Medieval History
It has been said that Marco Polo did not really go to China; that he merely cobbled together his information about it from journeys to the Black Sea, Constantinople and Persia and from talking to merchants and reading now-lost Persian books. But in Marco Polo was in China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues, Hans Ulrich Vogel, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Tübingen, puts paid to such rumors.
He begins with a comprehensive review of the arguments for and against, and follows it up with evidence from relevant Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French, German and Spanish literature. The result is compelling: despite a few, well-known problems with Marco Polo?s writings, they are supported by an overwhelming number of verified accounts about China containing unique information given over centuries.
Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net
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The National Museum of China in Beijing holds a picture scroll very similar to one in Japan that was until now thought to be the only pictorial record of the medieval "Wako" pirates, it has been learned. "Wako" is a name meaning "Japanese invader," used...
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Medieval History
Marco Polo really did go to China, new study finds
It has been said that Marco Polo did not really go to China; that he merely cobbled together his information about it from journeys to the Black Sea, Constantinople and Persia and from talking to merchants and reading now-lost Persian books. But in Marco Polo was in China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues, Hans Ulrich Vogel, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Tübingen, puts paid to such rumors.
He begins with a comprehensive review of the arguments for and against, and follows it up with evidence from relevant Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French, German and Spanish literature. The result is compelling: despite a few, well-known problems with Marco Polo?s writings, they are supported by an overwhelming number of verified accounts about China containing unique information given over centuries.
Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net
- Remembering China?s Forgotten Jewish Community At Passover
It should therefore come as no surprise that Chinese and Persian Jewish scholars, Fook-Kong Wong and Dalia Yasharpour, have just jointly published a well-annotated reproduction of the Passover Haggadah of that now defunct Jewish community of indigenous...
- History Of Math: The Chinese Side Of The Equation
One of the more perplexing questions of history asks why China - the birthplace of many technological discoveries at the heart of civilisation - took so long to achieve industrial revolution, centuries after it had come and gone in the West. Perhaps we...
- The Melodies Of The Emperors
In ancient China, court music was so valued that musicians and their instruments were buried with the emperor after the ruler?s death. In fact, so respected was such music that it spread to imperial courts in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. But in the early...
- Second Scroll Depicting 'wako' Pirates Found To Be Held By Beijing Museum
The National Museum of China in Beijing holds a picture scroll very similar to one in Japan that was until now thought to be the only pictorial record of the medieval "Wako" pirates, it has been learned. "Wako" is a name meaning "Japanese invader," used...
- The Spirit Of Xanadu, Morphing Across Borders
Art history is not a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be assembled. It?s more like a smashed sheet of reflective glass, continually reshattering, with splinters scattered here and there, many lost forever. With luck and work, scholars retrieve a few splinters,...