Did Marco Polo see dinosaurs in China?

CLAIM: Marco Polo documented dinosaurs in his travels throughout China between 1271 - 1288 CE. (Butt, 2010) (Clarey, 2015, p.19) (Hodge & Welch, 2011, p.6) (Hovind, 2003, 34:24) (Thomas, 2013, p.19)

RESPONSE: Despite popular opinion throughout young-Earth creationist literature, there is no good reason to believe that Marco Polo witnessed dinosaurs. Polo's own description favors his encounter with a much more likely creature, the extinct 20ft. long crocodile Hanyusuchus.

WHAT DID MARCO POLO DESCRIBE?

In the records of his travels, Marco Polo mentions giant serpents residing in the province of Karazan, which some young-Earth creationists have interpreted to mean that Polo witnessed living dinosaurs in 13th and 14th-century China. Polo described the creatures as follows (taken from Thomas Wright's 1854 revision of William Marsden's translation):

"Here are seen huge serpents, ten paces in length, and ten spans in the girt of the body. At the fore-part, near the head, they have two short legs, having three claws like those of a tiger, with eyes larger than a fourpenny loaf...and very glaring. The jaws are wide enough to swallow a man, the teeth are large and sharp, and their whole appearance is so formidable, that neither man, nor any kind of animal, can approach them without terror. Others are met with of a smaller size, being eight, six, or five paces long; and the following method is used for taking them. In the day-time, by reason of the great heat, they lurk in caverns, from whence, at night, they issue to seek their food, and whatever beast they meet with and can lay hold of, whether tiger, wolf, or any other, they devour; after which they drag themselves towards some lake, spring of water, or river, in order to drink. By their motion in this way along the shore, and their vast weight, they make a deep impression, as if a heavy beam had been drawn along the sands. Those whose employment it is to hunt them observe the track by which they are most frequently accustomed to go, and fix into the ground several pieces of wood, armed with sharp iron spikes, which they cover with the sand in such a manner as not to be perceptible. When therefore the animals make their way towards the places they usually haunt, they are wounded by these instruments, and speedily killed. The crows, as soon as they perceive them to be dead, set up their scream; and this serves as a signal to the hunters, who advance to the spot, and proceed to separate the skin from the flesh, taking care immediately to secure the gall, which is most highly esteemed in medicine. In cases of the bite of a mad dog, a pennyweight of it, dissolved in wine, is administered. It is also useful in accelerating parturition, when the labour pains of women have come on. A small qauntity of it being applied to carbuncles, pustules, or other eruptions on the body, they are presently dispersed; and it is efficacious in many other complaints. The flesh of the animal is sold at a dear rate, being thought to have a higher flavour than other kinds of meat, and by all persons it is esteemed a delicacy. (Wright, 1854, pp.265-266)

HANYSUCHUS INTERPRETATION

When Polo's description is laid out in full rather than merely referenced, we get a very clear picture of the creature being discussed. The chapter is discussing the Yunnan Province (referred to by Polo as "the province of Karazan") in southwestern China. Polo describes serpents/reptiles, not dragons, that live in the water and in caves, were around 10 paces long, were very fearsome and hunted by humans, required individuals to be employed in order to hunt them, and their body parts were used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Every single one of these qualities matches the giant crocodilian Hanysuchus perfectly without reading an unknown dinosaur into the narrative.

