conflicts,

etc., all around the Mediterranean.

So we're not really sure what happened when he got home.

But within four years, he was in jail in Genoa.

So they're the great rivals of the Venetians.

And so yeah, he found himself in the year 1298 cooped up with other prisoners.

And this is when and how the book got first written down.

Okay, so he's in a Genoese prison.

He has survived 24 years in the court of the terrifyingly, you know, famously fearsome Kublai Khan.

He has survived thousands of miles of voyages.

He survived everything you can.

He gets back home and four years later, he's in jail.

It's not ideal, it's quite bad.

I'm hearing white privilege.

That's what I'm hearing.

That's what saved.

He was probably due jail for 24 years over there, but they just went camping.

He was just coasting around going, hello, hello, hello.

And he comes back, everyone's white.

He's like, wait a minute.

So, unlucky for him, lucky for us, though, because Sharon, we get the book because

his cellmate is a renowned writer.

Guys, with a lovely name, Rusticello.

Oh, Rustice from Pisa, because Pisa was another one of Genoa's trade rivals.

And we know of Rusticello because he wrote an Arthurian romance.

And so the two teamed up.

Actually, in the book, when you have I or we, it's often Rusticello talking, not Marco.

Are they co-authors?

They are.

We would call them co-authors.

And I guess we would be tempted to call Rusticello a kind of ghostwriter, but unlike modern ghostwriters, he doesn't disappear into the background.

He's like front and center

saying, you know, I, Rusticello of Pisa, got Marco to tell me these stories, and I'm writing them down.

Fair enough.

Any excuse to insert yourself, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, why not?

You know, you've gone through the hard work of all that scribbling in the cell.

You know, there's probably not very good lighting.

It wasn't just the scribbling.

He got him to tell the stories.

That's true.

That's another thing, isn't it?

He extracted these stories from him.

Okay, and the book, as you said earlier, Sharon, is not called Travels of Marco Polo.

It is called Description of of the World, composed in 1298, dictated to Rusticello.

Rusticello.

Boring question here.

What is he writing on?

Are there like writing supply?

Like, when you're in prison,

is there paper, is there pen?

What's he doing?

Well, we don't know exactly, except that a lot of the prisoners, especially the Pisans, were notaries.

And, you know, they're used to keeping records, writing stuff down.

And so the Genoese put these prisoners to work and they had them copying manuscripts and stuff.

So, you know, they would have been around a lot of writing implements.

So it's a sort of prison work scheme where you're put to work writing out legal documents.

Exactly.

No, actually manuscripts, translations from Latin romances.

Rio, do you know what language is written in the book?

Well, okay, so just the fact that you've asked me the question means that the answer isn't Italian.

Well, because, okay, so he's peace, and she said that they're notaries, they translate from Latin, so it could be in Latin, but this, this is,

I mean, because it's Rusticello writing it down, and it's not Italian?

Well, Sharon, there's many languages being spoken in Italy at this time, or dialects, perhaps.

So, which dialect?

It's not Latin, it is a vernacular language.

Which language are we calling this?

It's French.

Ta-da!

Oh,

of course.

How did I not get that?

Of course, it's French.

Of course it's French.

It's Italy.

It's French.

Of course it is.

Of course, Rusticello knows French as well as Latin, as well as Italian.

So Marco Polo

speaks Mongolian.

He probably speaks a bit of Persian.

He speaks Italian, but now this book is in French.

That makes sense.

Do we know why he writes it?

Or why does Rusticello extract the story in the world?

Well, this is because, okay, this is like a half-generation before Dante writes his divine comedy and makes Italian into a respectable language to write in.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So

French is classy.

It's It's classy.

It's classy.

Yeah, and Italian.

You know, it's an international language, sort of like global English.

So

Italians who were not associated with the church and therefore were not going to write in Latin wrote in French.

And we have lots of examples.

Ah, okay.

But who's it for, this book?

Is he just dotting down his memories because he doesn't want them to get lost?

Or has he got an audience?

Is there someone he intends it for?

Is this his way of getting out of prison?

Well, Rusticillo's prologue starts out by addressing emperors and kings, dukes and marquees, counts, knights, townsfolk, all of you who wish to know the diverse regions of the world.

