中國網站品牌欄目（頻道）
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 Travelling trickster? Marco Polo may have fabricated his experiences by using other people's stories. |
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One of history’s greatest explorers, may in fact have been a conman, it was claimed yesterday. Far from being a trader who spent years in China and the Far East, he probably never went further east than the Black Sea, according to a team of archaeologists. They suspect the Venetian adventurer picked up stories about the mysterious lands of the Orient from fellow traders around the Black Sea who related tales of China, Japan and the Mongol Empire in the 13th century. He then put the stories together in a book commonly called The Travels of Marco Polo, hailed as one of the first travel books; it purports to be his account of his journeys through Persia, Asia and the Far East between 1271 and 1291. It details his relations with Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler who became Emperor of China. But now an Italian team of archaeologists studying in Japan have cast doubts about one of Italy’s great national heroes -- although there have been competing claims to him from Croatia, which argues he was born there. The doubters told Italian history magazine Focus Storia that there were numerous inconsistencies and inaccuracies in Marco Polo’s description of Kublai Khan’s attempted invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281. 'He confuses the two, mixing up details about the first expedition with those of the second. 'In his account of the first invasion, he describes the fleet leaving Korea and being hit by a typhoon before it reached the Japanese coast,' said Professor Daniele Petrella of the University of Naples, the leader of the archaeology team. 'But that happened in 1281 – is it really possible that a supposed eye witness could confuse events which were seven years apart?' He said that Polo’s description of the Mongol fleet did not square with the remains of ships that the team had excavated in Japan, as he had written of ships with five masts, while those which had been found had only three. 'When he describes Kublai Khan’s fleet he talks about the pitch that was used to make ships’ hulls watertight. He used the word 'chunam’, which in Chinese and Mongol means nothing. 'In fact, it is the Persian word for pitch. It’s also odd that instead of using, as he does in most instances, local names to describe places, he used Persian terms for Mongol and Chinese place names.' The explorer claimed to have worked as an emissary to the court of Kublai Khan, but his name does not crop up in any of the surviving Mongol or Chinese records. (Read by Nelly Min. Nelly Min is a journalist at the China Daily Website.) (Agencies) |
昨日有消息稱，歷史上最偉大的探險家之一可能事實上是個大騙子。 據一個考古隊稱，馬可?波羅可能根本不是在中國和遠東行走多年的商人，很可能都沒到過比黑海更遠的地方。 他們懷疑這位威尼斯探險家從一些黑海地區的商人伙伴那里聽來了很多關于那片神秘的東方大地的故事。他們向他講述了很多13世紀中國、日本和蒙古帝國的傳說。 后來他將這些故事集成一本書，也就是為世人所熟知的《馬可?波羅游記》，這本書號稱是最早的旅游書籍之一，并包含他1271年到1291年間游歷波斯、亞洲和遠東的記錄。 書中詳細講述了他和蒙古統治者忽必烈的交情，忽必烈后來成為了中國的一代帝王。 但如今一個在日本開展研究的意大利考古隊對這位意大利民族大英雄產生了質疑。不過關于馬克?波羅的國籍，克羅地亞堅稱他是克羅地亞人，說他出生在那里。 懷疑者們告訴意大利歷史雜志《聚焦歷史》說，馬可?波羅關于忽必烈1274年和1281年兩次試圖入侵日本的描述中，存在諸多不一致和不準確的地方。 “他將忽必烈第一次和第二次遠征的細節弄混了。” “在描述第一次入侵日本時，他說艦隊剛離開高麗（今天的朝鮮、韓國）就遭遇了臺風，沒能抵達日本海岸。”這支考古隊的領隊、那不勒斯大學教授丹尼爾?彼得雷拉說道。 “但那其實是1281年時候的事——如果是親眼所見，怎么可能將相隔七年之久的兩個事件搞混？” 他還說，馬可?波羅關于蒙古艦隊的描述也與考古隊在日本挖掘出來的船舶遺骸不相符，他所記錄的艦船有5支桅桿，而所發掘出的艦船只有3支桅桿。 “當他寫到忽必烈的艦隊時，他提到用瀝青做船體防水，他用的詞是‘chunam’，而在中文和蒙文中并沒有這個詞。 “實際上，這是個用來表示瀝青的波斯文詞語。而且，大多數時候他都會使用當地的地名，但是這次他卻用波斯文詞語來指稱蒙古和中國的地方，這也很奇怪。” 這位探險家自稱曾作為使節去朝見忽必烈，但現存的蒙古或中國史料記載中都找不到他的名字。 相關閱讀 （中國日報網英語點津 實習生沈清 編輯：陳丹妮） |
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Vocabulary: conman: 騙子 purport to: 聲稱，號稱 square: 使一致，使相符 excavate: 發掘（古物等） emissary: 使者 crop up: 出現 |
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