incredible new map could reveal that 13th century Italian explorer Marco Polo was actually the first European to discover America – more than two centuries before Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World.

A crude map drawn on sheepskin shows what appears to be the Bering Straight, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and the west coast of North America.

'Map with Ship' comes from a trove of 14 documents that have just been studied in depth for the first time. They were found in the 1930s in a trunk in that belonged to an Italian immigrant who settled in San Jose, California.