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Secondary sourcePaintingc. 1375

Caravane Marco Polo

Abraham Cresques · c. 1375

A scene from the Catalan Atlas showing a caravan traveling toward Asia, reflecting how Marco Polo's travels shaped European mapmaking.

This map scene shows Polo's descriptions of Asian trade routes entering European geography decades after his death.

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Detail of a medieval painted map showing a camel caravan on a tan desert band. Grey camels with saddles and red-and-gold trappings walk left, led by robed merchants in green and red. Red rhumb lines radiate from a compass rose. Gold-trimmed walled towns with flags sit below.
Abraham Cresques, Catalan Atlas (detail: caravan to Cathay), c. 1375.

About this source

What it is

This detail comes from the Catalan Atlas, a map made by Abraham Cresques around 1375, showing a camel caravan of merchants crossing the desert toward Cathay, guided by compass lines and marked with walled towns.

Why it matters

Made only about fifty years after Marco Polo's death, this map shows how quickly his descriptions of Asian trade routes entered European geography. It reflects how merchants and mapmakers used travelers' accounts like Polo's to picture distant lands they had never seen themselves.

Look closer

  • What details in the caravan suggest trade and long-distance travel?
  • Why would a mapmaker include a caravan scene rather than just place names?
  • How might information from travelers like Polo have reached a mapmaker in Catalonia?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Marco Polo on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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