The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps by Benjamin B. Olshin

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps by Benjamin B. Olshin Elizabeth Horodowich (bio) The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps. By Benjamin B. Olshin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Pp. 176. $45. In this study, Benjamin Olshin argues that a set of hitherto understudied documents, a collection of fourteen maps and texts in a private collection, could be thirteenth-century originals recording Marco Polo's travels. These manuscripts appear to suggest that Polo arrived in the farthest reaches of northeastern Asia long before the voyages of Vitus Bering and passed information about these regions on to his daughters, who then commented on their father's travels in these papers. Following Olshin's genealogy, an Admiral Ruggero Sanseverino, a contemporary of Polo's, somehow obtained these documents, and they have ever since been held privately by an Italian family who claims the documents' descent from Polo. The maps and related documents, illustrated for the curious in color plates, are indeed intriguing. Ink on vellum, the maps depict on separate pages the outlines of Asia, the North Pacific, Europe, North Africa, and the Americas. The associated texts are in Latin or Venetianized Italian. Some maps employ Ptolemaic place names and grids, as well as a series of Arabic and Italian toponyms and numerous unrecognizable terms. To explain these maps, Olshin proposes a range of possibilities. They could be thirteenth-century originals or accurate copies of documents from that time. They could be fabrications from this period, inventions from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, eighteenth-century copies of earlier materials, or a mix of fantasy with genuine elements of cartographic transmission: that is, a mix of fabrications and modernized copies. Unable to commit with certainty to any of these hypotheses, he argues that the maps "reveal a unique fusion of Western geographic knowledge and Eastern lore" (p. 37) or "a kind of 'pastiche' or composite" (p. 44) of various sources. Olshin is clear that doubts about the Polian provenance of these documents remain. Namely, the maps appear too knowledgeable for the late thirteenth century, especially in their depictions of the geography of the North Pacific; Ptolemy would have been unknown to thirteenth-century cartographers; and none of this information appears in Polo's narrative. The author has tentative explanations for all of this; for instance, the maps could be based on lost images or textual accounts, or somehow the map-makers "[may] have [had] access to a copy of Ptolemy's Geography before the rest of Europe" (p. 99). But Olshin does not follow up his suppositions with much convincing evidence and his trails quickly go cold. As the author himself puts it, "a precise connection—if any—remains elusive" (p. 55); "connections remain unclear" (p. 47); and "once again, we are left with many questions" (p. 97). To be fair, this book addresses itself to a general audience. Olshin states [End Page 1078] openly that his intention is "to introduce the reader to these maps" (p. 13). For the generalist, this is surely a fun read. Nevertheless, more specialist readers will find themselves asking, where is the scholarship and science? For instance, there is little sign of the immense scholarship on the history of cartography. Similarly, questions of forgery, copying, and authenticity have long occupied historians of art; these issues are central to Olshin's study, but again, he never considers these maps in the context of these studies. Why have the vellums and their ink not been subjected to carbon dating (aside from one vellum which, we must note, when tested by the Library of Congress dated to sometime between 1463–1633)? Why has the handwriting not been thoroughly considered by experts in paleography? (The author mentions only one fleeting 1937 appraisal [p. 9].) And why is the Ruysch Map, a printed chart from 1507 that seems to have little or nothing to do with this study, on the cover? Olshin's title may at first cause us to stop and wonder if he has discovered maps made by Marco Polo; the volume quickly reveals that he has not. His study generates more questions than answers and does little to advance Leo Bagrow's seminal 1948 analysis...