Genghis Khan: Madman or Genius?

everything is the same. So if you have tickets to uh that Van Buren show, then they count for the Orpheum show obviously. And now there are a whole lot more tickets for you desert dwellers. And I can't wait to see you all in your lovely tans and your scorpions and your tarantulas and your rattlesnakes yep. So we'll be there on Wednesday, October twenty four at the Orpheum Theater. And if you haven't gotten tickets yet, you can get them by going to s y s K Live dot com,

our clearinghouse for Stuff you Should Know Live. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and sitting across from me Charles W. Chuckis Chinks Bryant, And sitting to your right is ghost producer Casper Nobody. It was Ramsey guests producer Ramsey. We've got like all these new guest producers coming on hot and he now Jerry had she had to leave today, and I think everyone's busy,

and so someone came in. There's also a distinct lack of interest I've picked up on. Boy, remember the days when people used to jump out a chance to sit in here? Oh yeah, Now they're like, I've got a mail something. I know. You used to be like, oh my gosh, Jerry's gone, let me do it, Let me do it. They grew up, Yeah, and then they grew up in um. Now we have our little dunking bird to pick the key that our record button. Just going

back and forth thinking about where life went wrong. Just us, just us Chuck and a guy named Genghis Dinghis Khan. Do you pronounce it Dinghis or Genghis or Chingis? Are you being serious? I know it's not Dinghis, but I've also seen it spelled in a way that would suggest you you pronounced it chingis Oh really, I think I have heard that, but we're gonna go with the the

general Genghis pronunciation. Okay, right, although his what was his birth name, Timujin doesn't even Genghis Khan isn't even his real name. Everybody, so calm down. It's Temujin or Temujin. Man. Did you see that statue. I've seen it before. Yes, it's enormous. Have you seen in person? Now, I've not yet been to Mongolia. That's something else, man, I will one day though. Yeah, I know it's it's the world's biggest equestrian statue, and with good reason. It's like forty

or thirty ft tall. That's an enormous statue. It's pretty impressive whether whether you're on a horse or not. That's a big old statue, right, I almost didn't say old. And I think it's made of like fifty tons of stainless steel, which means it rinses clean really well. And it looks like I saw the wide shot. It doesn't look like one of those. It's you know, surrounded by burger kings. Oh good, looks like there's a lot of land around it. Well, Mongolia has a lot of land,

a lot of undeveloped land from what I understand. Yeah, this was an interesting one because depending on what kind of historian you are, he is a either a revered mastermind or scorned butcher. Butcher, yeah, I know, he's actually I think both well of Yeah, there are definite camps for sure, Like like a lot of people, um I've

seen him called the pro Genghis camp um approach. Yeah, that they're they're all about like all the cultural transmission that happened under his his rule, um or all of them. All the new innovative laws of religious religious tolerance was another one. And yes, you like all that stuff happen, it's not in dispute, Like there are a lot of

things that we'll talk about that we're really positive. But he's also directly responsible for the deaths of about thirty five million people over twenty million twenty five year period. That's a ridiculous amount of death of people who had Genghis Khan not been born and you know, decided to lead a conquest, would probably otherwise not have died violently. That's a big mark in his favor or against him. My morality just switched off there for so you got the pro g the anti G and the alleg it's

the third camp I missed that. It's good stuff. It is, but they tried to bring it back, remember and it is there a part two or two point. They that's that's the problem. They didn't do new stuff. It was just him introducing old stuff, and it was like, we want more new stuff. We've all seen this stuff bunch. It was like for a month on FX. But they shot new hosting segments, yes, that were like fifteen seconds long.

So basically they said, hey, Slasha bart Cohen, how'd you like to make another X amount of dollars by showing up for a day. How would you like to do that? The Ali G version of S Y s K selects, Oh yeah, alright, I'm not gonna examine that one too quickly. Alright, So we're talking about Ali G, I mean Genghis Khan, right, yeah, and just some large statistics right off the bat, as far as his um, his his influence, well not his influence,

but his rule and sheer numbers. Yeah, this is the reason we're still talking about I'm not just because he killed so many people, yeah, agreed. Um. By the time, you know, of course, everyone knows he was a great conqueror who just kept branching out further and further, and this is how far he reached. Eventually, in modern day terms, he would reach Austria. Austria, he banged on the door of Austria, his his son did. Just get out of

world map and look at where Mongolia is. So Austria, Finland, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Vietnam, Burma, Japan, and Indonesia twelve million contiguous square miles, which is the size of Africa. Again amazing. Yeah, and then to put that in context, you know the great Roman Empire that was about half the size of the United States. Yeah, the Roman Empire was half the size of the United States. Yeah,

it took them four hundred years to amass that. In twenty five years, Genghas Khan had an empire the size of Africa. Yeah. And then at the time, the population in the the world was about seven billion people. The Mongolian empire was about three billion of that. So it's just astounding.

