THE POLO TRIO
Being chronically nosey, I have long been among those who wondered from time-to-time how the famed Marco Polo got along so well on the road without credit cards - without plastics of any kind. Think about it. Primitive living. Not even colorful pieces pressed into neat, little cards with numbers on them.
Marco was a keen and accurate observe in this time. Whatever late innovations which might have been available in his time, he surely used to his advantage. We actually know more about Marco Polo’ s travels because records were kept detailed records of his travels.
Those records need some clarification, however. Marco was a lad of barely seventeen. He was more of a favored guest. Two other members of the group were merchant-nobleman-rich Nicollo Polo, Marco's Father and his well-established Uncle Maffeo Polo, his dad's brother. Both were old timers on the Silk Road. Both had been to China and back to Venice before - in 1260 or so. Each had become rich and famous; envied, perhaps, but not exactly seen as men telling the truth about their visits with and their peaceful meetings with Genghis Kahn. These three - Niccolo, Maffeo and Marco left Venice for a trip which would last twenty five years. Records, as far as I have read, do not say who stayed at home to keep the mansion fires going.
No “wish you were here cards” were sent along the way,” it seems, and after a complex trip to China the people of Venice were surprised to see them home one day a quarter of a century later - two old men and one one of about fifty – the ex-boy Marco, all wearing strange oriental clothing.
Once again the people of Venice took their tales to be more entertainment material and little else. The leading commercial city the West did not realize that the cartography of the world had been drastically modified. The Venetians were the best traveled people of their time and ,yet, it was beyond their ability to comprehend what the explorations of the Polo people meant to civilization as a whole.
Today, are we aware of travelers of our time are saying? Are we aware of the vast changes which have mutated our future since men have traveled to the Moon and to some other place in space? Have we truly listened what such travelers say? The authorities of ancient Venice could not understand what the Polos said they found in China. Do we ask the right questions of those who, today, are traveling in Eastern nations and in China? Are we interpreting what we do hear wisely? Or, are we misled at times, by subtle narrowness and prejudices?
Marco Polo was an “also ran” in a sense, and, while his contributions were worthy. we have, perhaps, overlooked, as did the Venetians, the informational treasures available form Nicollo and Maffeo. They must have spoken of the fantastic wealth of the Orient ...but were not believed... ignored by Venice merchant. Marco laid it on thicker it seems with the PR people of his time and gets credited with various things the other Polos actually may have done.
Are we talking with and listening to the right people today? If we are asking questions and seeking only those answers which we see as Truth, we could be in big trouble.
A.L.M. May 22, 2003 [c894wds]
