NARRATOR: Venice, Italy, one of
the most romantic cities in all of Europe. It is virtually unchanged
from that moment 700 years ago when a native son
returned home after traveling abroad for many years. His name was Marco Polo. Little, if anything, would
be known of these travels had Marco not been swept up in
a war then raging between Venice and Genoa. In the year 1298,
at the age of 44, Marco was captured and thrown
into a dungeon with a man named Rustichello, a writer
of romantic fiction. One can imagine his stunned
disbelief when Marco Polo began relating his adventures,
adventures that far exceeded any Rustichello could have
concocted himself for Marco was claiming that before
coming back to Italy, he had spent nearly 20 years
in China as a personal aide to the mighty Kublai Khan. China, then the most remote
and mysterious place on Earth. At some point, Rustichello began
writing down Marco's story. BRIAN HALL: The
only reason he did write a book was because
he was literally imprisoned with a ghostwriter. And it's got to be one of the
most fortunate imprisonments in history. NARRATOR: The book, first called
"The Description of the World," then "The Travels of Marco
Polo," and at various times, "Il Milione," told
of things just too fantastic for his
countrymen to take as factual. BOOK NARRATOR: Outside the
hall, the guests at the banquet numbered more than 40,000. I can also assure
you that on this day, the great Khan receives gifts
of more than 100,000 horses of great beauty and prize. The Travels of Marco Polo. NARRATOR: Is it
any wonder, then, that Marco's reading public
wouldn't take his account literally? How could there be
cities in China, where millions lived in
prosperity, when Venice the wealthiest and largest
city in Europe at the time had a population
of only 100,000? And how could a cruel
barbarian like Kublai Khan possibly be living so
glamorous and civilized a life? In time, however, Marco's
magnificent document would be believed and would
affect the future course of east-west relations. While it reveals little
about the author himself and no likeness of him
survives from his time, no name is more synonymous
with travel and adventure than Marco Polo. [theme music] The world into which Marco Polo
was born in the 13th Century was one of great turmoil
and great opportunity. Two cities dominated the
economic and political fortunes of the Holy Roman Empire-- Venice, Italy in the
West and Constantinople, now Istanbul,
Turkey, in the East. The church's influence may have
spread much further East had it not been for the meteoric
rise of an illiterate Mongol warrior named Genghis Khan. Within a few short years,
his pagan Tartar troops had conquered all of Persia,
Central Asia, most of Russia, and finally, the prize of
prizes, Cathay, or China as it became known. Genghis and his heirs soon
commanded the largest empire in the history of the world. In 1254 in Venice,
Italy, Marco Polo was born into a wealthy
merchant family. He was expected to
enter the business. NICOLA DI COSMO: The typical
education of Venetian merchant lasted until the
boy was 14 or 15. During this time, he would
learn how to read and write, of course. And also, he would
learn arithmetic, abacus as they called it. He would learn bookkeeping. He would learn the
basic knowledge necessary for a
commercial enterprise. NARRATOR: Marco's mother
had died when he was a boy. During his entire youth,
his father, Niccolo, had been away on business. His prolonged absence
had been the result of an extraordinary
trip to China, where he and his brother Maffeo
had been welcomed by Kublai Khan himself, perhaps the
first European merchants to be so honored. The emperor had sent them home
with an unusual commission. A progressive ruler,
Kublai wanted to know more about Christianity. The Polos were to bring 100
priests back with them as well as some oil from the Holy
Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Now in 1274, the Polos prepared
has set off again for China to fulfill Kublai's request. This time, they would take
Marco, now 17, with them. They expected to be away for
several years at the least. But would they have
left Venice if they had known their travels would
ultimately keep them away for 23 years? The way that a
merchant thought was totally different
from our modern concept. A Venetian merchant had not
the same notion of time. He was prepared to spend
years and years in the field. NARRATOR: But what reward
could the great Khan offer the Polo brothers that justified
risking their lives again and that of young Marco? Kublai had issued the Polos
his rare personal seals that assured them safe passage
within the Mongol empire. But still, one may ask
the why of embarking on so dangerous a journey. The survival of Venice
depended upon the Venetians' sense of Enterprise. So it was, in some
ways, a patriotic duty. Of course, there was
also another side to it. And that was that there