So, you know, this is like an act of social imagining that corresponds to no actual audience that you could have had in the Middle Ages, and it's pretty unique.

It really strongly echoes the beginning of Rusticllo's one romance where, you know, he's trying to get the biggest readership possible.

Okay.

When you start with kings, you're definitely aiming high, but then by the end, he's like, townspeople, anyone,

whoever is nearby.

Hey, you.

Yeah, please read my book.

Okay.

And so he calls it a description of the world because he's seen the world.

So it's quite a grand title.

He's kind of showing off a bit.

Well, I question who picked the title at this point.

I feel like Rustikello really had a lot of sway in the making of this book.

He's like, first of all, we're going to write it in French.

Second of all, I'm in this book.

I didn't go on the trip for 24 years, but I'm in the book.

Third of all, it's going to be read by everybody.

So I don't know that Marco Polo had much say in what it was going to be called.

And then Marco Polo was released from prison.

What did he go in for?

Well, we don't really know, do we?

We just sort of assume he was a bit foreign and the Genoese were like, you,

you're a foreigner.

Wait, but he isn't.

He was born there.

Well, no he was born in venice oh he lands in oh i missed that i thought he went back to venice

he went back to genoa but there was a war between venice and genoa it's all very confusing so well well why why if you're venetian would you land in genoa in the middle of a war i don't know

do we know sharon well probably in some battle there were a lot of battles and you just took a lot of prisoners of war oh oh i see okay okay

mainly you held them for ransom but you know yeah

okay he He is released from prison eventually.

Presumably they're like, ah, all right, the war's over, off you go.

What does he do with his time?

Does he settle down?

Does he marry?

Does he start a different career?

He marries and actually he marries well above his station.

So we start to see, you know, the profit that he's getting probably from the musk trade.

He marries very well.

He has a couple daughters who also marry very well above the polo's original social status.

And then we really don't know much more than that.

We have a couple of contracts mainly having to do with Musk and then he dies in 1324, aged 70, a ripe old age for those days.

What was the name of his wife?

Donata Badoer.

Lovely.

Okay.

They had daughters and married.

So he did quite well for himself in the end, actually.

He ends up marrying, you know, he goes from polo mint to

Fox's Glassia Mint.

I don't know what's

trying to think of a classy mint.

I don't know.

When he goes from lifesaver to polo mint.

There we go.

There we go.

But yeah, so he does well for himself in the Enria.

You know what really surprises me is that he spent 24 years as a foreigner in the Mongol Empire and doesn't marry and have kids there.

He must have had relations and something going on there.

And then he just one day upped and went, honey, I have to go and take this bride to Persia and then never comes back.

Sharon, I think it's fair to say he was a bit of a lover man in China, in the Mongol Empire.

Is that he had a lot of necklaces?

He had a lot of necklaces.

You know what?

What happens in the Mongol Empire stays in the Mongol Empire?

Very nice.

Unless you're a bride from the village of the Chief Bua.

That's right.

That's beautifully done, Sharon.

Thank you very much for that.

Okay, and so in his will, Rhea, he left 24 beds to

his children, family, Marco Polo.

So I don't know if he was running like a boutique hotel, but that's he's done all right for himself, isn't he?

24 beds.

24.

Well, ideally, in a hotel, right?

Like surrounded by a structure that they could do something.

I don't know.

I mean, I don't know.

Just a warehouse full of IKEA furniture.

Maybe he was importing furniture.

Maybe he was trying to sell them out in the Mongol world where they're, you know, they're nomads.

I don't know.

But yeah.

How much was a bed?

That that was, you know, thanks, Dad.

That's worth quite a lot of beds, isn't it?

I mean, famously, Shakespeare in his will leaves his best bed to second best bed to his wife.

A bed was valuable.

To leave 24 behind suggests great wealth, Sharon.

It suggests a big household, so, you know, family members and all this, but also, you know, it was widespread throughout Italy and much of the Mediterranean at this time to have enslaved peoples, aka domestic servants.

Ah, okay.

So I was about to say that Marco Polo sounds like actually quite a nice guy, but then you've unfortunately ruined that.

