Despite the extremely unreliable and often fantastical nature of the travels it describes, it was used as a work of reference - Christopher Columbus, for example, was heavily influenced by both this work and Marco Polo's earlier Il Milione. The most recent theory suggests that The Travels of ...
Probably the most numerous and unusual finds from the first millennium Silk Road kingdom of Khotan are small terracotta figurines. And while they include animals—such as the Bactrian camel and horse—that would have been familiar travellers on the Silk Road in this Taklamakan kingdom, the most...