![]() ![]() Paper Money Portrait of Kublai Khan, artist unknown, c. The descriptions are quite accurate for a crocodile too, and suggest that he has observed them for some time.Ģ. Marco Polo describes the creature as a “serpent”, identifying it as a separate animal from snakes, which he mentions earlier, and is likely already familiar with, having hailed from Europe where there are various native snakes. Medieval depiction of a crocodile from Marco Polo’s time, c. He went on to add that “their mouth is big enough to swallow a man at one gulp.” The sheer fascination is clear when reading The Travels, although some historians and naturalists have disputed whether this really was a crocodile he was describing, or whether he used some generous poetic licence and sprinkled in some descriptions from Chinese mythical dragons. ![]() He came across the reptilians and described them as “loathsome creatures”. That is what Marco Polo had to do when he was on his travels in a place he called Kara-jang, which we now know as Yunnan Province, China. However, imagine describing a crocodile to people who had never even heard of one, let alone seen one. We may now think of crocodiles as something we would only see in a wildlife documentary on television, or in a zoo or safari park. ![]() Marco Polo’s Encounter with Crocodiles Mosaic of Marco Polo, displayed in the Palazzo Doria-Tursey, Genoa, Italy, 1867, via ![]()
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