The Travels Of Irco Polo And The Travels Of Marco Polo

Throughout history, people around the world have interacted with each other. People have explored the lands to see other people’s cultures all around the world. Trade has also played a major part in how cultures have interacted and learned from each other. This especially applied between the years 500 to 1500 AD. The world was doing a lot of trade during this period and because of this, cultures were mixing together and gaining pieces from one another. One way or another the cultures, during the time, were getting an idea of the world around them. Travel and trade exposed the cultures, around the world, to one another and made it so that the cultures were able to expand their horizons with cross-cultural interaction. People were starting to

Marco Polo first published The Travels of Marco Polo in Europe in 1299. The Travels of Marco Polo shows the European view of Kinsay, a land that Marco Polo travelled to. It provides many different facts about Kinsay; such as the fact that they wore silk, markets had a vast array of vegetables and fruit, and that the natives are very kind to the visitors. This shows that travel was not only for trade, it was also so that people could learn about other people’s cultures. Marco Polo actually went as far as to note that Kinsay has 3,000 baths. When looking at the text though, one must note that Marco Polo was not in fact from Kinsay. All of the information that he wrote down was told to him or he himself witnessed. This leaves a lot of questions since one cannot possibly know everything about a culture that they are just visiting. The Record of the Western Region, by Xuanzang in China during the Seventh Century is also an example of a culture’s way of life being wrote down by someone from a different culture. In Record of the Western Region, Xuanzang wrote about how in India the villages have inner gates, the schools for Buddhist studies have different masters, and that they have a caste system. Again, this is another piece of writing that focuses on the people’s life in general. There is no true purpose other than to explain how the culture works. As with The Travels of Marco Polo, Record

The Travels of Marco Polo and Record of the Western Region are two of the works that previously mentioned that focus on travel and learning about the culture. Another piece that focuses on information about a culture is Travels in Asia and Africa. Travels in Asia and Africa, written by Ibn Battuta in 1354. The writing, actually goes more in depth of the people that were there. Ibn Battuta actually lists the qualities that he liked best and what he did not like about the cultures that he visited. In Travels in Asia and Africa, Battuta states that he likes that the people of Malli wear clean clothes on Friday and are zealous about leaning the Koran. He goes on to state that he does not like that they put ashes on their heads as a sign of respect and that the women walk around naked. What Ibn Battuta thought of as bad and good qualities are probably different than what someone else would have thought. One must realize that Ibn Battuta was not from the culture and had his own culture influencing his thinking. How one perceives a different culture is quite often not completely open-minded. One last example of cross-cultural interaction is in “Peoples of the Silk Road,” which is a painting from the 9th century that was found in the Mogao Caves in China. In the painting, many different kinds of people can be seen. This is shown through the different ways that the people are