Hi all, what is the earliest evidence of contact between East Asia and Europe/Africa? I know that during the time of the Silk Road, these regions had a lot of cultural interaction with each other. But before that, did the Eastern Asian civilizations (namely China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc) know that people from the far west existed? (excluding the Americas). Did the average person in, say, China know that there were blond-haired people living in Scandinavia, or darker-skinned people in Sub-Saharan Africa? Thanks for your input! 