was an increased demand for oriental products in Europe. And the profits were fabulous. NARRATOR: And so for both
patriotism and profit, the Polos set off for Jerusalem
where they retrieved oil from the Holy Sepulcher. But only two priests, not
100, could be recruited. However, the rigors
of caravan travel soon forced the priests
to quit the journey. But for young Marco, the great
adventure had finally begun. The sights, sounds, and
smells of the Middle East where as nothing he
had ever imagined. Every fresh experience seemed
to make an indelible impression on the teenager. BOOK NARRATOR: Anyone wishing
to travel beyond these regions must travel for seven days
across an endless plain. But there are also at
frequent intervals, delightful little palm groves
to be ridden through all full of game, which is a great
pleasure to the traveling merchants. MORRIS ROSSABI: Marco Polo
is extremely intelligent, extremely observant. The fact that he was able to
remember all of the various details that are found in the
book-- many of which check out, many of which are actually
verifiable and seem to be quite accurate-- tell us that he was an unusual
man and unusually perceptive. His intelligence
cannot be doubted. NARRATOR: The initial
challenge the Polos faced was to reach the port of Hormuz
in Persia, where a ship would take them on to Beijing. But they were merchants
first, travelers second. Business would be transacted
as usual as they traveled in their large, costly
caravans, an eye always open for the nemesis of
merchants-- bands of outlaws. TIMOTHY SEVERIN: Every time
you came to a frontier post, you negotiated with the
local guard captain. And you had two
or three soldiers. And you went on with
your creaking carts. As you got into more
difficult terrain, you had to transfer your
goods onto pack animals. This meant that you could
only carry goods really of high value in small bulk. The ultimate high
value in small bulk would be, as the Polo
brothers traded in, jewelry, which you could
carry concealed on you. BOOK NARRATOR:
Leaving Kerman, you proceed over the
desert of eight days journey exposed
to great drought. Neither fruits or any kind
of trees are met with. And what water is found
has a bitter taste. One of the typical things that
caravaneers would do oftentimes was to force feed the
camels with lots of water. And in case the men
ran out of water, they would force the
camels to regurgitate. And they would, therefore,
have liquid for themselves. NARRATOR: In his book, Marco
notes not only geography and ethnic customs but reports,
as fact, tales told him by third parties. Many of them are so
exotic or incredible, his contemporaries dismissed
the entire book as fiction. The story of the old
man of the mountain, a brutal outlaw who ruled
from a mountain fortress in northern Iran,
is one such tale. TIMOTHY SEVERIN: When he
wants to recruit soldiers, he drugs them, takes
them to this valley. He has this valley all
organized with beautiful gardens and lovely picnics and
beautiful women, and so forth. Then they're drugged
again and brought back to the court on the brink. And he says, well, I'm able to
control this access to paradise if you serve me properly. And they're so impressed that
they go off and serve him. And he uses them as political
killers, drugged with hashish before they went
on these missions. And indeed from that, we
get the word assassin. It comes exactly from that. So there was a strong element of
truth in that particular story. NARRATOR: During the first
several thousand miles of his adventure, Marco doesn't
comment on any personal fears or misgivings. He had heard so much of the
great Chinese civilization that lay ahead, no hardships
could dim his enthusiasm. Once the Polos reached the
port of Hormuz, however, they find the boats not
seaworthy enough to take them to the China coast. They decide to proceed
overland instead. In so doing, Marco would now
become the first Westerner to document, for posterity,
the landscapes and customs, exotic and breathtaking, of
Central Asia and China itself. In their dank prison
cell in Genoa, Marco now recalls to Rustichello
that it took him another three years before he would meet
the legendary Kublai Khan. And it is then that Marco's
great adventure truly begins. Not the least of Marco
Polo's achievements was his memory, to be able
to recall for Rustichello in prison all that happened
to him for the past 20 years. BOOK NARRATOR: It
is a cold country. On the summits of the
mountains, the air is so pure and so
salubrious that when those who dwell in the town find
themselves attacked with fever, they immediately remove thither
and to recover their health. Marco Polo affirms he had
experience in his own person for having been confined
by sickness in this country for nearly a year. By ascending the hills, he
presently became convalescent. The Travels of Marco Polo. Marco Polo seems to have got
ill somewhere in Afghanistan. And he had to recuperate
up in the mountains. They got over the Pamirs in
