Marco Polo may have discovered America long before Christopher Columbus set foot there.
A set of 14 parchments was collected and studied, revealing never-before-seen maps from Marco Polo's journeys and helping fill in historical gaps, Smithsonian Magazine reported. Written accounts of Polo's travels are scarce except for his book "Travels," that was penned by a ghost writer.
If the maps are genuine then Marco Polo recorded the shape of the Alaskan coast back in the day, meaning the explorer discovered the New World two centuries before Columbus.
"It would mean that an Italian got knowledge of the west coast of North America or he heard about it from Arabs or Chinese," Benjamin B. Olshin, a historian of cartography whose book, The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, will be released in November by the University of Chicago Press, told Smithsonian. "There's nothing else that matches that, if that's true."
There is still a lot of work to do in determining the authenticity; testing the ink and performing radiocarbon dating on the parchment could help back up the artifacts.
The researchers noted Polo himself did not write anything about the maps, or lands other than those in Asia.
The documents were written on sheepskin and was discovered in a trunk in the 1930s that belonged to Marcian Rossi, an Italian immigrant, the Telegraph reported.
Marco Polo's travels took place mostly in Asia during the 13th century. The explorer left Venice in 1271 and traveled the world until 1295. These new findings suggest during this time he may have come across Alaska.
"I have been looking at these for maps for over 10 years. I am the evidence guy and there are a lot of maps," Olshin told the Telegraph. "They are interesting in that they show that there was a deeper knowledge that Marco Polo may have got from a variety of sources."Marco Polo may have discovered America long before Christopher Columbus set foot there."
