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I love hearing about historical trade networks. I don't think they get a high enough profile.
1653 North America:
>The two travellers learned of the great trade fairs in the Mandan villages along the upper Missouri River. People from thousands of kilometres away, from all directions of the compass, congregated to haggle and barter for goods such as northern furs, pipestone, buffalo robes, grease, ochre, obsidian, eagle feathers, porcupine quills, fine leather, pottery, dried corn, wild rice, tobacco, dried herbs, preserved fish, precious stones, decorative seeds, coloured embroidery—and of course to share news of the land.
https://www.readersdigest.ca/culture/the-incredible-origins-...
Trade routes with the Eastern Mediterranean were still active in this time period; it's not surprising to find Eastern Roman items in England. The level of trade had dropped to a trickle compared to levels seen before the Fall of the Western Empire, but luxury items could still be had.
Some books I enjoyed about the trade networks across Eurasia:
* When Asia Was the World
* Religions of the Silk Road: Premodern Patterns of Globalization
Previously discussed on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14044940
Always find it interesting that Marco Polo, who 'discovered the east' in popular western culture, is a Venetian who's father set up shop in Constantinople soon after it was sacked by the venetians in the 4th crusade, but yet clear evidence of active trade routes like this clearly existed long before - seems like a pretty clear case of historical revisionism to me..
> Always find it interesting that Marco Polo, who 'discovered the east' in popular western culture
No one thinks Marco Polo "discovered the east", but he was one of the first medieval westerners to travel throughout some parts of east and, most importantly, write about it.
His father and uncle and were the successful ones, Marco Polo learned their trade and travelled with them. The really interesting part is that they won the favour of the Kublai Khan, arguably the most powerful ruler of the time.
I guess that only very rarely a person made the whole trip along the entire silk road, but knowledge about the foreign lands definitely travelled much earlier.
For instance here's a Chinese description of the Roman empire from the 3rd century:
Goods could have passed through many intermediaries before they reached China.