In the mid-twelfth century, at a time when European rulers felt threatened by the growing power of Muslim nations on their borders, a letter suddenly appeared from Prester John, who described himself as a Christian king of great wealth living in the far east. The letter was addressed to the Byzantine emperor Manuel Comnenus.

Prester John claimed to be a descendant of one of the Three Magi. He wrote that his kingdom stretched from India to the land where the sun rises, and that it was inhabited by fantastic creatures such as seven-horned bulls, birds so large they could lift and kill an armored man, and horned men with three eyes in the back of their heads. He even claimed there was a fountain of perpetual youth in his kingdom.

The letter circulated throughout all the European courts. In 1177, Pope Alexander III instructed his personal envoy to travel east, search for Prester John, and deliver a reply to his letter. It was hoped Prester John would come to the aid of the Christian nations in Europe, but no response ever came. Nevertheless, European explorers continued to search for the mythical king for centuries.

The true author of the letter remains unknown. Whoever it was, he was familiar with old legends, which he borrowed heavily from — legends such as the tales of Alexander the Great’s adventures in the East. Linguistic evidence suggests the letter originated in Italy. The author probably intended to offer hope to the Christian armies fighting the crusades, and in this respect he succeeded, even though the hope was a false one.

Marco Polo's Description of the World, written around 1298, described his travels in China. In later centuries the book became one of the principal European sources of information about China. But some historians, principally Frances Wood in Did Marco Polo Go to China?, argue that Marco Polo may never have set foot in China. Instead, he may have traveled no further than his family’s trading posts on the Black Sea, where he was able to compile information from Persian and Arabic guidebooks about China. Evidence for this theory rests largely on curious omissions in Marco Polo's work. For instance, he never mentions the Great Wall of China nor the Chinese use of chopsticks. However, this theory remains highly controversial. More→

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which first appeared in print around 1371, purported to document the travels of an English knight throughout Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Persia, and Turkey. The book was very popular, and was regarded as being factual by medieval scholars, but modern readers can easily spot that the majority of it is fiction. For instance, it describes islands whose inhabitants have the bodies of humans but the heads of dogs, a tribe whose only source of nourishment is the smell of apples, people the size of pygmies whose mouths are so small that they have to suck all their food through reeds, and a race of one-eyed giants who eat only raw fish and raw meat. More→

For centuries European map-makers believed that an island called Hi-Brazil was located in the Atlantic, even though no such island had ever been found. More→

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