The Mystery of the Marco Polo Maps: A Discovery That Challenges History

In the 13th century, Marco Polo returned to Venice with extraordinary tales of Asia, claiming to have spent 17 years in China as a confidant of Kublai Khan. Yet no Chinese, Persian, or Mongol records mention him.

The only account of his journey is The Travels of Marco Polo, dictated while imprisoned in Genoa. Centuries later, a set of parchments surfaced in the United States that tell a different story—one involving maps, unfamiliar names, and a possible glimpse of North America long before Columbus.

A Silent Trail from the East

Though Polo described cities, courts, and customs in vivid detail, his book makes no mention of personal maps or lands beyond Asia. In contrast, the parchments contain depictions of coastlines resembling Alaska and references to a strait between Asia and another continent.

If genuine, they would predate Vitus Bering’s mapping of the region by over 400 years. The maps include text in Italian, Latin, Arabic, and Chinese—none of which match known European cartographic styles of Polo’s time.

Marcian Rossi’s Arrival and Claim

The documents were brought to the U.S. by Marcian Rossi, an Italian immigrant who arrived as a teenager in 1887. He settled in San Jose, California, where he worked as a tailor and raised six children.

Rossi claimed the parchments had been passed down by noble ancestors, tracing back to a Venetian admiral entrusted with them by Polo. In the 1930s, Rossi donated one parchment—known as the “Map with Ship”—to the Library of Congress. The FBI analyzed the document at the library’s request, but the report signed by J. Edgar Hoover offered no conclusion on its authenticity.

Tested Materials and Unresolved Questions

Radiocarbon testing of one parchment dated the vellum to the 15th or 16th century, making it too late to be an original from Polo’s hand but possibly a copy. The ink remains untested. Benjamin B. Olshin, a historian of cartography, spent over 13 years researching the materials.

He traced Rossi’s ancestry back to Venice and translated the inscriptions. Some refer to “Fusang,” a name used in Chinese sources to describe a land across the ocean—possibly the Americas.

Daughters and Forgotten Accounts

Among the documents are references to Polo’s three daughters—Fantina, Bellela, and Moreta—figures rarely mentioned in official records. Several parchments bear their names, and Bellela describes encounters absent from The Travels: a Syrian navigator, a people who lived underground, and women clad in ermine pelts. She wrote that these stories came from their father’s letters, discovered after his death.

While the maps remain controversial, no evidence has confirmed them as forgeries, and their contents continue to challenge accepted timelines of exploration.

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