Central Asia, the high plateau of Central Asia, and came down
into the Great Gobi Desert where there were all these
stories and that the idea that the ghosts roaming the
Gobi, which lured the travelers to their doom and sandstorms
and heat and cold and thirst. It was a very long, very
grueling trip until finally, they reached China. NARRATOR: China had been
completely closed off and forbidden to
strangers for centuries before Genghis
Khan conquered it. Now in the 13th Century,
he and his successors welcome strangers to the
land of 60 million souls. Nearly four years after
departing Venice, Marco, his father, and uncle
finally enter the court of Kublai Khan, ruler of the
largest empire in the world. They deliver the Holy oil
they've carried all the way from Jerusalem. BOOK NARRATOR: I have come to
the point in this book at which I will tell you of the great
achievements of the great Khan now reigning. Kublai Khan was, to my
mind, one of the great figures of the 13th Century. He was not simply a
conqueror and subjugated like his grandfather,
Genghis Khan. He was truly civilized. He was educated. He was tolerant of a variety of
different religions, a rather remarkable individual. NARRATOR: Marco first meets
Kublai Khan at his summer palace called Shangdu, or
known more commonly as Xanadu. For Europeans, the
first indication of how advanced the Chinese
civilization had become derives from Marco's
description of it. BOOK NARRATOR: A huge palace of
marble, its halls and chambers all gilded. A wall encloses fully
16 miles of park land, well watered with springs
and streams, and diversified with lawns. Here, the great Khan keeps
game animals of all sorts as harte, stag, and
roebuck to provide food for the gyrfalcons. NARRATOR: We don't know if
Marco's ghostwriter Rustichello believed all, some, or
none of what he was told in that Genoese prison. But he wrote it
down as if he did. And certainly, the next
episode dictated to him would be the ultimate test
of Marco's credibility. BOOK NARRATOR: I assure you,
for a fact that before Monsieur Marco had been
very long at court, he had mastered four
languages and their writings. Observing his wisdom, the
Khan sent him as an emissary to a country named Carajan,
which took him a good six months to reach NARRATOR: Marco would
have Rustichello believe that beginning at age 21, he
served for the next 17 years as a special envoy
for Kublai Khan, that he was his eyes and ears
in the outer reaches of China, Tibet, Burma, India, and
even as far away as Java. He's very well
qualified for this because he was, after
all, a foreigner. He had no particular
ax to grind. And he was clearly a
very good observer. And the other thing,
which would have been important to the great Khan, was
that Marco Polo was a merchant. Kublai Khan would have been
interested in information in commercially valuable
information, the information which would have
made the Khan richer. NARRATOR: Marco Polo's record
of his adventures in China is regarded today by most
historians as a valid document. Yet some skeptics still question
whether he reached China at all. Apart from his own book,
no correlating evidence has ever turned up either
in China or Europe. There is still some lingering
controversy as to whether Marco Polo actually reached China. He mentions that he, his
father, and his uncle were very important
in a major battle that the Mongols undertook
against the Song dynasty, against the Chinese. Unfortunately, the battle
occurred three years before Marco Polo
actually reached China. Despite these errors and
contradictions, because there is so much in the
work that's accurate, my own feeling as I say is
that there's no question that Marco Polo reached China. NARRATOR: It was difficult,
if not impossible, for the Westerner in Marco's
time to comprehend the vastness of Kublai Khan's empire. Marco's attention
to detail is perhaps no more evident than when he
describes how the great Khan gathered information and
mastered communication with his commanders, officials,
and millions of subjects spread about over millions
of square miles. BOOK NARRATOR: And
you must understand that posts such as these at
distances of 25 to 30 miles are to be found all along
the main highways leading to the provinces. And in each of these
posts, the messengers find 300 to 400 horses in
readiness and palatial lodgings such as I have described. NARRATOR: Marco
devotes five pages to the advanced communication
system, how couriers covered 250 miles a day, how 10,000
posts across the land operated day and night, the
system, which of course, was the Khan's key to
controlling his empire. While much of Marco's book
contains hearsay, often erroneous, no historian
questions the authenticity of major passages such as the
one on the Khan's information highway. But what of Marco himself? Here, the historian is
at a loss even to come up with a physical
description of him, much less a
