Italian explorer Marco Polo was born on 15th September 1254 and died on the 8th or 9th January 1324. We're not sure which because in Venetian law the day ends at sunset not midnight. It was Marco Polo's book of his travels that introduced Europeans to China and Central Asia.
1264–≈1269: First expedition of the Italians Niccolò and Maffeo Polo to China.
Europeans in China. Marco Polo (1254–1324) was one of the earliest Europeans to visit China—though he was not the first (Friars John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck both reached China in the middle of the thirteenth century).
Marco Polo
He published a book titled “The Book of the Marvels of the World” which revealed in detail the economic power of China as well as its cities, landscapes, and people. Marco's father and uncle were merchants and travellers before him and had established a reputation trading in the Middle East.
Jorge Álvares (died 8 July 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is credited as the first European to have reached China by sea during the Age of Discovery.
Marco Polo is arguably the most famous Western traveler to have journeyed on the Silk Road. As a young merchant, he began his journey to China in 1271 and his travels lasted for 24 years.
More specifically, they were the Portuguese, and they were the first Europeans to sail all the way to China.
The expedition of Zhang Qian in 138 BC is considered to be the foundation of the first 'Silk Road'. On his return to Han China, his most important achievement was to demonstrate the possibility for safe travel far to the west.
Around the same time, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo became one of the first Europeans to travel the Silk Road to China. His tales, documented in The Travels of Marco Polo, opened Western eyes to some of the customs of the Far East. He was not the first to bring back stories, but he was one of the most widely read.
Several decades before Columbus sailed to the New World, a Chinese admiral named Zheng He made even more ambitious voyages. Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng He led seven major expeditions, commanding the largest armada the world would see for the next five centuries.
Was China colonized by any country? Yes, China was colonized directly by Britain, Portugal, Russia, and China. Many other countries had control over trade in much of China.
Studies of Chinese populations show that 97.4% of their genetic make-up is from ancestral modern humans from Africa, with the rest coming from extinct forms such as Neanderthals and Denisovans.
When did Japan independent from China? Japan has never been part of China. China has never invaded or sent military troops to Japan in the entire history.
1600-1050 B.C.: Shang Dynasty - The earliest ruling dynasty of China to be established in recorded history, the Shang was headed by a tribal chief named Tan. The Shang era is marked by intellectual advances in astronomy and math.
Though the ancient Chinese rank high among the world's oldest civilisations (2000 BC), the development of a united China came almost 1100 years after the ancient Egyptians (3100 BC). Mesopotamia (4000 BC), Egypt (3100 BC) and the Indus Valley civilisations (3300 BC) all significantly pre-date ancient China.
Our ancient ancestors lived in China, too. Ancient humans appear to have reached northwestern China about 2.1 million years ago, and they lived there for hundreds of thousands of years, according to a new study published Wednesday in Nature.
James Cook was the first recorded explorer to land on the east coast in 1770.
Polo's 13th Century journey to China was the first to be well-documented. However, Chinese historians recorded much earlier visits by people thought by some to have been emissaries from the Roman Empire during the Second and Third Centuries AD.
Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, dictated an account of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295. His travels are recorded in Book of the Marvels of the World, (also known as The Travels of Marco Polo, c. 1300), a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China.
The short answer is: yes, the Romans knew of the existence of China. They called it Serica, meaning 'the land of silk', or Sinae, meaning 'the land of the Sin (or Qin)' (after the first dynasty of the Chinese empire, the Qin Dynasty). The Chinese themselves were called Seres.
The silk road was a network of paths connecting civilizations in the East and West that was well traveled for approximately 1,400 years. Merchants on the silk road transported goods and traded at bazaars or caravanserai along the way.
It's not until the 3rd century BCE, after the unification of Qin, that we have evidence of the Greek world — now Rome's world, really — being fully aware of the existence of a civilization in what is now China.
Macao (Macau) is located on a peninsula in the estuary of the Pearl River delta in southeast China and it was a Portuguese colonial settlement from c. 1557 until 1999.
NEW YORK: History may be rewritten as new evidence suggests ancient Chinese explorers landed on the New World around 2,500 years before Christopher Columbus, contrary to popular belief that the Italian seafarer 'discovered' America.
Genghis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan, defeated the Chinese Southern Song in 1279, and for the first time all of China was under foreign rule. In 1271 Kublai Khan named his dynasty Yuan which means "origin of the universe." The Yuan dynasty in China lasted from 1279 to 1368.