Potentially, he maybe wasn't so nice in the end.

But okay.

So he died in 1324, aged 70, and his travel book outlived him because, of course, you you have translated it and it's well known.

And as Rhea said, people were shouting his name in swimming pools throughout the 20th century.

So, can you tell us about the book, this fantastic, extraordinary document?

How did it outlive him?

And how did it spread through Europe?

Well, this was a bestseller in the Middle Ages, if you judge by the number of manuscripts it survived, but most of them survived because the book was fairly rapidly translated into Latin by a Dominican friar.

And so, you know, once the church gets hold of it, you can imagine that they're not going to have the same attitude towards the description and especially the customs of these exotic places like those tokens that you get in Tibet.

So they change the text or, you know, they insert their own little editorial comments.

Oh, really?

And it's that Latin copy that then gets re-translated into a bunch of languages, back into Italian dialects, but also, you know, further on into Northern European languages.

And I know that Columbus was a big fan.

Christopher Columbus, when he set off to look for India.

1492.

Thank you, Rhea, for absolutely true.

In 1492, Ocean Blue and all that.

He read...

the book as a sort of when you go out and buy a travel book before you go on holiday was he was he was this him sort of going i need to know all know all about

Asia because I'm off to India.

I haven't got anything on the world.

Yes.

Actually, I have this description of it.

Yes, description of the world.

Sharon, is that because the book was a classic by then, by the 1490s?

Well, you know, you have to remember that, so Marco Polo is writing in 1298, and then in 1348, we get the Black Death.

Lots of things collapse as a result of the Black Death, including a lot of those open pathways into Asia.

And so even by 1492 or the 1490s when Columbus sets out, we don't have so many first-hand experiences, especially of the coast of Asia, the Pacific coast.

And so since that is what Columbus is aiming for, Marco Polo's book of India that describes that maritime route is really,

you know, even though it's kind of old, it's the information that we have.

And if only he followed it, he would have found Asia.

I mean, in fairness to Columbus, he was looking for India.

He sort of, he thought Cuba was Japan, and then he got very confused, and then he came home.

Right, because he didn't follow the actual path in the book.

Yeah, well, you know,

it's hard.

Tell us about the 19th century, because I know in the Victorian era,

there was a sort of Apolo

kind of re-I don't know.

Resurgence?

Resurgence.

Yes, thank you.

A polo renaissance.

We get sort of more interest in him.

There was a particular, was it a Scottish translator or a geographer?

Well, you know, by the 19th century, you had your

Brits playing the great game in Asia.

Oh, yes.

And then you had, you know, Royal Geographical Societies and, you know, that kind of stuff.

So

we had a lot of

adventurers who were out there, part of the army, part of the administration, and they were fascinated.

by Marco Polo's descriptions, especially of some of the flora and the fauna and some of the peoples encountered.

So you had Henry Ewell in particular, who translated it and who, I mean, the annotations are about six times as lengthy as the text, but he's writing to friends of his who was the

head of station in such and such up in the mountains.

And he's saying, you know, so can you verify for me that there's a plant like this and an animal like that?

So it's really part of the expansionism and the geographical and sort of scientific cataloguing of the world.

That's really interesting.

So the age of exploration in the 13th century, then you get the age of conquest and colonialism where these men of science and learning, but also administrators, are looking at earlier texts and going, ah, yes, I can see that plant.

He's written about it earlier.

It's very interesting to see a book having that kind of legacy in life.

It's kind of interesting to think that it got discovered, I'll put in air quotes,

written about, then

Black Death, everything then became theoretical.

And then they went out again and just went, hey, is what you discovered what they discovered?

And they go, yeah, it's because it's the same place and the same plants.

Find me a Marco Polo sheep.

I want to ride it.

The nuance window!

This is the part of the show where Rhea and I sit quietly and study our navigation charts while Professor Sharon has two minutes to tell us something we need to know about Marco Polo.

My stopwatch is ready, so Professor Sharon, please take it away.

Okay, thanks, Greg.

What I'd like to emphasize, I think, is how surprising Marco Polo's book is on so many levels.

