VENICE, MARCO POLO, AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
This fantastic article was shared by one of our regular readers here, Mr. K.L., and have to share it. According to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, a map has been found, allegedly in the hand of Marco Polo's daughter, detailing a hand-drawn map of the northern Pacific, including the east coast of Asia, Japan, and the northwestern coast of North America:
Here's the relevant passages:
"The documents, reportedly written by Polo's daughter Bellala recount how the Venetian explorer met a Syrian trader on the Kamchatka Peninsula on the far eastern edge of the Asian continent then sailed across the Bering Straight to North America.
"Before his voyage, the trader told Polo about a land far east - a 40 days voyage from Kamchatka,Smithsonian Magazine reports.
"It is believed that if Polo sailed to North America, he would have crossed the Bering Straight - a 51-mile stretch of waster that connects the easternmost point of Asia to the westernmost point of Alaska.
"This new land, the documents say, was called 'the Peninsula of Seals' and it was 'twice as far from China' as Kamchatka and Polo soon set sail in search of it.
"Polo arrived, according to the documents, and discovered a people who wore seal skins, ate only fish and lived in homes 'under the earth,' according to the Smithsonian."
...
'It would mean that an Italian got knowledge of the west coast of North America or he heard about it from Arabs or Chinese,' historian Benjamin B. Olshin, a history professor at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, told Smithsonian.
This goes a long way to confirm a hypothesis I outlined in my most recent book, Thrice Great Hermetica and the Janus Age, namely, that Polo, whose account of his travels, may have "hitched a ride" aboard Chinese vessels and voyaged far beyond Japan to North America. What is missing in these recent assessments of the recently discovered map and documents is the willingness to speculate on Polo's real connections, and motivations. Those connections are simply revealed by the fact that Polo was initially sent as a Venetian ambassador - along with papal documents - to the far east, and this after the Serenissima Republica had founded the notorious Council of Ten. The Council of Ten, to put it succinctly, was Venice's version of the National Security Council, a central and highly elite body, acting in the name of the Grand Council and reporting directly to the Doge, coordinating all of Venice's ambassadorial missions, its far-flung intelligence operations, conducting domestic surveillance and counter-intelligence, and finally, the ability to hear and secretly try bills of capital attainder against people "secretly denounced". In short, the Council of Ten also fulfilled the very same role given to the NSC in the recent American NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act).
This implies the possibility that Polo was no "simple traveler" or "explorer", but rather, a Venetian agent, and his mission may have in fact been to test the veracity of persistent rumors - first voiced in medieval Europe by the church father Isidore of Seville - of a land beyond the seas. As I pointed out in the book, the fact that Polo upon his return was subsequently captured and imprisoned by Venice long standing traditional rival, Genoa, also adds weight to the idea that he was a Venetian agent.
But in any case, the map itself is more testimony to the fact that someone in Europe knew of the New World prior to Columbus, and that this knowledge was suppressed and secretly held, and that Venice, for quite some time, knew all about it. And if one could get there from China, it was only natural that Venice might seek to test that knowledge more directly, to see if one could get there from Europe as well.
See you on the flip side.
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if one has read such oevres as Rick Osman’s “Graves of the Golden Bear” or Richard Dewhurst’s “The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America” there was trade with the Americas loong/waaay before this created historical “Marco Polo” entity ever appeared; I wouldn’t doubt that the entity ‘Marco Polo’ might actually have been real and had been a pawn/asset of some sort (sort of like the illiterate Shakespeare who wrote the plays attributed to him), but ‘he’ (like Shakespeare) may have been ‘many’- just like I’m not yet convinced Assange/Snowden, etc. are singular entities- they have a front man- should ‘Marco Polo’ have been different?
Larry
The Chinese tribes were in the America’s long before Marco Polo and his ship full of Bocci Balls, linguini with pesto sauce (as tomatoes are native to the America’s, so that may have been a main motivator of his mission – than again, the general argument is that Italian string pasta was copied from Chinese noodles anyway).
Just look the general cultures of lifestyles of the American Indians and tell me they aren’t “Asian” – communal living, animism, etc.
The Chinese (i.e. various Asian tribes” crossed the land bridge into North America thousands and thousands of years ago), and Marco Polo was simply hunting them down to pillage their tomato stocks so his wife could whip up some mean Marinara sauce to keep the shipmates from mutiny.
Just another theory.
Non-egg based pasta is made in presses–the better presses use bronze dies for extrusion molds.
There are Roman era frescos of pasta presses in use.
Asian noodles are more made with a knife, the way one would hand make pasta today; though perhaps modern Asian noodles get pressed too.
The idea that the Italians got noodles from the east (China) is a myth.
Frankie, totem poles…obelisks….tee pee….pyramids…..oh and according to there legends, there gods…white men…Quezecoatl..the plasma people
@Marcos. I wouldn’t be trusting of Menzies, his works has SIGNIFICANT flawed. His ideas are fascinated granted, but the execution is really poor,
Now official academia is finally kicking a screaming admitting that there was pre Columbian knowledge of the Americas possible Australia too. As for Columbus I read a book that he followed Brendan the Navigator . Then there is the Pies Reis and the infamous Vinland maps. As for the Chinese there are two stories of their voyages to the Americas Gavin Menzies 1421 and a earlier voyage in the fifth century ACE. Also mention in They All Discovered America is that Clovis people of America were the ancestors of the European Solutreans mention in the book No Stone Unturned. So as you mention in Financial Vipers Of Venice what did the Europeans know of the rest of the World and when did they know it. And thanks Robert of that book I never bought it but knew of it I will be on the lookout for that novel.
It definitely cuts as close to the censor’s bone as possible, in too many ways to write of here. Its definitely X-Rated and REAL History. What fun it must have been for Jennings to research it. I have always wondered what remained on the cutting-room-floor. Now that beyond x would be…? In a world where the press was truly free.
Marco response polo….codeword during d day invasion for g I Joe.
Good Budd with Kublai khan
New testament …
The connection with the “Smithsonian Magazine” is interesting. This super-establishment publication (the current Editor in Chief comes from the Wall Street Journal) might have several reasons for “outing” this story, not the least of which is increased sales, and perhaps even to bolster that shaky “Bering Straits” migration theory. They tellingly define researcher G. Thompson as “controversial” (not having read his book I can’t comment further).
The discovery of the map on vellum has a plausible ring, stranger things have happened in the world of old documents. The Chinese connection crops up yet again, focusing attention on trade patterns in the Middle Ages and their implications for world history. But the real step forward will occur when more light is thrown on the Venetian financial oligarchy and its ramifications, as has been done in “Financial Vipers” and “Thrice Great”.
Just as the modern day Breakaway Civilization knows the secrets of deep physics and has been applying them since the 1940s(benefiting from). Maybe even mapping out the universe & beyond using advance technologies not as yet released to the serfs.
The modus-operandi has not as yet left Earth.
There needs to be a polar shift of power
from closed systems to open systems.
(Incidentally an outstanding fictionalized X-rated version of Marco Polo’s journey’s was written by Gary Jennings/The Journeyer.)