双语:意大利考古学家称马可-波罗从未到过中国

http://www.sina.com.cn   2011年08月10日 17:22   环球网

  Marco Polo—one of history’s greatest explorers, may in fact have been a conman, it was claimed Monday。

  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, famous 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 said 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。

  "It was during our dig that doubts began to emerge about much of what he wrote,'" said Prof. Petrella。

  "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," he added。

  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。

  The famous travel book was said to have been dictated by Polo to a fellow prisoner named Pisa while he was in jail after returning from his adventures, and it is thought Pisa embellished many of the stories。

  But the latest claims back those made in a book by British academic Frances Wood in 1995 entitled “Did Marco Polo go to China?”. She argued he never got beyond the Black Sea and that his famed account was a collection of travellers’ tales。

  据英国《每日邮报》8月9日报道:周一有消息称,世界上最伟大的探险家之一——马可•波罗实际上或许是个骗子。

  据一队考古学家称,马可•波罗非但没有作为一个商人在中国和远东地区游历数年,甚至可能连黑海以东更远的地方都没去过。

  他们怀疑,这位威尼斯的探险家是根据黑海附近商人们讲述的关于13世纪的中国、日本、蒙古帝国的传说,而编造了这些关于东方神秘国度的故事。

  然后他把那些故事整合在一本书里,称为《马可•波罗行记》,它以最早的行记书籍之一著称,整本书的内容是记述了马可•波罗1271年到1291年间在波斯、亚洲和远东地区的游历。

  该书还详细记述了他和当时蒙古国的统治者,后成为中国皇帝的忽必烈之间的关系。

  但如今一队意大利考古家在日本的研究向这位意大利最伟大的民族英雄之一提出了质疑,而此前还有争论说马可•波罗的出生地是克罗地亚。

  怀疑者们说,关于忽必烈在1274年和1281年试图入侵日本的历史,马可•波罗的描述有多处矛盾和错误。

  “他混淆了这两次入侵,把第一次时的细节写入了第二次。在他笔下,第一次的入侵舰队离开朝鲜半岛还未到达日本海岸时遭遇了台风,” 来自那不勒斯大学的考古队领头人丹尼尔•彼得雷拉教授说。

  “但是这确是发生在1281年的事儿,一个目击者会混淆仅相差7年的两件事,这可能吗?

  彼得雷拉还说,马可• 波罗描述的蒙古舰队和在日本挖掘出来的那支舰队剩余的船只不匹配,他描述当中这些船是5个桅杆,而实际只有3个。

  “随着我们的挖掘,他描写中的很多疑点逐渐暴露出来,”彼得雷拉教授说。

  “当他描述忽必烈的舰队造船的防水外壳用的沥青时,他用了‘灰泥’这个词,它在汉语和蒙古语里面不表示沥青。实际上,这是个波斯语中的沥青。同样奇怪的是,在大多数情况下,马可•波罗都使用波斯语,而不是当地语言来描述蒙古和中国的地名。”

  马可•波罗声称曾作为使者为忽必烈王朝效力,但是在现存的蒙古国或中国的记录里却没有他的名字。

  据说马克•波罗游历回国后被关进监狱,他在狱中向一位叫做比萨的狱友口述,由他写成这本著名的游记,其中大多数故事据说都是比萨加以润色的。

  对于这些说法最近一次的证明是在1995年, 当英国学者弗朗西斯•伍德写了一本名为《马克•波罗真的去过中国吗?》的书。她认为马克•波罗甚至从没跨过黑海,而他的著作只是一本旅行者们的故事集。

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