psychological profile. If a portrait had been made
of him during his lifetime, none has survived. And his book reveals
little, if anything, of his personal
feelings or values. It is, perhaps, one of the first
major works of pure journalism. But it is also the work of
a brave young man of flesh and blood, a man who was always
honest both to his subject matter and himself. If many of the Oriental
customs Marco first reported on met with disbelief by
13th Century Venetians, his descriptions
were, nevertheless, exceptionally accurate. BOOK NARRATOR: When it happens
that men from a foreign land are passing through
this country, the matrons bring
their daughters to the camp to the
number of 20 to 40 and beg the travelers to
take them and lie with them. The Travels of Marco Polo. The theory was,
as Marco relates, that it was considered
that travelers were especially good
sources of a certain essence for the women. And that women were most valued
if they had broad experience with men. The customs he's
talking about are well attested in other traditions. And in fact, some of those
customs in parts of Sinkiang are still alive. Marco concludes his account of
this with this short statement saying, this country would
obviously be a wonderful place for a lad of 17 to 24 to visit. And since he was around that
age when he first went through, he probably found it a
wonderful place to be. NARRATOR: As the years
went by, Marco's interest in the exotic Orient never
diminished nor did his keen eye tire. Remarkably, he'd be
able to recall in detail all he had found
colorful and important. BOOK NARRATOR: Let me
tell you further that on the southern
side of this city is a lake some 30
miles in circuit. And all around it are
stately palaces and mansions of such workmanship that
nothing better or more splendid could be devised. On the lake itself is the
endless procession of barges thronged with pleasure seekers. For the people of this
city think of nothing else, once they have done the work
of their craft or their trade, but to spend part of the
day with their womenfolk or with hired women
enjoying themselves. Marco Polo was
dazzled by Hangzhou, a city of three million
people approximately, a city beautifully laid
out with canals, lakes, parks, restaurants. Hangzhou was a sophisticated,
much more sophisticated city than Venice or any other
European city at that point. NARRATOR: Today, Hangzhou
is an industrial center. Could it ever have been
the ideal metropolis Marco rhapsodizes over at length? While accused of exaggeration
and embellishment, what Marco witnessed firsthand and
had Rustichello write down invariably captured
the essence of a place. Scholars agree with
Marco's assessment that Hangzhou was once a model
for civilized city living. Marco Polo would be
described, I suppose, if he was a modern traveler
as an anthropologist or an ethnographer. He was very interested in
people's habits and customs. On the one hand,
he was a merchant. And he was always looking at the
natural products of a country, sort of like basic
school geography. But at the same time, he was
very observant about people, about their social customs,
about what they ate, their architecture, the
things that caught his eye, and their funny and
strange little customs. NARRATOR: Marco's commentary
is seldom expressed with any personal criticism. Even human flesh eating
tribes of Southeast Asia receive little moral judgment,
nor does this ritual he reports on from a remote province. BOOK NARRATOR: Another
practice of theirs was this. If it happened that a gentleman
of quality with a fine figure or a good shadow came to
lodge in the house of a native of this province, they would
murder him in the night. You must not suppose they
did this in order to rob him. They did it rather because they
believe that his good shadow and the good grace with
which he was blessed would remain in the house. This is a custom which is
known to anthropologists. It seems to have been
a fairly small group. And in fact, the practice was
stamped out by Kublai Khan. NARRATOR: While Marco makes no
claim to personally observing such violent customs,
his detailed descriptions of the wild animal
kingdom of the Orient were clearly drawn
from direct contact as were those of plant
life and vegetation. Like most of the information
imparted in his book, it was all new and astonishing
to readers in the West for whom it would take
centuries to digest and verify. But after having been away
from Italy for nearly 20 years, the entire Polo family was
finally feeling homesick and expressed their
wish to leave China. MORRIS ROSSABI: They had
played important roles for him as envoys extraordinaire. They had helped him in terms
of interpreting and translating Latin and other texts. And so he'd really valued them. He was not particularly
eager to have them leave China at that time. NARRATOR: However civilized
the great Khan may have been, one did not pressure him. Marco, now in his late