It is astounding. And to put it in like true cultural or true historic context at the time and say, like the early early thirteenth century, the Mongols were the Mongols a bunch of nomadic tribes, tribes on the steps of Mongolia. China was a well established and um fairly advanced patchwork of dynasties. Um, you had like Europe growing in the they were in the Middle Ages, but they

were like the Renaissance is coming not too long. Um. You had the Native Americans over in America doing their thing, Africa doing their things. So there's all these different things going on in the world, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this tiny little bunch of people who aren't even in agriculture take over Eurasia in twenty five years out of nowhere and kill thirty five million people

out of nowhere. It would be like if if Polynesia suddenly rose up and took over the America's in twenty five years. They just assembled and said we're taken over. And they were just so ferocious that America just didn't even know what to do and was overrun by them. Yeah, and their their rule was not long lasting for a lot of the reasons that there's a lot of ironies, you know, a lot of the reasons that they were able to spread so fast ended up being their undoing.

But um, this is all just set up fodder. Yeah, we haven't even gotten into it yet, so let's let's let's do start, Okay, sure back in. Uh, people think the best guess is probably I think eleven eighty five. I saw there was a kid named Timmy Jin eleven sixty two. I'm sorry, and uh he was born uh in a place called well along the Onon River near La Batar, which is a great name, but that's the capital of Mongolia. There's five a's in that's a lot.

And uh, this this kid, this Temujin, who would grow up to be Genghas Khan was not genghaskm material from the outset. No, he was Um. Well, he was a middle brother, and apparently both younger and older brother outshone him. Yeah, he was very much the jam Brady of his family. He was because apparently little brother was a much better athletes and a better you know, arrow shooter or I guess you would call them archers. Um, kind of better at everything, and then his older brother picked on him.

Um he was not. He was illiterate. He wasn't like formally schooled or super smart, right right, But I mean, in his defense, neither were most of the people he knew or lived on the steps. Yeah, it's not like his two brothers like got their doctorates, their PhDs and kicking butt. Uh that's true. Um, but he was there was.

I mean, reading I wish I knew more about this, this whole era, because it sounds like it was just a crazy time, especially over there, where people would be like if I want something, I'm just gonna go take it. If I want that tribe gone, I'm gonna go kill them. If I want those ladies and your children, I'm gonna kidnap them. And that was just sort of how the land was ruled. It was kind of not chaos, but

just brute force. Lawless. Yeah, pretty lawless. And you were you were loyal to your tribe or your clan um and your tribe or clan was nomadic and you live by the horse and yeah you you There was a lot of war between these tribes on the steps and tiny wars like like like you said, kidnapping, like you would kidnap your wife. That's how you got your wife, was you go kidnapper from another tribe and be like you're my life. Now. That's how his mother came about, right, Yes,

that's how he came about. Was his father kidnapped his mother. His father was the chief of his tribe. Um oh, what's his father's name? And Yessugi kidnapped who lou who loon. Yeah, there's a lot of m louts in there. I don't know how the oom out represents Mongolian dialect, but we're gonna do a German style. So her name is Hulon?

Is that pretty German mert crew? So she was kidnapped, and this is the thing, Like I have no context to put this in if this was a common thing, was she like I'm being kidnapped, Okay, Like I guess I'm eighteen now or something like this is just a normal course of events for so it didn't impact her or is that just a ridiculous thing to even think?