So we've already touched on the point that it was written not as a travel narrative and that despite being authored by two Italians, it was composed in not in Italian, but in French.

But in his own time, Marco Polo was a real myth-buster.

One spectacular example is when he tells his readers that, now hang on, unicorns are not at all as they are described in contemporary bestiaries and encyclopedias, but along with that single horn protruding from their forehead, they, as he says, have hair like buffaloes and feet like elephants.

What he's describing, of course, is a rhinoceros, which as he emphasizes, decidedly does not let itself be captured by a virgin.

At least as wondrous, I think, is the way Marco identifies the many sites across South, Southeast, and East Asia that are sources of the spices, especially pepper, but also cloves, nutmeg, galangal, and other exotic commodities that European merchants like himself would previously have accessed only at Mediterranean ports such as Acres or Alexandria.

What might read to us like that tedious repetition would have held the fascination of secret intel, I think, for his compatriots.

Now, for modern readers, it's often astonishing to see Marco recount customs like polygamy, cremation, even anthropophagy, with equanimity, even though they would have been unspeakably shocking to Latin Christians back home.

His book lacks any divisions of the world and its peoples into capital E East or capital W West, and he makes no mention of the old world continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe, that are the staple of Latin European cartography of the time.

His quote-unquote idolaters lumps together peoples we would today identify as Buddhists, Confucians, Hindus, animists, and so forth.

But they are not bad unless they attack merchants.

So these are just some surprising aspects of Marco Polo's book, but I think we need to recognize that this was a voice in the Middle Ages that we

can strike us as surprisingly modern.

And that's why I think Marco Polo is just such a wonderful subject for rediscovery.

Thank you.

Amazing.

Thank you, Sharon.

Thank you so much.

Rhea, that's a really interesting note to finish on, isn't it?

It was.

Can I just ask quickly, did you say polygamy, apophagy, and...

Anthropophagy, I hope I...

Anthropophagy.

Yeah, you know, eating people.

Cannibalism.

Oh, yes.

So, what do you know now?

Well, there we go.

So, it's time now for the what do you know now.

Oh, this is our

quick buy quiz for Rhea, who is wincing, panicking.

What's the word?

Well, I've written copious notes.

You have?

I've got, yeah.

Oh, my gosh, I wrote loads of notes.

Okay, and I drew a picture of a polo sheep.

It's a delightful polo sheep.

It has a hole in the middle.

Because it's got a hole in the middle.

Yes.

And bowls for horns.

All right, I've got 10 questions for you.

All right, I'm ready.

Let's see how you do.

Question one.

Marco.

No?

Okay, sorry.

No, I preempted it.

Right.

Question one.

What was the title of Marco Polo's book when he first wrote it?

Description of the world.

It was very good.

Question two.

In which city was Marco Polo born?

Venizia.

It was.

Oh, very nice.

Yes.

Venice.

Venizia.

Very good.

Question three.

Who was the Mongol emperor that the Polos worked for?

Kubla Khan.

Very good.

Question four.

What was the name of Kublai Khan's capital city?

Do you remember?

As far as I followed, it was, it's now Beijing, or in that area.

But then there was Dadu.

Yeah.

And, but also there was something called Khanbalak, which was city of Khan, which

people called it.

You've taken some very good notes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Khanbalak and Dadu, which would be Beijing.

Also, there was Xanadu as well, which I think was a separate capital.

Question five, what did Marco Polo say about the women in Tibet?

Do you know what?

I'll be honest, I don't think we actually learned what his personal feelings on the matter were, but what I do believe we know is that he left lighter

of a lot of necklaces that he had with him at the time.

Maybe.

But he described these Tibetan women where they actually prized sexual experience.

You're right, absolutely.

Over virginity.

That's right.

Question six, describe one of the three ways that you can mine diamonds in India.

Just one of the three?

Yeah.

Well, it's got to be.

You get some sticky meat.

You throw it in a cavern.

The diamonds are naturally attracted to the sticky meat.

Then you send an eagle in,

right?

And then the eagle, you hope, goes for the meat rather than one of the poisonous snakes that are also in the cavern.

