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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 traveller Marco Polo.
And to help us on our way, we have two very special travelling 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 Kinoshita. 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-I-Sau. It's Ria Lina. 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. OK. 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. Very science. It's in herpes viruses, if we're going to be precise. OK.
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. Tutors and stewards, tutors and stewards, you know, 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 China. 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 travelled the world, Sharon? By 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 travelled to Venice, ooh, aren't you fancy? You will 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 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,
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. OK, 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 Venice, I don't know how old Venice is, but it's at least as old as the 1200s. Right. Because they 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 Marshy 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 it...
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. Yeah.
Sharon, I think Ria'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, Ria. Yeah, the Marsh era indeed. Venice, in fact, was founded several centuries before by refugees who were fleeing those Germanic invasions and refugees.
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 of
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 Venice.
Polo's family relations, do we know his siblings, mother, father? We don't know too much about the family of his generation yet, although we know a lot, well, we know a relative a lot about his father, Nicolo, and his uncle, Maffeo.
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 dojos and so forth. So all we know about them really is what Marco and his co-author tell us in the book.
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 and
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. Right.
But, you know, they want to be 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 Polos would have first arrived.
encountered Kublai Khan. But one of the capitals is in Chinese called Shangdu. And this will give us Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Xanadu 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, a big capital. Marco calls it Khanbalik, which is a Turkish word, meaning kind of head city, 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. So the polos now, our pack of polos, let's call them that. So Maffeo, 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, oh, did he really go to China? 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, 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 region.
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 Kublai 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, you know, 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 Genghis Khan, the grandfather of Kublai Khan. Genghis Khan, I guess, more famous name, but Genghis is what we called him. I mean, he's there. He's quite impressed by Kublai Khan and the capital, Dadu or Khanbali.
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. It was. So I'm going to guess this was long. 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. Sure.
So you've done very well. You're very good at this, Ria. You've got incredible knowledge here. Pulling it from I don't know where. Well, 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 time.
in China, in Mongol-controlled China. What does he tell us about 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.
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 ways,
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 aspects.
Welcome to the nerd show over here. And you gave me a notebook and pen. I'm writing this down. I did. 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. OK. 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, you know, bringing fresh fruit to the con from far flung places just in time for snack time, right? Fresh fruit. Yeah.
And actually, one of Kublai Khan'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.
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 is I was halfway through a query. 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 security integrity system, wasn't there? Yeah, I think those messengers were not oral messengers, but rather 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 the journey. Yeah. Tell us about paper money because Marco Polo is particularly fascinated 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, you know, 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 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. Shiny, shiny jewels. Yes.
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, Ria. One of them involves eagles. What? The big flappy birds. Sorry, three techniques for getting jewels. For finding 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 those are my three highly informed decisions.
Ask me how many diamonds I have. How many diamonds do you have? None. None of those worked for me. Sorry. Sorry to hear that. Sharon, is Ria 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...
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. 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? Because birds famously can't control themselves. Right. They don't have sphincters. No. So you could either throw the meat in and then fight the eagle for the meat. Yes, which...
This diamond sticky meat. I don't know what meat that is. Yeah, what's a... What's a diamond sticky meat? Is it caramelised? Does someone put it in a sort of delicious jus so it's just kind of sticky? No, it's definitely raw. It's raw meat. It's raw meat. Sticky bloody meat, okay. Diamond sticky. Diamond sticky. Diamond sticky meat. Yeah. And then you let the eagles fly and be themselves but every so often just...
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. Because 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. Yes, Civic Cat. Civic Cat, so...
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. But we didn't pick up, we didn't say mining, did we? We didn't say how we're going to mine. Maybe I didn't. You didn't say mining. Okay, fair enough. In fact, technically none of those are mining. Okay.
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. 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.
Ria, if I say to you ambergris and musk, do you know what those two things are? Whale vomit. It is. Whale 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 and things because it doesn't smell nice. But it is this horrendous yellowy kind of smell.
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, that sells for good money. It's quids in, isn't it? It is. 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 correct? Yeah, deer and oxfords.
I guess. And it's no accident that Marco Polo really pays attention to these because they
The Polos 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. Yeah.