And like, yes, if you were kidnapped and take him from your tribe and made to be some dude's wife unwillingly, it doesn't matter where it happened or when it happened. It was a horrific experience. I think it was. I mean I think it was that and just sort of the way it was. Women were just had no recourse

or say in anything at the time. But like I think I know what you're saying though, Like you know, she had these children and they were a quote family, but what does you know, what does that mean in that context? Yeah? Is it a family if mom's like looking for an escape route? Right, the whole life? Right? Um? Either way, it was not like people recording one another back then. So, um, yes, Sugi right, that's what we decided on. Yes, Uh, yes, Suggi was the chief, like

I said, of the clan of the tribe. Very powerful dude. And he was poisoned. Actually, he died by poisoning when Timudgin was nine, and that was bad news for Timidgen, his mom and his two brothers. Yeah, they were just sort of kicked out of this new tribe. And I'm not sure why. I guess because he was the son of of Yeah, they didn't want anybody being like, oh, by the way, I'm the rightful heir, I I should

really be the chief of this tribe. I'm very surprised that they didn't just kill all of them, yeah, because that's kind of the way he usually went. So, yeah, they were kicked out. Uh. So he had a rough childhood. They were not They had a scavenge for food. Um, I reckon it toughened him up a little bit. But um, as our article points out that he uh, it kind of gave him a will too, and probably picked him off.

So he had anger and will, vengeance and vengeance all rolled up into one, which says a lot about like the man that he would become. I think, um so he and his family make it so, not all of his family. There's there's a story called the Secret History of the Mongols, and it was written in about twelve forties, so shortly after Genghis Khan's death. We don't know who the author was, but that's the primary source for most

of the auto or the biography of Genghis Khan. They know a lot, a lot because somebody sat down and wrote this, and we'll see eventually why Um but them, that's where we're getting all of this information, which is also why if you listen to the history of Genghis Khan, a lot of it sounds like a string of fables and tales wrapped together. But historians tend to think that there's some some kernel of truth or just outright truth

to most of it. Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, We'll take a break and we'll talk about what young Timogen was like. All right, So we said that he was a bit of a cry baby, got picked on, wasn't very athletic or strong, but he had charm, he had chutzpah, he had charisma and a little bit of moxie and definitely you gotta throw in some moxie. And apparently he was able, through his charisma too, to talk people into helping him out, and that became sort

of a trait through his life. And they give a couple of examples. Um, one time he was going after a horse thief and he just ran upon a stranger and kind of convinced the guide to not only give him a horse, but to help him out. Yeah, he really attracted people into his orbit from what I understand. Yeah,

he was like h like gil like Gilbert Godfrey. It's funny because I knew I was trying to think of someone legitimately, and I knew that you were headed down to different Uh what I There was another time that he had a bride to be or maybe I think he was married, I think, and she was kidnapped because that's how it went. And so he went to the leader of another tribe and said, hey, take this sable skin.

It was one of my wedding gifts. Yeah, he was pretty impressed apparently because he helped him rescue the wife and then pledged his allegiance to him as an ally for life. He said, not only am I going to help you get your wife, You're gonna go on to do great things and I want to be there with you.

Love me so um. There's just tons of stories like that, like early stories where like he was held prisoner by he was kidnapped himself and escaped by beating the guy watching him with the wooden caller that he had fastened around his neck. There's just tons of stories like that. If you put it together, you can kind of see this guy develop over time, right, But eventually he probably

hit the weights eventually, right. Yeah. As um, as he grows up and develops, and more and more people kind of come into his orbit and want to help him out, he starts putting that that charisma and that vengeance too, I guess productive use. And he he assembles like his own tribe and other tribes. He starts alying with other tribes, and the tribes that don't go along with it, he slaughters in war um, and he would. He was known for having like an eye for other talent, which would

aid him tremendously throughout his years as a conqueror. But for example, if you were a good enemy soldier, and he noted that in battle, there was a good chance that you were gonna end up a field commander on his side after the battle was over, and he beat your your guys. And there's actually a story where his horse was shot out from under him. And after his

his group won the battle, the Mongols won the battle. Um. He wanted to know who shot that arrow and the I on the other side stood up and said it was me. And he said you your name is Jebe now, which means arrow, and you're going to become a field commander for me. And he went on to be one of the best to you ever had. I think. I was like, is he messing with me? Yeah? But that was that was pretty par for the course with him. And so through these actions he started assembling like an

army and became the leader of the steps. Yeah, and people like you said, if they challenged him, they were squashed. He um. He had a surrender or die policy, which apparently if you literally did not fight, and you were just like, okay, we're all yours. Apparently he was okay to you. He wasn't known for torturing people. Um, I don't know if he you know, I don't know. I don't want to say he was kind to them, but I think he kind of wanted his subjects to be

happy and productive. So if they didn't fight him, he was like, all right, you're you're part of the big extended family. Come here, come here, you thank you for your kingdom. Although he isn't khan at this point. Still. No, that didn't take place until I believe twelve oh six. Yeah, that's when they the Mongol tribes all got together. They had a great assembly called cure Lie and they said,

