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Section A22 NOVEMBER 2011

Marco Polos Dragons

Recently we returned romour annual 24-day rollingcamping trip. While covering13 states and 3,900 miles, thepervasive testimony o NoahsFlood intrigued me. Every roadcut we passed through pro-claimed Noahs Flood via theprominent sedimentary layers.

As Ken Ham says, Billionso dead things, buried in rock layers,laid down by water, all over the earthshout convincingly o a global catas-trophe. We saw huge dinosaur bonesand enormous teeth. Almost all theossils (remains o dead things) we

saw were probably buried by sedi-ments laid down by Noahs Flood.

GreatCamPinGtriPs

We explored caves, Presidential mu-seums, Civil War battlefelds, dunes,rivers, lakes and ocean. But our ad-

ventures paled beside those o three othe greatest camping trips ever: Lewis& Clark, Marco Polo, Moses.

In May 1804, Lewis and Clarkembarked on a two-and-a-hal-year,

8,000-mile camping trip to explore Jeersons Louisiana Purchase. Co-leader Captain William Clark wasthe younger brother o Revolution-ary War hero George Rogers Clark.Clark logged course directions anddistances and compiled detailedmaps. Upon reaching the Pacifc, hecalculated they had traveled 4,162miles. He was o by only 40 miles,less than a one-percent error.

Marco Polo (1254-1324) was amerchant rom Venice, Italy, who isrenowned or his 24-year, 15,000-mile camping trip to China.

In 1446 B.C., Moses led the Isra-elites on an o-trail camping trip andhike rom Egypt to Canaanor 40 years. Exodus throughDeuteronomy records someo their adventures.

With these examples or

inspiration, how did peopleever abandon camping andstart living in houses?

PolosCamPinGtriP

In 1271 at age 17, MarcoPolo let Italy or China withhis ather and uncle. They re-turned in 1295 ater 24 yearsto fnd Venice at war withGenoa. The Venetians hadlong given up the Polo mer-chants or dead.

Polo was captured andthrown into a Genovan pris-on or our years where he

entertained cellmates withtravel stories. One cellmateoered to document Polos

journey. Polo dictated a de-tailed account to Rustichello

da Pisa.Over the next sev-

eral centuries The Travelsof Marco Polo stimulatedgreat geographical discov-eries, including Christo-pher Columbus attemptsto reach China by sailing

west around the world.Polos book with handwrit-ten comments was oundamong Columbus belong-

ings.Travels was the only encyclope-

dia o the East, and gave Europeanstheir frst look at Asia. It served as aguide or mapmakers or 200 years,especially since Polo brought back a

nautical and world map rom China.Polos journey preceded construc-tion o Chinas Great Wall by twocenturies. He reported seeing oun-tains o oil (mineral oil springs), blackstones that people burned or heat(coal), and paper money.

One o his adventures involved atwo-year journey by sea accompany-ing a wedding party. O the 600-per-son party, only 18 survived, includingall three Polos.

PoloseesDraGons

One o many unusual accounts in Trav-els is Polos report o erocious beastshe encountered in southwest China in

what is now the Yunnan province.Here are seen huge serpents, ten paces

in length, and ten spans in the girth of thebody. At the fore-part, near the head, theyhave two short legs, having three clawslike those of a tiger, with eyes larger thana fourpenny loaf and very glaring. The

jaws are wide enough to swallow a man,the teeth are large and sharp, and theirwhole appearance is so formidable, thatneither man, nor any kind of animal, canapproach 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 tak-ing them. In the day-time, by reason ofthe great heat, they lurk in caverns, fromwhence, 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 whichthey drag themselves towards some lake,spring of water, or river, in order todrink. By their motion in this way alongthe shore, and their vast weight, theymake a deep impression, as if a heavybeam had been drawn along the sands.

Those whose employment it is to huntthem observe the track by which they aremost frequently accustomed to go, and fixinto the ground several pieces of wood,armed with sharp iron spikes, whichthey cover with the sand in such a man-ner as not to be perceptible. When there-

fore the animals make their way towardsthe places they usually haunt, they are

wounded by these instruments,and speedily killed. The crows,as soon as they perceive them tobe dead, set up their scream; andthis serves as a signal to the hunt-

ers, who advance to the spot, and proceed to separate the skin fromthe flesh, taking care immediatelyto secure the gall, which is mosthighly esteemed in medicineThe flesh also of the animal is soldat a dear rate, being thought tohave a higher flavor than otherkinds of meat, and by all personsit is esteemed a delicacy.

What was this beast? Somethink Polo recorded a myth;others believe he saw crocodiles.But its a actual description

which the author clearly intendsto be accepted at ace value. The

highly specifc details he relatesdistinguish it rom legend andmark it as a genuine record oPolos experience.

The creature was not a croco-

dile. Crocodiles were amiliar to Egyp-tians and Greeks and well-known inthe Mediterranean. Ancient Rome hadpictures and statues o crocodiles. Ro-man legionnaires used crocodile hideor armor. Polo would not have mistak-

en these earsome beasts or crocodiles,and people would not have had suchinordinate terror o large crocodiles.

How big were eyes larger than a fourpenny loaf that Polo reported?Nobody documented the size o aourpenny loa 700 years ago, but hereis some indication.

In 1770 the ood allowance in theLeicester, England county jail wasa ourpenny loa o bread, weigh-ing rom two pounds, eight ouncesto three pounds, fve ounces. In the1600s in Tunbridge, England, a our-penny loa was the daily ood allot-ment or the poor.

Thus in 1290 a ourpenny loawas likely at least three pounds in around, mounded shape. Three-poundloaves were certainly as big around asmedium pizzas. So the creatures eyes

were enormous ar, ar larger than

crocodile eyes.Most likely the creature was sometype o dragon a now-extinct hugedinosaur. Possibly it was one o twoearsome dinosaurs, Behemoth or

( Job 40:15-41:34). Jobs and Polosrecords are evidence that dinosaurs

were contemporaneous with humans.Our camping trip was shorter in

time and length and adventure thanPolos, but we did survive somethingPolo did not mention a jellyfsh at-tack! Soli Deo Gloria.

E-mail Dr. Pelletier at

BibleScienceGuy@woodsidenews.org.Read the Bible-Science Guy blog athttp://BibleScienceGuy.wordpress.comand follow him at http://twitter.com/BibleScienceGuy.

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WilliaM T.PelleTier Ph.d.

tHE BIBLE aND sCIENCE by WilliaM T. PelleTier, Ph.d. [woodside news COLUMNIST]

Leviathan, that Yahweh described to Job

William T. Pelletier2011