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, Maffeo, Niccolo, Kublai Khan. Marco Polo does write about the women he encounters on his 24 years. He talks about the women of Tibet as particularly interesting. Do you know why, Ria? The women of Tibet? Yes. I'll give you a clue about their romantic and sexual lives.
Well, OK, this I don't know if this is intimate. I do know that there is and I'm fascinated by 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 life.
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. That'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 pass through, just what you said, Ria, mothers would bring their daughters to sleep with them. And afterwards, they demanded a little token 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 are. Exactly there. So instead of notches on the bedpost, these, I guess, are nomadic people without beds. And presumably without eagles. Otherwise, you'd be like, is she a virgin or does she just have really good eagle? You know. Yeah.
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 fairytale occasion? Is this a big royal wedding? Is it Harry and Meghan, Mark II? So Kublai's great nephew, who is the Ilkhan, the sub-Khan of Persia, says...
sent a request to Uncle saying, you know, my chief wife has died. I would like another bride from her same tribe. Can you send me one? So Kublai 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
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.
And what was your previous position? I beg your pardon? What did you do for a living?
I ushered souls into the next world. Start listening to Terry Pratchett, the BBC radio drama collection. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks. 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? Genetics, right? Yeah, same surname. 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, you know, I'm feeling the age now. Oh, you feel that danger? Yeah. For me, that's... It really isn't. Yeah.
I just want you to feel better about yourself. Thank you, but I feel like I'm decaying quickly. Oh, okay. And have you spent 24 years in the Mongolian Empire? No. No, you have not. What have you done with your life, Greg? Very little. 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, oh!
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's survived everything you can. He gets back home and four years later he's in jail.
It's not ideal. It's quite bad luck. I mean, 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... 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.
But with a lovely name, Rusticello. Yeah, from Pisa, because Pisa was another one of Genoa's trade rivals. And we know of Rusticello because he wrote In Arthurian Romance. And so the two teamed up.
Actually, in the book, when you have I or we, it's often Rustichello talking, not Marco. Are they co-authors? We would call them co-authors, and I guess we would be tempted to call Rustichello a kind of ghostwriter, but unlike modern ghostwriters, he doesn't disappear into the background. He's like front and centre, saying, you know, I, Rustichello of Pisa, got Marco to tell me these stories and I'm writing them down. Fair enough. I...
Any excuse to insert yourself, right? Yeah. Well, why not? You've gone through the hard work of all that scribbling in the cell. It's probably not very good lighting. It wasn't just the scribbling. He got him to tell the stories. That's the thing, isn't it? He extracted these stories from him. And the book, as you said earlier, Sharon, is not called Travels of Marco Polo. It is called Description of the World, composed in 1298, dictated to Rustichello. Rustichello.
Boring question here. What is he writing on? Are there like writing supplies? 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 peasants, 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. Oh, no, actually manuscripts, translations from Latin romances. Rio, do you know what language is written in the book?
Well, OK, so just the fact that you've asked me the question means that the answer isn't Italian. Well... Because... OK, so he's Pisan. She said that they're notaries, they translate from Latin, so it could be in Latin. But 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. Ah. 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, he 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 Rustichello extract the story? 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 classy. It's classy. Yeah, and Italian. And it's really, 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. Yeah.
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, Rustichello's prologue starts out by addressing emperors and kings, dukes and marquises, 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 context.
audience that you could have had in the Middle Ages and it's pretty unique. It really strongly echoes the beginning of Rustichello's one romance where 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, sheep, please read my book. Okay.
Okay. And so he calls it 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 Rustichello 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. Yeah.
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. Yeah.
But he isn't. He was born there. No, he was born in Venice. 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. 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, I see. Mainly you held them for ransom, but you know, yeah. Okay. He is released from prison eventually. Presumably they're like, 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 the profit that he's getting, probably from the musk trade. He marries very well. He has a couple of 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, age 70, a ripe old age for those days. What was the name of his wife? Donata Badoer. Lovely. OK. 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 Glacier mint. I don't know what's that. I'm trying to think of a classy mint. I can't. I don't. I don't know.
Well, he goes from lifesaver to polo mint. There we go. There we go. But yeah, so he does well for himself in the end, Ria. Yeah.