Hanysuchus was a genus of extinct crocodilians associated with Chinese folklore and historical records. It was named after Han Yu, a Tang dynasty scholar and poet who famously addressed an infestation of these creatures in the Han River by performing rituals and symbolically expelling them. Fossil evidence shows Hanysuchus resided in the area described by Polo, with its range spread throughout much of South China from at least the Bronze Age (1276-876 BCE) up to the Ming Dynasty (1630 CE) . (Iijima et al., 2022) It matches the length described by Polo - if the "pace" used was the traditional measurement corresponding to 2.5ft., then the serpent's length would have been around 25 feet long, with the longest Hanysuchus remains measuring nearly 20.5 feet in length. (Iijima et al., 2022) It was described as living in caves, multiple records attest to horrific encounters between Hanysuchus and humans (i.e., it ate children, was large enough to flip over small boats, etc.), and the government employed hunters so efficient and diverse in their practices that they likely the primary force that drove the creatures into extinction. Additionally, alligator/crocodile body parts have been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine in the past, though specific records are limited - however, modern experiments have shown the crocodile oil utilized in Traditional Chinese Medicine to be efficacious in treating inflammation, setting a standard for the use of crocodiles in medicine as opposed to dinosaurs (which have never been attested to as useful in traditional medicine). (Iijima et al., 2022; Marshall, 2022; Ngernjan et al., 2022) Some young-Earth literature leaves out the whole picture, emphasizing the serpents' short legs and claws to draw parallels to theropod dinosaurs. (Hodge, 2011) However, modern paleontological speculation becomes unnecessary when the entire description of the creature is taken with the context of fossil evidence and the wider historical record. Polo likely encountered a giant, extinct reptile while in China, but that doesn't mean it was by default a dinosaur.

APPENDIX - DRAGON SYMBOLISM AND DINOSAURS

Some young-Earth authors like Dave Woetzel suggest that Polo's serpents could be viewed through the lens of Chinese dragon mythology, with Chinese dragons being actual animals. (Woetzel, n.d.) However, the evolution of China's dragon imagery moves from very simple to more intricate and complex, suggesting that dragons were not thought to be mere animals but images of transcendent figures that became more complex as China expanded and urbanized. The earliest depictions of Chinese dragons are from the neolithic Hongshan culture (4700-2920 BCE), where dragons were depicted as "simple" snake-pig chimeras with no legs at all, associated with water and resembling Chinese alligators. During the Eastern Zhou to the Lia dynasty (771-256 BCE, 916-1125 CE), the dragon took on characteristics of other cultures that China came into contact with, gaining legs and taking on more chimera-like traits, with a figure that merged pig, snake, alligator, horse, eagle, and tiger, as a symbol of chaos and what existed beyond the borders of the state. With the increasing urbanization of the country, the dragon would eventually become "domesticated" and take on more human features during the Song and Yuan Dynasties (960-1279 CE, 1271-1368 CE) as it became a symbol of imperial authority, with different dragons denoting different status as opposed to biological features (for example, five-clawed "true dragons" represented the Emperor, while four-clawed "mang dragons" represented lower nobility). (CUHK, 2024) Actual animals are usually depicted more consistently across time - an example being the Altamira Cave bison. Despite being produced between 15,000-12,000 BCE, the animals are depicted true to life compared to other bison cave art and when compared to living bison today. This is not so for Chinese dragon imagery, and a case by young-Earth advocates for interpreting Chinese dragons as dinosaurs would need to explain why this would be the case for other organisms but not dinosaurs.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Chinese University of Hong Kong [CUHK] (2024, March 18) Here be dragons: how a scaly, mythical beast has helped to shape the history of China. CUHK in TOUCH.

Hodge, B. (2011, October 1) Dragon Legends - Truths Behind the Tales. Answers in Genesis.

Iijima, M., Qiao, Y., Lin, W., Peng, Y., Yoneda, M., Liu, J. (2022) An intermediate crocodylian linking two extant gharials from the Bronze Age of China and its human-induced extinction. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 289(1970).

Marshall, M. (2022, March) A 6-metre-long crocodile relative lived in China during the Bronze age. New Scientist.

Ngernjan, M., Ontawong, A., Lailerd, N., Mengamphan, K., Sarapirom, S., Amornlerdpison, D. (2022) Crocodile Oil Modulates Inflammation and Immune Responses in LPS-Stimulated RAW 264.7 Macrophages. Molecules, 27(12), 3784. 

Ollivier, C. (2022, October 21) 5 Things Marco Polo Discovered on His Travels. The Collector.

Price, D. (1900) The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Macmillan and Co.

Woetzel, D. (n.d.) Dragons in History. Genesis Park.

Wright, T. (Ed.) (1854) The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian: The Translation of Marsden Revised with a Selection of His Notes. George Bell and Sons.