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Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant and explorer whose travelogue, written with the Italian writer Rustichello da Pisa following Polo's return from the Mongol/Chinese Yuan Dynasty court, helped bring a new level of knowledge and understanding to European societies about their East Asian counterparts. Traveling for decades across the Silk Road to Asia, Polo also described in great detail the societies of Central Asia through which he passed.
The Silk Road was an extensive set of overland trade routes connecting the Eastern and Western portions of the Eurasian continent since antiquity. The network bears the name "Silk Road" for one of its most famous commodities: silk, often produced in Chinese textile workshops and bought at great expense in the West, even as early as during the days of the early Roman Empire.
