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there, one which it takes one month to cross, the other one whole year. Their ships are so big that they can hold between 50 and 100 men. These people presented a wine beaker made from the egg-shell of a sea bird. If one poured wine into it the wine became warm immediately... The emperor was very pleased that these people had come from so far and gave them liberal gifts of gold and textiles.
This is quite an extraordinary story. But it is, in more than one way, typical of most descriptions of foreign countries in the Middle Ages. It is always the fanciful and fantastic that is given predominant attention, and travellers seem always to have made a point of telling yarns that they knew would impress their foreign listeners. This entire problem of cosmography in the Middle Ages, European and Chinese, cannot be understood without investigating some of the basic underlying concepts that invariably show up in descriptions of regions and peoples at the end of the world. The unknown is full of marvels, of mirabilia and portenta. But there is equally, as a rule, some factual basis for even the most fantastic notion, distorted as it is by transmission and tainted by preconceived concepts about the world. I should add here in an aside that the description of the Mongols in the European medieval Latin sources shows the gradual transition from the apocalyptic Gog and Magog concepts, derived from late Hellenistic lore, to the sober accounts of the travellers and missionaries. The Franks at Kublai Khan's court evidently tried to impress their Mongol and Chinese hosts by some tall stories. But there are certainly a few factual data that can help to elucidate this curious report. The reference to the constant daylight seems to imply that these people came from Northern Europe because of the short summer nights there. In my opinion these blonde and blue-eyed men were traders from either the Scandinavian countries or, which seems even more probable, from some Northern trading center like Novgorod. It remains a question what is meant by the two seas they had to cross. Did they reach Shang-tu by sea, that is via the Indian Ocean? Or are the two seas the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, or the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea? We do not know and perhaps never shall. The curious remark about flies and mosquitoes being born from wood reminds one strongly of the Medieval European notion, derived from Aristotle, according to which insects like flies and fleas come from wood.3
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SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS
55
there, one which it takes one month to cross, the other one whole year. Their ships are so big that they can hold between 50 and 100 men. These people presented a wine beaker made from the egg-shell of a sea bird. If one poured wine into it the wine became warm immediately... The emperor was very pleased that these people had come from so far and gave them liberal gifts of gold and textiles."
This is quite an extraordinary story. But it is, in more than one way, typical of most descriptions of foreign countries in the Middle Ages. It is always the fanciful and fantastic that is given predominant attention, and travellers seem always to have made a point of telling yarns that they knew would impress their foreign listeners. This entire problem of cosmography in the Middle Ages, European and Chinese, cannot be understood without investigating some of the basic underlying concepts that invariably show up in descriptions of regions and peoples at the end of the world. The unknown is full of marvels, of mirabilia and portenta. But there is equally, as a rule, some factual basis for even the most fantastic notion, distorted as it is by transmission and tainted by precon- ceived concepts about the world. I should add here in an aside that the description of the Mongols in the European medieval Latin sources shows the gradual transition from the apocalyptic Gog and Magog concepts, derived from late hellenistic lore, to the sober accounts of the travellers and missionaries. The Franks at Kublai Khan's court evidently tried to impress their Mongol and Chinese hosts by some tail stories. But there are certainly a few factual data that can help to elucidate this curious report. The reference to the constant daylight seems to imply that these people came from Northern Europe because of the short summer nights there. In my opinion these blonde and blue-eyed men were traders from either the Scandinavian countries or, which seems even more probable, from some Northern trading center like Novgorod. It remains a question what is meant by the two seas they had to cross. Did they reach Shang-tu by sea, that is via the Indian Ocean? Or are the two seas the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, or the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea? We do not know and perhaps never shall. The curious remark about flies and mosquitoes being born from wood reminds one strongly of the Medieval European notion, derived from Aristotle, according to which insects like flies and fleas come from wood.3
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