you know what, you're the man, You're Genghis Khan. Now we are all on your team because quite frankly, we're scared of your where scared so scared. So he was like, hey, that's fine. Yeah, So Genghis Khan. They think their khan means ruler, indisputably Genghis. They're not acent sure what they meant by it because it can mean ocean or just so they think they were saying like supreme like the leader all the way to the ocean. Sure, and then

then you run into t Triton. You don't want to mess with him, right, But up to Triton's area, this guy is the leader. So that's what they meant by like ocean leader. He was an aqua man. No, So they're unified now. And he said, I have to, like I have to assemble a nation here. I've got all these tribes. I want a unified people. Yeah. That was a big move, it was, and it was a smart move. Um. And all these old clans got together, people that were

enemies UM, joined forces. I don't know if they became you know, best buds or anything. Well, one of the things they did is they renounced these old rivalries. Yeah. They they stopped warring with each other, they stopped robbing one another. Um. And they started identifying not as these individual clans but as Mongols. Yeah. And like strengthened numbers. I think they realized this, this could benefit us all

if we're one big, powerful group. Right. But numbers is relative though, man, Like from what I saw at its peak, the army of Genghis Khan had about a hundred thousand men, Yeah, which is peanuts. It is peanuts. So why were they should we get into why they were sick cessible yet or this? Yeah, so why were this successful? Well? Uh, a few reasons. Probably the one of the biggest is is these dudes could ride horses and shoot arrows like

nobody's business. They were incredible. Uh. They had an incredible cavalry. He was one of the first that whoever wrote that article you sent um that one historian he was great. So he pointed out that he uh, he realized that that the cavalry didn't need to be followed by an infantry, which was a huge advantage. I guess in battle you needed far fewer guys. Yeah, and just get everyone up on a horse. Uh. They were incredible archers. They could

their accuracy was unmatched. They could fire an arrow apparently like over three hundred yards accurately. Um. These horses were awesome. They were grass fed, they could live off the land, and they had this armor that was really lightweight and flexible. So you know, at the time they were fighting people when much heavily armored apparel, so they they were they

could move around better. You know, on their horses. They were firing arrows and they had these little short swords, and they had this thing called a hooked lance, and they're like, a lance is all right, it's it's cool, I guess to poke someone off a horse, But what if you can poke them or grab them? So they added a hook to the lance, a very simple feature, and it really changed things. It was like a modern uh evolution and weaponry. So these are just a few

of the reasons. One of uh. One of the others is tactics and strategy. Uh. He would scout out before battles for weeks. Sometimes he wouldn't just go as like as brutish as they were. They would spend a lot of time doing research and spying and really kind of figuring out a game plan, like like if they were going to sack a city, like they you where the trade lte or the supply lines were, escape routes, um, you know all that kind of stuff, all the stuff you need to notice sack a city one of the

other things. So so part one I saw it called the quantum leap in military strategy and technology. Okay, that was the first thing. The other thing is something you touched on earlier there, surrender or die policy. Right, so their military prowess combined with their tactics and the their policy of if you don't just say yes, that's fine, we don't want to fight, we're gonna kill everybody, just about everybody. And they were actually pretty smart about it too.

They'd find like the skilled craftsmen in some cities and we're gonna spare your life because you're now a Mongol. You gotta move to Mongolia, by the way. Um. But they would just kill so many people that a lot of historians have tried to figure out why were they so ferocious, and they've actually been a number of theories that have been put up. One is so apparently so Genghis Khan was a he was into shamanism. That was his religion. But he was like fervently religious about shamanism.

And there was like a great god of the sky who um I think is analogous to Vishnu maybe in Hinduism. And this this god supposedly gave him a vision that he should become conqueror of the world. And so some people have said, well, he you know, if you opposed him, you were opposing his god. And so there was no room for that, and that's what made him so ferocious um.

Probably the best explanation though, is that if some it's like one of their hundred thousand horsemen died, that was a big deal, right, So to save their numbers, they were better off not fighting, so by slaughtering an entire city that worried about that gets around the area. So when those guys show up to your city, there's a pretty good chance that if they say surrender or die, you're gonna surrender. And so the Mongols didn't have to sacrifice this single person. Yeah, and also get the idea.

