"Paper was invented in China....long after Marco Polo brought back gunpowder and pasta - but long before any other Europeans ever ventured anywhere near China again."

Paper was invented in China around 100 BCE - that's more than a thousand years before Marco Polo was even born. It had made its way to India, Japan and Korea by around 600 CE and to the Islamic scholars in West Asia some 400 years before Polo's birth.

It's not really a big leap to see how paper - already widespread across Asia well before Polo - would have found its way eventually to Europe. I'm not saying they *didn't* get it from Africa (I believe paper could be bought at high price from Egypt during that period), but rather your facts about Marco Polo, the development of paper and Europeans in China are sadly lacking.

Eg: there are recorded journeys of Europeans (after Polo) to China and the Far East from the 1300s through to the 1600s (there was no near-1000 year gap between Polo and the next European explorer).