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 fair? 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 boy. That's right. That's beautifully done, Sharon. Thank you very much for that. Okay. And so in his will, Ria, he left 24 beds to his children, family, Marco Polo. So I don't know if he was running like a boutique hotel, but he's done all right for himself, hasn't he? 24 beds? 24. Wow.
Ideally in a hotel, right? Like surrounded by a structure that they could do something with? 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 nomads. I don't know. How much was a bed that that was, you know, thanks, Dad. That's worth quite a lot of beds, isn't it? Famously Shakespeare in his will leaves his 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, a.k.a. domestic servants. Ah, OK. 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 OK. So he died in 1324, aged 70, and his travel book is...
outlived him because of course you have translated it and it's well known and as Ria 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 that 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, you know, 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 retranslated into a bunch of languages, back into Italian dialects, but also, you know, further on into Northern European languages. And I
I know that Columbus was a big fan. Christopher Columbus, when he was set off to look for India and... 1492. Thank you, Ria, for the... Absolutely true. In 1492, Ocean Blue and all that, he read the book
the book as a sort of, when you go out and buy a travel book before you go on holiday? Was this him sort of going, I need to know all about Asia because I'm off to India? If you've 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 Colossus
Columbus sets out, we don't have so many firsthand 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.
If only he followed it, he would have found Asia. I mean, in fairness to Columbus, he was looking for India. 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, you know, it's hard.
Tell us about the 19th century, because I know in the Victorian era, there was a sort of Apollo kind of... I don't know. Resurgence? Yes, thank you. Apollo Renaissance. We get sort of more interest in him. There was a particular... Was it a Scottish translator or geographer? Well, you know, by the 19th century, you had your Brits playing the great game in Asia. Oh, yeah.
Oh yes. And then you had, you know, royal geographical societies and, you know, that kind of stuff. So we had a lot of, you know, adventurers who were out there, part of the army, part of the administration, and they were fascinated by Marco Polo's descriptions, especially of, you know, some of the flora and the fauna and some of the peoples encountered. So you had
Henry Yule, 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, you know, friends of his who was the, you know, the head of station and 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 cataloging 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 they 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, 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 Ria 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. OK, thanks, Greg. What I'd like to emphasise, 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 use
would previously have accessed only at mediterranean ports such as acre 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, you know, 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, you know, 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. Ria, 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 So What Do You Know Now? This is our quick-fire quiz for Ria, who is wincing, panicking? What's the word? Well, I've written copious notes. You have? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I wrote loads of notes. 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 ten questions for you. All right. I'm ready. Let's see how you do. Question one. Marco. 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? Venezia. It was. Oh, very nice. Yes. Venice. Venezia. Very good. Question three. Who was the Mongol emperor that the Polos worked for? Kublai Khan. Very good.
Question four. What was the name of Kublai Khan's capital city? Do you remember? As far as I followed, it's now Beijing or in that area. But then there was Dadu. Yeah. But also there was something called Khanbalak, which was City of Khan, which other people called it. You've taken some very good notes. Yeah, absolutely. Khanbalak and Dadu, which would be Beijing. Also there was Anadu 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. Yeah.
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 Kublai Khan? Yeah. So this was a biggie, right? So Kublai Khan's nephew lost his chief wife, right? And this was a good chief wife, right? She came from a special village in
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 incredible, Alta. You've got an incredible memory, honestly. Yeah.
You remember those things. But it was a huge entourage. You 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, Rusticello. 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 were 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, Riolina. 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, Ria. It's 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 Ria, you can check out the episode on the iconic pirate queen, Chunyi Cao. 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. Because that's how women do it.
And of course, you can listen to our episode on Chinggis Khan as well. And if medieval travellers 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 You're 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 Kinoshita from UC Santa Cruz. Thank you, Sharon. Thanks, Greg. I had a great time. It was wonderful having you on. Thank you. That was wonderful. Yeah, it was absolutely fascinating. And in Comedy Corner, we have the sensational Ria Lina. Thank you, Ria. No, thank you for having me. It's been a delight. I've learned all about eagle poo and diamonds and all sorts. Eagle guano. And to you, lovely listener. I'm going to move to Tibet now. 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 jewellers. I'm going to be rich. Bye! You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.
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