I mean, we're going to talk about his major uh sieges, but he also had a lot of smaller skirmishes with just kind of regional tribes I think, And I got the idea that he wouldn't send all his dudes in there. He would send in a small amount of people as possible because they were so fierce and good at what they did, he didn't need to. And then that also reduced the chances of lots of life, I guess. And then so the smallest units, those that hundred thousand man

army boiled down to units as small as ten people. Yeah, that was the individual unit was a ten person cavalry group, and yeah, you could just say send five groups in or a thousand groups in or whatever. Yeah, there you go. And he would also, uh, he would also as he went he would pick up whatever weaponry and tactics that other armies used and use those. Because one thing that Um was pretty clear in reading this Genghis Khan did not like walls in walled cities. It ticked him off,

especially for some reason. Why would you do that? You know? So he you know, he got catapults and things like that, and he would, you would do some awful things like with ladders and catapults, he would fling diseased animals like that wasn't I don't know. He wasn't the only one to do that, but some of the seems like Lord though, the thing with the cats and the birds, Yeah, he told one city that he'd spare them if they gave

him a thousand cats and ten thousand birds. And they gathered up there ten thousand birds, which I guess they had in the thousand cats and gave them to him. And then he set the cats and the birds on fire and flung them over the walls to start fires in the city. Well, supposedly cod cotton got to them and set them on fire. Well that's much better, but I'm sure the fire spreads. It does seem a acry full. Yeah,

I don't know if I believe that apocryphal. By the way, I just learned in like the last year or so, I mean that made up. You didn't know that's you never heard the word or plenty of times I just didn't realize. I always assumed it meant like biblical and end of time. Interesting because it's resemblance to apocalypse. I've got one more for you. What's that? I just this

week learned what kudi gras actually means. I thought it meant like the cream of the crop, the ultimate it's the death blow, like there's nothing after it, not because it's the best, because you just had your head cut off. Yeah, the kuda, Yeah, yeah, the final blow. Just learned that this week. Yeah, I think I knew that. You know what word I used to always get wrong? Was dubious? Did you think about pot? I don't know. Yeah, can you score me some dubious? Did you ever listen to

funk Dubious? They were like this rap group from the nineties US they were eight, they were they all they want to do is have fun in the midst of like the whole gangster totally remember that boy? They they just went away. I haven't heard that name, and I think they had like one album in that was it. What was their big hit? I don't even remember, but all but it had to do with pot probably so um. All right, So he's got Mongolia pretty well taken care of.

What What did you think dubious meant? I joke instead of letting your answer, No, I don't. I don't remember what I thought it meant, but I think I just used to get it wrong. We'll go back to funk dubious. Uh. So he's got Mongolia pretty well under control, and he

is insatiable though Genghis Khan is. He starts looking around and he's like, China is big do a pretty pretty pretty and I think even though they are wealthy and tough and have a lot of dudes to fight, I think I can take him because I'm Genghis Khan, which is a nuts so thing to say at that time. It's depending on which of the dynasties in China you were talking about, because I think there were at least three major ones. Well, he's like, all of them, let's

just go one at a time. Yeah, so that's what he did. Yeah, that's exactly what he did. He started with the and there's I'm sorry everybody, I'm having trouble keeping up with all of the names. But the Tangots. Yeah, the Kingdom of Jijia. That is how I would probably pronounce it, not dixiea chang No. Yeah, thinking about that, Yeah, Ji and the Tangets, And uh, I think this was sort of a test, his biggest test militarily at the time. Yeah, it was. He'd been fighting other tribes on the steps

that to consolidate them and killing off the resistors. They didn't have cities. The Tangots were the first ones that he encountered that had like cities with walls that were fortified that he needed to figure out how to lay siege to. Yeah, and he he did, to the point where the king finally said, all right, you were my master, here are my troops, and here's the princess bride as well, because I've heard you get around and Genghas Khan said, as you wish, that's right, and that what he said,

I think so. Uh So the next he said, all right, how about this other region, the Chin Kingdom, and he faced a seventy thousand man army and it said virtually wiped it out in this article. So he's working his way up here now. Yeah, so he actually hit the Chins twice from what I understand, and this How Stuff Works article says that happened in two thousand thirteen, So I'll bet the Chins were quite surprised to see Genghas Khan show up five years ago. Yeah, I wonder why.

