We speak two different concepts when we speak of Marco Polo's journey to Cathay, and the Silk Road. For while Marco and his father and uncle took the middle and eastern Silk Roads they did not take the traditional western road through to Damascus. By cutting off this traditional camel caravan route the Polo family used the maritime potency of rising Venice. For in its ascendency Venice could cut off the long western leg of a journey by a voyage from Venice to the base of fabled Mount Ararat of Noah's Arc fame.

From here it was they, a local guide, all of them dressed in beggars rags; with sufficient pack animals they began the long walk up over the north hump of mighty Asia and its spikes of the Himalayan Mountains. To their south now was Tibet, the Silk Road ran to the north and filtered down to the south only as the Silk Road filtered into several routes near the Forbidden City. Always at the heart of power in China since records have been kept is Tiannamen Square. The palaces here housed the Emperor and his family,

Also living here or nearby were court members in a vast network of royal buildings. Most of these buildings are still in place as serve as public service today, or museum status to signify their national prominence. Nearby is a reminder of the need for a mighty army needed in The Great Wall of China. What great irony that both mongols Genghis Khan and his Mongolian grandson Kublai Khan from north of the wall came to rule all of vast and varied Chinese areas from Mongolia to Vietnam in fearful peace and harmony as long as all obeyed the commands of the day.

To reach the eastern terminus of the Silk Road was to have traversed mighty Asia from Damascus in the realm of Persia and Rome in their times, to Beijing at the Forbidden City and Tiannamen Square. That the Great Wall of China nudges close to Beijing at this point and that the wall or series of walls continue to the west, ending lost in time in moving sand dunes in the Gobi Desert. To your left on this westward journey of the Silk Road has you lower than the great Tibetan Plateau lifting to the highest in elevation on earth occupied land mass in the area known as Tibet.

Marco Polo walked up over the spine of Asia even at their lower elevation, and they would have passed Mongols on ponies living in yhurts then as now. People along this route include blond hair blue eyed Mongols who are known to share the blood of Amazon Greek warrior women from ancient Greece. Escaping Persia ships to the eastern edge of the Black Sea and escaping east, these legendary Amaazon females blood has been found in DNA samples taken of local. History returns us to our roots in many different ways.