Marco Polo is one of the greatest explorers to go down in history. He was a man of many things, a merchant, an explorer, and a writer. He is best known for his travels and descriptions to the Eastern part of the world. All of his travels are recorded on the book, The Travels of Marco Polo. This book describes the power and culture of the Eastern part of the world. Marco gave many Europeans a look into the wealth and greatness of the Mongolian Empire, and many other Asian countries.
Marco Polo was born into a wealthy merchant family, in Italy. Growing up, Marco was a very smart child. He was able to speak, write and read many languages. His mother had died when he was young, so he just usually waits for his uncle and father to come back from their merchant trips. When he was 15 years old, Kublai Khan, one of the greatest rulers the Mongolian Empire has ever seen, invited the Polos and priests to come to them. Unfortunately they only brought two priests, which was okay. When Marco was 17, he and his family and the priests set out on the long trip to China. They went by foot, and stopped by many cities to get refreshed and things they might need. The trip was so hard, the priests could not continue the trip, and went back. Finally, after much hardship, they arrived at the Mongolian Empire.
The Mongolian Empire was amazing. There were large parks, and huge buildings containing species of animals that no one has ever heard of. They had pipes in the ground giving the buildings cooling systems. People were clean, nice, and smelled good. For someone like Marco who has never seen such a place, it was like he “died and went to heaven”. As for Kublai Khan, was an amazing leader. He accepted the different beliefs and religions of the explorers and neighboring Empires. He was not land hungry or money hungry all the time, and respected the other people.
After 24 years, Marco returned to Italy and was jailed. His riches were illegally stolen, and he was thrown in jail. That is when he met a very famous writer friend, Rusticello, who wrote his stories of the amazing Mongolian Empire. Marco made sure to give no bias. After the publishing of the book, it caused much unrest. It is understandable that people would be skeptical. His stories sounded too good to be true and almost magical. Even when Marco was on his death bed, he was questioned about his stories, but he stuck with the truth.
I think that Marco Polo was truly an amazing Italian explorer. If i was a person living in Italy at the time, I would not have believed his stories either. Marco was unlike the explorers that came after him. Other famous explorers like Christopher Columbus were greedy, and enslaved the indigenous people he met. Marco Polo was far from this, and never had any intention of “taking over” the Mongolian Empire. Even after receiving much hate and backlash about his controversial book, he was calm and collected, for he knew that in the years to come, people will eventually find out the truth.