Every student is taught that Marco Polo brought back goods and spices from Asia and introduced these to Europe. He sailed out of his home city and began a twenty four year journey that spanned the entire length of the Asian continent. He encountered diverse groups of people and learned about their cultures and traditions along the way. What most people don’t know is that Polo described his journey to Rustichello da Pisa while they were together in prison. Pisa carefully listened to his stories and helped him put his journey into writing. This collaboration resulted in an influential travelogue titled Description of the World, which was published in 1300 in Venice. This publication, which was read by quite a few upper class men and women in Europe, explains all aspects of Polo’s voyage. Many years later, Ronald Latham translates this book into English, which allows the majority of the world’s population to read about the brilliant journey of Marco Polo. Historians, students, and regular people are now able to read about Polo’s journey and gain a wealth of information of the journey itself and the things and people …show more content…
Because this travelogue is completely based off of stories told by Marco Polo, biases may be involved. He only glances over the specifics of certain provinces, stating that “there is nothing here worth mentioning in our book (Polo).” He also could have made certain things sound more significant than they really were. For instance, Polo could have made cities sound more deserted than they historically were. His memories of certain things could have changed over time as well, leading to inaccuracies in his accounts of his expedition. Because of the possible errors in the source, it should not be used as a lone resource to learn about Asia during the fourteenth century. Instead, it should supplement modern textbooks and serve as a separate