30s and still a bachelor, then continued his
travels which must have been taken in relative
comfort and little fear. The stamped metal packet
he carried with him, the Khan's personal credit
card, carried behind it the threat of a Mongol army
should any harm come to him. Add to that a supply
of paper money, first invented by the
Chinese and negotiable in the farthest
reaches of the empire, Marco's ease of movement might
be envied by world travelers today. He may never have had
occasion to visit the Great Wall of China,
which had in fact, been built to keep Kublai
Khan's ancestors out of China. But he would reach as
far South as India. BOOK NARRATOR: Among
them are certain men who are called yogis. They live even longer than the
others, as much as 150 or 200 years. And their bodies remain so
active that they can still come and go as they will. This comes from their
great abstinence and from eating very little
food and only what is wholesome. NARRATOR: Finally, Marco is
called before Kublai Khan who requires the entire
Polo family's services. He offers them a chance to
return to Italy if they will escort a prized cargo. Their trip back will take
two years, only half the time it took to first reach Xanadu. But it will turn out to be
their most dangerous journey, replete with misfortunes
and disasters, which it seems only a man
named Marco Polo could survive. [theme music] It is the year 1292, and
the Polos' final audience with the great Khan in whose
service they have spent 17 years. They are requested to escort
princess Kokochin to Persia where she will
marry a Mongol lord. Only then do they have
permission to return home to Venice. And so a unique historic
relationship comes to an end. Marco suggests they go by sea. It will be faster. The Chinese compass, so
advanced over the Europeans, has impressed him. There will be more than 600
passengers aboard the vessels in addition to
hundreds of sailors when they depart
from the China coast. So what you get in Marco
Polo is outward by land, back by sea. So in a sense, he covers
the complete scenario. It's great good fortune
for subsequent historians. NARRATOR: But it was not good
fortune for the hundreds who perished on the long voyage due
to disease and savage storms. The princess, some
of her entourage, and the Polos rich
Hormuz safely. They are among
only 18 survivors. Marco comments only
briefly on what must have been a shattering experience. He does not mention at all the
traumatic episode that followed in Turkey. There, Genoese
officials illegally appropriated 3/4 of the
Polo family's wealth. Most of their
capital, their profit from the 17 years they spent
in China, was apparently lost. We know about their loss
from notary documents found in Venice, which apparently
describe an attempt by the government of Venice
to recover the Polos' losses. NARRATOR: For reasons known
only to Marco and Rustichello, his book ends just before
his return to Venice. What Marco was feeling, what
he was looking forward to upon arriving home
after 23 years, is left to the
reader's imagination. And certainly, the readjustment
could not have been easy. NICOLA DI COSMO: Even
the family members seem to have had problems
recognizing the three men. They could hardly speak
their native tongue. After such a long
period abroad, they were more familiar with
Persian, Turkic, or Mongol than they were with Italian. Their clothes were oriental. Their faces we're unfamiliar. Therefore, they certainly
found a different world. But it was probably because
they had changed more than because Venice had changed. NARRATOR: But Marco
had just turned 40 and had many years ahead of him. What would he do with them? Circumstance again seem to
dictate next most significant adventure in his life. Soon after his return, he
is aboard a Venetian galley, either as a civilian
merchant or officer-- historians are
uncertain-- when it is captured by Genoese rivals. And he is imprisoned for a year. In the telling of his fabulous
tale to his ghostwriter, Marco relived years
and years amidst people and places no Westerner
could yet imagine. And while it is unlikely he
himself could imagine the value this book would
play in history, he must have taken
great satisfaction in having produced
a tangible document of his adventurous life. After it was completed during
the year of his captivity, and after he and
Rustichello were released, hand-copied manuscripts
were widely distributed. "The Travels of Marco Polo"
instantly became the book to read for those who could
read French, Italian, or Latin. The printing press was
more than 100 years away, yet Marco's 1,001 stories were
at once on everyone's lips, especially in Venice. Marco became a celebrity,
if not entirely the kind he might want to be, for his
book intrigued and fascinated a public who believed it was far
more full of fiction than fact. "Il Milione," "The Millions,"
the title given the book by some publishers, reflected
