Paper

The best-documented westward journey on this list, and a good lesson in legend versus evidence. Tradition credits the court official Cai Lun with paper in 105 CE, but fragments from Gansu are far older, reaching back to the 2nd century BCE. The famous story says Chinese prisoners taken at the Battle of Talas in 751 taught papermaking to Samarkand. Historians doubt it: no contemporary Arab source describes the battle, and paper was already in use there decades earlier. What is solid is the chain that followed. Abbasid Baghdad had paper mills by 794 to 795, Cairo merchants were wrapping spices in paper by 1035, and the first recorded paper mill on the Iberian Peninsula was at Xàtiva in 1056. Italy's mills followed in the 13th century.