I mean, it says that came he came back and got a bunch of silk and gold and got a bunch of engineers. I wonder if that was the the purpose of that mission was, like, hey, I don't think

we properly rated them. Yeah, because this was two years after the first one, I guess that's all all it was that he wanted some more silk and gold, and again in appropriating weapons like crossbows, catapults, and because it's China, early versions of explosives, right, and so he's using all the stuff he's not married to, just the hook pole and just the saber. He'll try out anything he sees worked, right, So he's he's knocked out the first two dynasties, he's

brought them under his control. He now controls a significant portion of China, all of the steps around Mongolia, and he's got his sets, his sights set on the biggest one of the three, the Jin dynasty, and he um actually got in contact with them, or else they got in contact with him first. But the emperor of the Jin dynasty, this is an advanced civilization at this point, very wealthy, maybe the most advanced and wealthy civilization on

the planet at the time. Genghis Khan is a backwoods redneck horse rider who just happened to get lucky a couple of times, caught the other two dynasties slipping. That's what the emperor of the of the Jin dynasty is thinking. Yeah, he's thinking, you're gonna be my slaves. Yeah, He's like, you've done pretty good, kid. I'll tell you what. I'll let you. I'll let you look over my land in the south. You'll be my vassal. And um, here here's the princess bride. I hear you like him. But it

did not work out that way, No, it didn't. He actually successfully defeated the most advanced, wealthiest society on the planet at the time. The Jinn's slaughtered thousands and thousands of people. Well, that's how you do it, I guess. And these three campaigns, these these are huge, enormous campaigns. China was extremely populous at the time, and the number of people who died, most of the people who died under Genghis Khan's rule through war and conquest happened during

these three China camp pains. Yeah, about thirty about thirty million people died. And this is over I mean ten years. I think less than ten years, Yeah, I think. So, it's nuts man. Yeah, so he wanted to continue going,

I guess West twelve nineteen. He made his way through modern day Central Asia like Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Shah Mohammad there said he killed an ambassador that they had sent forward from a trading caravan and he had a big walled city and he's like, I'm gonna be fine. I'm not sweating this guy, and uh, he burned the city down. Genghis Khan did, and including a thousand of the soldiers who were in a mosque hiding out, killed

about a hundred thousand people. But of course like you said earlier, he spared the skilled craftsmen and workers, right. And this is the quarsam Kuara's and I even practice this one the charasm Choorism Empire, which um it's capital city that he sacked is now in Uzbekistan, but I've seen it called mostly like Afghanistan, Iran for the most part. This is the area it covered, Iran is what I see it mostly compared to these days. Yeah, And things are starting to get a little out of hand at

this point. And and it's basically sort of due to the fact that he there was he went too far. There were too many people, too much land. Um, when you control your I think that the guy who wrote that article you sent said that they weren't producers of anything, the Mongols, yeah, or or tradesmen. They were conquerors, that's it. Yeah. And that's not like you got to diversify. From what I understand, they didn't have a written language. Um, they

didn't do anything. They just conquered people and took go over your land and then leeched off of you. Yeah, which is a good skill to to get going. But if that's all you can do, I think he likened it to a shark needing to feed, Like, eventually you run out of lands to conquer, and then in the interior it's such a huge corporation at this point it gets unwieldy. So Genghas kind recognized this. At some point he saw that he had basically a change of heart

about agriculture, about walled cities, about a sedentary lifestyle. And I think he mostly saw like, oh, you can make way more wealth this way. So he turned from conquering as much toward figuring out how to administer this area that he conquered. Again, Eurasia is conquered. It's under this guy's This guy's had never never been united before and has hasn't been united since, even under Soviet Soviet rule.

The Genghis Khan's empire is bigger than that, right, um, And so he's put it together and he's like, what do I do now? And we'll talk about that after this message about that, okay, Chuck, So Genghis Khan has conquered Eurasia and said, what now? What now, Eurigel, what do you guys want to do now? I'm done with killing? Not really the well he died, Yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah, and this is no one knows quite how he died still. Uh. Some people say he had a fall from a horse

and was injured eventually died. Other people said, at my have been typhus. There are a few other theories floating around out there, but yeah, like shot in the knee with an arrow is my favorite. Yeah, which I guess just infection. I would die from pain. Yeah. Uh, it's interesting though. In August seven, when he was on his deathbed, like one of the last things he did was say, you don't remember the Tangets, go kill all of them, right,

that's what he did. I think they were the first people he conquered, right, they were the ji Um people, Okay, the first people in China. And when he went to go Um go attack the choir z M empire, he demanded that they send some troops his reinforcement, and they said no. He defeated the choirs M and Um turned around and went right over to Jija. It was like, you guys are your toast. You're in trouble. And that was his last act as as a living person. Yeah.

