The routes identified for knowledge of China reaching Europe include Franciscan travellers after 1245, Marco Polo, and later Jesuit missions. Seventeenth-century writing about Asia also came from merchants, sea captains, physicians, soldiers, and independent travellers. Hobson's case draws on the volume of these descriptions and their potential influence on literate Europeans. Clarke accepts that ideas moved in both directions but questions how far written accounts explain practical engineering advances when many early innovators had limited literacy.
Notable Point · 2:23:34-2:25:20
How Asian knowledge reached Europe, and the literacy objection
Missionaries, travellers, and maritime workers carried knowledge of Asia, but the role of books in practical innovation raises a separate question about literacy.