Marco Polo (September 15, 1254 – January 8, 1324) was a Venetian merchant and explorer who, along with his father and uncle, was among the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China.
It is said that he introduced gunpowder to Europe, although the first time it was used in the West occurred at the Battle of Niebla (Huelva) in 1262. The Polos (Marco, his father, and his uncle) supposedly lived there for seventeen years before returning to Venice. Upon his return, Marco Polo was then 44 years old and commanded a Venetian galley on the day a naval battle against Venice's great rival, the Republic of Genoa, was fought before the walls of Korcula in Croatia in 1298. .
The Genoese captured Marco Polo, took him to Genoa, and there, in prison, Polo dictated to a certain Rustichello of Pisa the memoirs of his fabulous journey to Cathay (China) and the return through Malacca, Ceylon, India, and Persia. Rustichello wrote in a Franco-Venetian dialect the book known as Il Milione (The Million or "Marco Polo's Travels") about his travels. The book was originally called Divisament du monde ("Description of the World"), but was popularized as the Book of Wonders of the World, and later as Il Milione. It is a general belief that such a name came from the author's tendency to refer to large numbers; "millions" but it is more likely derived from his own name "Emilione", abbreviated to Milione.
There would not be, then, in this denomination any allusion to its exaggeration. Marco Polo is considered one of the great explorers, and a famous storyteller in travel literature.