He was succeeded by one of his on ogadi who took that stuff all the way to Europe, had a bunch of sons, and I guess we might as well talk about his lineage. It's very famously the Genghis Khan. I mean, what is it like one of every two d men, something like point five per cent of the total global population is directly descended from him. That's amazing, it's amazing and gross. That's a lot of people. Yeah, he was about sixty five ish when he died, and

no one knows where he's buried. No, because they killed everyone on the way to the funeral this one. And then also they rode over his his grave with horses. I looked up. Have you do you ever go on cora? Uh? Sure? And then it's great man, Yeah, like you can you can usually tell who knows what they're talking about. Of the answers, the multipla and frequently it's most of the bowl. It's it's a very it's a good serious like it's a good place to get info that you should then

go double check. Yeah, but agreed, though it's not like the old days of what was the terrible when years and years ago, where you would ask question who questions? Yeah probably yeah, yeah, something like that. Yeah, there and there are a lot of platforms like this. This is a pretty good it's not corrupt yet. How about that? Yeah? I think is pretty good. Actually, so um, I went on Core. This one you can't really look up. But um, this one guy two people like. The question was why

was Genghas con buried in secret? I think? And two people said, um, they didn't want a grave robbed. Um. They wanted to make sure that the transfer of power to his son was complete, so they had to keep his death a secret. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, this one guy said, don't be idiots. He's a little arrogant, but he said, like, don't be idiots. Genghas Khan was shamanistic person, religiously fervent. He would have gone one of

two ways. They would have cremated him and just spread his ashes, or they would have done a sky burial. Remember we talked about before where they just left him on the mountainside for the vultures to pick over. Um, it wouldn't have buried him with grieve goods. He would have been embarrassed with that. So he's the only person I saw say something like that. But it gave me pause. It made me wonder if if the hidden grave is just you know, just a more lower about Genghis Khan

and off the mark. Interesting. Well, his legacy looms large still, not only in his uh, his lineage from his loins, his overactive loins just leaching out goop. But depending on who you're talking to, Um, well, he definitely did some things. He opened up trade, Um, the West got things like noodles and tea and playing cards. He perhaps founded the very first version of what would later be at post office, which is what's it called the yam Yeah, like a

pony Express. Yeah, like those different stations, the Pony Express. Yeah, like straight up, but like six years before the Pony Express, Yeah, exactly. But depending on who you're talking to, Some people lay almost all of modern warfare at his feet, which is sort of interesting because you can sort of draw a line back to his tactics that and eventually would become the Crusades or the uh the slaughtering of the Aztecs

and the Incas. Yeah, so they like they would learn from him and then do that, right, because it was more of that cultural conveyor belt the right. So they say that he conquered the kars M Empire, came in contact with with Islam Um and taught them ferocity, which the Europeans learned during the crusade, and they took that for city back to Europe and then eventually to the New World, which they used on the Native Americans they found there. And somebody said, um, no, the Europeans were

already well versed in ferocity and brutality and warfare. They didn't need to learn it from getting his Khan. That doesn't mean that's wrong, but it does. It's the suggestion that the Europeans were naive to brutality and warfares is incorrect. Well, it's complete bs and um. The author of that article also makes a good point, and like you can't you can't look it and judge him by today's lens. He wasn't anymore brutal than anyone else back then, it was

just the number. Yeah, he just did it better. That's to me though, So I guess then maybe my problem is is like celebrating people who have killed tons of people like that's what I have a problem at at base because it's a great man, great man history. You know,

it bugs me. It bugs me too. We didn't come, We didn't come across the way, did we so but just just just by carrying on the tradition of talking about this guy, and you know, there's you definitely keep his his little flame burning well and there's a what hundred and fifty ft statue of him. Yeah, like he's still very much revered. Well, let's talk about like if you were in Mongolia right now, you're probably pretty mad

at me and Chuck apologies for that. We're really it's the great Man history thing we have a problem with. But Um in Mongolia, he is known as the founder of Mongolia, them the great, basically the great, the greatest leader Mongolia has ever known, and possibly the world if you're a Mongolian Um and during that, during the Soviet occupation of Mongolia, you were not allowed to talk about him. Yeah,

they took him out of history books. Yeah, because they were trying to stamp out any kind of nationalism in Mongolia at the time. So the moment the Soviets left the Soviet Union dissolved, they were like Genghas Khan, Gigas Khan. Genghas Khan built a statue of him, they named him an airport after him, they put him on currency. So he's definitely revered over there. But I think that that um art that the author of the article. I think his name is Frank mclin almost positive. Yeah, it's great,