the ongoing problem his readers had with its authenticity. Every time Marco Polo
mentioned anything about China, the numbers were colossal. So they say, oh, this is a
man who talks about thousands and millions the whole time. Of course, that's
still true today. The numbers in China
of people, of TV sets, or whatever are still huge. NARRATOR: Reliable
sources of the time relate that Marco would
marry, raise three daughters, and carry on the family
business apparently unfazed by his skeptics. BRIAN HALL: There's a sense
in the book, when you read it, of a person that you feel you've
come to in a very simple way. You come away feeling like you
know a man whose name is Marco, that he would be fun to
sit with, drink beers with, and talk about
what he has done, which in fact, is how he spent
the last 20 years of his life apparently. NARRATOR: After prison Marco
would live for another 25 years. During this time,
neither a claim nor respect for his
great accomplishment were forthcoming. But eventually, they would come. And today, some
believe he should be credited with affecting
the course of world history. In our space age, it may
be difficult to imagine that only 700 years ago, no one
had yet sailed around the world nor had all its land masses
and seas been charted. TIMOTHY SEVERIN: Polo's
contribution was information. It was to be a source
of wonder and curiosity. So later on, people
would set out to see whether the places
he described really existed. Marco Polo was really
a mine of information. And that mine would be quarried
for centuries afterwards. NARRATOR: In Venice today,
one can find no monuments to Marco Polo. It's believed he may have lived
and died in this building. No one can be sure. His family had
been entombed here in the Church of San Lorenzo. But their remains were exhumed
and moved elsewhere 200 years ago, we know not where. How important then could
Marco Polo's legacy be? Two centuries after
Marco's death, Christopher Columbus pleaded
before Queen Isabella of Spain to finance his daring
expedition to the Orient. Daring in that he would sail
West across the Atlantic, which no one had yet attempted. NICOLA DI COSMO:
Christopher Columbus owned his own personal copy
of a Marco Polo's book. And this was printed
in Antwerp in 1585 and luckily was handed down to
us with Christopher Columbus' original notes. NARRATOR: Marco's description
of the wealth of the Orient had excited Columbus'
imagination. Of course, sailing westward,
Columbus never reached Asia. He discovered America instead. Without Marco Polo's
book as an inspiration, many experts believe
this historic accident may have happened
in a later time, perhaps under a different flag. The name Columbus became
synonymous with exploration and navigational genius. The name Marco Polo is seldom
mentioned in the same breath. BRIAN HALL: The difference
between Columbus and Marco is fairly striking. Columbus went to plant
the flag of his country. Marco was never
interested in that. He never planted the
Venetian flag anywhere. Columbus renamed
everything where he went. Marco carefully tried to figure
out what the natives actually called the place and then
reproduced it so that you can trace his itinerary quite well. Columbus looks on the people
that he's come to as barbarians and savages that can only be
benefited by his presence. In Marco's account,
there instead, shines through this admiration
for the Mongol empire, the peace of the roads,
the well-run cities, the cleanliness. NARRATOR: Some myths
that persist about Marco, the notion he brought back
pasta, pizza or gunpowder from China, are
totally unfounded. Scholars believe these
misconceptions minimize his actual achievements. The Chinese sources
would give you Kublai Khan and his bureaucratic role. But Marco Polo told you
something about the person. His observations, his
intelligence, his clarity, along with that, the
significance of the book can't be downplayed. It had a tremendous impact
on the desire of Europeans to have greater
contact with East Asia. And it also laid down the
first European vision of what East Asians were all about. NARRATOR: In 1324,
at the age of 67, Marco died at home
of natural causes. As a merchant, he had
made and lost fortunes. As the author of the most
popular book of the time, he had earned nothing. Besides the book,
his will is perhaps the only other personal
document of note that survives to the present. In it, he bequeathed his
modest wealth to his family and acknowledges someone
never mentioned elsewhere. A nice little
touch in his will is that he frees a slave
of his who is a Tartar-- that is, from Mongolia. This may have been a
servant that he acquired during his travels and who
came back to Venice with him. But of course, the best
story about Marco Polo on his deathbed is when he
was dying, people came to him and said, all those stories you
told us, they weren't really true, were they? And it is sad that
Marco Polo replied, I didn't tell half
of what I saw. [music playing]
