The Dark Ages: The Travels Of Marco Polo

Since the start of the Dark Ages, Europe and the east were almost completely separated. The cultures were so different they knew very little about each other only hundreds of years after stopping trade. Re-discovering China would have been almost as important and shocking as discovering the Americas. One of the first person to travel to China after the Dark Ages from Europe and write about it was Marco Polo. Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant and trader who was one of the first Europeans to travel into the east and write about his accounts. His book, The Travels of Marco Polo, introduced the west to new places, cultures, animals and more. Many question the accuracy of his accounts since it was written, but many of the facts have been proved.

The Travels of Marco Polo housed one of the largest collections of evidence on new geography than any other book before this point.His book included many accounts on rivers, mountains, towns, cities, and more that were completely new to Europeans at this time, which is one reason why many people of his time had trouble believing in the information. This information was used in maps later once some parts were confirmed. Marco Polo also measured distances by a day’s journey, or about 30 miles, which turned out to be an accurate way to measure distance for the time and could later be used in maps. One example of a cartographer who used information given by Marco Polo in his book is Abraham Cresques who created the Catalan World Map of 1375. This was one of the most important and useful maps of this time, and it could not have been made without the information Marco Polo gave on the east, as the east had not been traversed and written about more thoroughly yet. Another example of more recent people using information Marco Polo collected in his books is Chinese historians, who have little information on many important events during the time Marco Polo was traveling through the east. An example of one of these events is the Siege of Xiangyang, which was a key battle between the Song and the Mongols that marked the Mongols pushing into the heartland of the Song. Another event Marco Polo wrote about is the Massacre of Ch'angchou, which was another Song and Mongol conflict. Marco Polo also wrote about the attempted conquests of Japan which have few other accurate accounts. Marco Polo’s later influence of these historians and cartographers through his book shows his great importance to