Frank mclin. Um he wrote this wonderful article called the Brutal Brilliance of Genghis Khan. But he he points out, like, whatever you think of the guy, even if he was the same as his contemporaries, and it still seems alien to you, Like, think about your own leaders. Your own leaders send people to to to die on the battlefield too, and they're revered as well, aren't not noble? Right? So the the the point is is, I guess, don't hate on Genghis Khan. Hate hate the game, not the player, right,

I guess. So, wow, boy, this guy took a deep left turned in it. Well it is interesting. Yeah, you can talk about this dude forever. Yeah. He also makes the point to that the Mongols were um what he called culturally unbalanced. So he's like, you know, at least the Europeans, while they were slaughtering and killing, we're giving us the divine comedy and Carmena Barana and these great cathedrals and operas, whereas the Mongols were just barbarian Raiders

and Butcher's all slaughter, no substance. That's a T shirt. Very famously too in the movies, Kingis Khan was played twice, once by John Wayne believe it or not, and The Conqueror and then Omar Sharif. Okay, so Egyptian. Also not close to Mongolean. Um. I don't know if it's better worse than John Wayne is probably the same. I think it's worse or no better better. Well now it'll be

Hugh Jackman. No, I think Holly would changed some what but like five years ago they would have been like, what about Jason Momoa, Matt Damono Manchu mustaches on him? But they just picked Momoa because like, he looks tough, who's he and he looks sort of ethnic. He's a guy that plays Aquaman and is on very versatile actect The Thrones probably but and I even looked up Mongolian American actors to see if there was anyone out there who they could tap into, and I don't think there

are a lot of them. Oh, probably have to be some some good unknown So speaking of looking like a Mongolian, Okay, got one last thing, where you done? I'm done. The Mongolians were really really good at propaganda. And one of the ways that they showed this was in Iran, in modern day Iran, the Coras chars um Man Empire, when they subjugated it. One of the things they did that say said, we are we don't have an alphabet, we don't write things down, but you guys do, and we

want to put that to good use. You have great artists. We want you to do a history of the Mongols. And the scribe said, sure, we'll do that, and we want you to do a history of the world. All the great leaders in the world, all the great civilizations in the world, we want you to do those. So they did. They built this, They wrote this huge compendium,

a universal history of the world. But the Mongols had them illustrate, like illuminate the text, and they had them whenever they drew a leader or a conqueror or an army, they drew them as Mongols. So they insinuated themselves into history as basically the the progenitors of all greatness, and thus justified the subjugation of this area um And they did it through propaganda. They had like all that like copied, you know, hand copied, and distributed it as widely as

they could. Wow, isn't that interesting? Yeah? There you go. That's it all right. If you want to know more about Mongolia or Genghis Khan or any of that stuff, you can type those words into the search bar how stuff works. Pick up a book you Denghis And since Chuck said that, it's time for listener ma'n Hey, guys, recently listen to the UM show about burying Ferraris. I want to share another cool story about an almost buried car.

Two thirteen, Brazilian billionaire Count chin Quing host Scarpa, made headlines when he announced he wanted to bury his five hundred thousand dollar Bentley like the Pharaohs did with their precious possessions, so he could supposedly right around the Afterlife and Style attracted tons of press and social media buzz, with many people outraged he would do something so selfish.

On the day of the burial, tons of Brazilian press and media crew show up to his house to see him Barry's Bentley, But moments before the cars lower in the ground, the count pulls a major plot twist and announces he won't be bearing the car, and he reveals true intention to create awareness uh for organ donation. Wow, because people are buried with something valuable, their organs and it was all a stunt and the use of social media and buzz marketing and create awareness for organ donation.

That is fantastic. Man, I want a cool guy. Really interesting anyway, guys, A big fan of your show, learned a lot from your stories over the years, so I wanted to take this chance to share this cool story with you. Uh. And that is from Kate Miller who was looking forward to more stories. Yeah, thanks a lot, Kate. I definitely had not heard about that. It's a good one. Um. If you want to let us know a cool story, we want to hear it. You can tweet to us.

I'm at josh um Clark and s Y s K podcast, Uh, Chuck's on Facebook dot com, Slash movie Crush and Slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant and slash Stuff you Should Know. You can end us all an email to stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and it's always choice at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com. M