Description

In 1298, Marco Polo named his source: a Turkish mining supervisor called Zurficar who spent three years directing asbestos operations for Kublai Khan. There's just one problem — Zurficar appears in no Chinese, Persian, or Mongol records. He exists in 150 manuscript copies of one document and nowhere else.

Episode 8 of Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making investigates why Marco Polo's detailed, accurate account of asbestos production stands virtually alone in the historical record — and why his debunking of the salamander myth failed to displace four centuries of institutional authority.

In this episode:

• The Genoese prison cell where Marco Polo dictated his memoirs to an Arthurian romance writer who'd been imprisoned for fourteen years
• Zurficar — the named eyewitness who described mining, processing, and fire-cleaning asbestos cloth, yet left no trace in any other historical record
• Chinese documentation of "fire-wash cloth" from 237 CE — a thousand years before Marco Polo — complete with their own mythology about fire mice instead of salamanders
• Why the nickname "Il Milione" (Marco of the Million Lies) first appears in 1559, 235 years after Marco Polo's death — and evidence his contemporaries actually believed him
• Christopher Columbus's annotated copy of Marco Polo's Travels, with 366 handwritten notes including a reference to the asbestos passage
• The Vatican's asbestos cloth that Marco Polo attributed to Kublai Khan — which actually came from a Roman-era pagan tomb on the Appian Way
• Why 350 years passed before physician Thomas Browne finally threw a salamander in a fire and proved Marco Polo right

Marco Polo documented what medieval institutions — trade, law, church — never bothered to write down. A material too rare to trade, too exotic to prosecute, too foreign to archive. The institutions that create records never captured it.

Next episode: Thomas Browne throws a salamander into a fire. The myth that wouldn't die finally does.

Resources

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Mesothelioma Compensation Options: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma-compensation/

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Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

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Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/