History Fact Finder | Exploration and Settlement - How Old Was Marco Polo When He Began His Famous Journey To The Far East?

How old was Marco Polo when he began his famous journey to the Far East?

Italian adventurer Marco Polo (1254–1324) was sixteen when, in 1270, he set out with his father Niccolo and his uncle Maffeo (who were jewel merchants) from Venice, Italy, to China. Although they intended to sail to the East, they decided to take an overland route (called the Silk Road) when they could not find a seaworthy ship for the voyage. The Polos stopped in Akko (in Israel) and Sivas (in Turkey), then traveled through Mosul and Baghdad (in Iraq) to Hormuz (a trade center at the mouth of the Persian Gulf). They went north to Khorasan (in Iran) and through Afghanistan to the high plateau range called the Pamirs in central Asia. After a forty-day trip across the plateau, the Polos reached Kashgar (in China) and the Gobi Desert, which they crossed in thirty days. They stopped in Tun-hwang, a Buddhist center, before traveling...

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