Read the text and answer the question. By 200 CE, the Silk Road was the most extensive trade network on Earth, connecting Asia and China with Europe and the Roman Empire. A trade caravan could leave from the western end of the Great Wall of China and stop at trading posts throughout Asia and eastern Europe. Middlemen carried goods from one trading post to another, covering the 4,000-mile network of routes that bypassed deserts and wound through mountain valleys to ports on the Mediterranean Sea. Though silk was a valuable trade good, other goods, including gunpowder and paper from China and wool, gold, and silver from Europe, were transported on the Silk Road. Trade and travel on the Silk Road facilitated the spread of languages, cultural practices, and religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, influencing all connected civilizations. Over time, parts of the Silk Road became unsafe and were abandoned. However, by the late 1200s, trade had revived. Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant and explorer, traveled across eastern Europe to Asia where he lived at the court of Kublai Khan for seventeen years. When Polo returned to Venice, he wrote about his travels. Though possibly exaggerated, his accounts raised European interest in Asia. What cultural changes likely occurred due to trade and travel on the Silk Road