Because you're just like, why would the eagle go for fresh meat when it can go for slightly sticky meat covered in diamonds?

And then you either fight the eagle for the meat or you wait politely until the eagle's had its fill and then hope it flies over you and makes you really lucky by raining down poo on you.

Yeah.

Incredible answer.

Yes.

Incredible answer.

I'm trying to think of the word.

What's the word for the bat poo?

Guano.

Guano, yeah.

So we can also sometimes, I bet you eagles also guano.

Yeah, they're going to guano on you.

Okay, that's an amazing answer.

Well done.

Question seven.

What was the final mission that Marco Polo carried out for Kubla Khan?

Yeah, so this was a biggie, right?

So Kubla Khan's nephew lost his chief wife, right?

And this was a good chief wife, right?

She came from a special village that just, I don't know what they did, what was in the water, but they made good chief wife stuff.

So he had to take another bride from that village all the way over to Persia to marry his nephew.

Unfortunately, though, the nephew got so excited or whatever, he popped his clogs before she even got there.

So in the end, she married his great-nephew.

This is an incredible answer.

You've got an incredible memory, honestly.

You remember those things.

And it was like, but it was a huge entourage.

She had tons of people.

It was, absolutely.

Question eight, which famous Italian writer did Marco Polo co-write the description of the world with?

Oh, I know.

Okay, so he wrote this with the famous author of that famous Arthurian romance, Rustocello.

Beautifully done.

Question nine: How many beds did Marco Polo leave in his will?

24.

It was 24 beds for 24 years away, I guess, maybe.

I don't know.

A better year.

A better year.

This for a perfect 10.

Which famous explorer was known to be a big Marco Polo fan in 1492?

Well,

he was a fan.

He didn't read the book very well because it went in totally the wrong direction.

But Christopher Columbus.

It was Columbus.

10 out of 10, Rhea Lina.

Well done.

What an extraordinary reciting of what we talked about.

Incredibly accurate.

Well done.

And also well done, Sharon, for such instructive teaching there.

That was amazing.

I've had such a lovely time.

Thank you, Sharon.

And thank you, Rhea.

Quite all right.

Our motto being, of course, what happens in the Mongol Empire stays in the Mongol Empire.

Oh, yeah.

And listener, if you want more Chinese history with Rhea, you can check out the episode on on the iconic pirate queen Chung Yi Sao.

What an extraordinary life she led as well.

Oh, she's still my hero.

She was amazing.

Incredible.

The fact that she got to retire with all her riches, incredible.

They were just like, all right, you know, incredible.

That's how women do it.

And of course, you can listen to our episode on Chingis Khan as well.

And if medieval travelers are your thing, we also have an episode on Ibn Battuta.

And remember, if you've enjoyed the episode, please share the show with your friends.

Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the episodes one month before all the other platforms.

It's very important.

And if you get on there, make sure to switch on your notifications so you never miss an episode.

I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests.

In History Corner, we have the spectacular Professor Sharon Kinishita from UC Santa Cruz.

Thank you, Sharon.

Thanks, Greg.

I had a great time.

It was wonderful having you.

Thank you.

That was wonderful.

Yeah, it was absolutely fascinating.

And in Comedy Corner, we have the sensational Ria Lena.

Thank you, Rhea.

No, thank you for having me.

It's been a delight.

I've learned all about Eagle Pooh and diamonds and all sorts.

Eagle Guadalupe.

And to you, lovely listener.

I'm going to move to Tibet now.

Yeah, why not?

Why not?

I'll come with you.

And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we navigate more historical wonders.

But for now, I'm off to go and train a bunch of eagles, then chuck some juicy steaks into my local jubilers.

I'm going to be rich.

Bye!

Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.

I'm Helena Bonham Carter, and for BBC Radio 4, I'm back with a brand new series of history's Secret Heroes.

And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent.

She will work undercover.

And if she's caught, she's going to be shot.

Join me for more stories of unsung heroes, acts of resistance, deception, and courage from World War II.

Subscribe to History's Secret Heroes on BBC Sounds.

In a world where swords were sharp and hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is, two fearless historians, me, Matt Lewis, and me, Dr.

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So, for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be qualified.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.