Hey, everybody, it's me Joshum. For this week's select, I've chosen our really great episode on Genghis Khan from back in June of twenty eighteen. He's maybe one of the more misunderstood characters in all of history. He's certainly one of the most significant. I mean, how many individuals can you trace a portion of the global population to? Not many, I can assure you anyway. I hope you like this episode. Enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and sitting across from me, it's Charles w. Chuckis Chinkis Bryant.
And sitting to your right is ghost producer Casper Nobody.
It was Ramsey, guest producer Ramsey. We've got like all these new guest producers coming on, hot and heavy.
Jerry, 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 picked up on.
Boy, remember the days when people used to jump at a chance to sit in here.
Oh yeah, Now they're like I've got to mail something.
I know. It used to be like, oh, my gosh, Jerry's gone, let me do it, let me do it. Then they grew up, Yeah, and then they grew up in Now we have our little uh dunking bird to peck the key, Yeah, the r record button.
Just going back and forth thinking about where its life went wrong. Just us, just Us, Chuck and a guy named ginghis Dingus Cohn, Do you pronounce it Dingis or ginghis or Chingis?
Are you being serious?
I know it's not Dingus, but I've also seen it spelled in a way that would suggest you pronounced it Chingus.
Oh really, I think I have heard that, But we're.
Going to go with the unerual Genghis pronunciation.
Okay, right, although his uh what was his birth name?
Timujin h doesn't even Ging's kind 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?
No, I've not yet been to Mongolia.
It's something else, man, Well one day though.
Yeah, I know it's it's the world's biggest equestrian statue, and with good reason. It's like forty meters or one hundred and thirty feet tall. Yeah, 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, sure, I almost didn't say old. And I think it's made of like two hundred and 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 plan 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 course. But yeah, there are definite camps for sure, Like like a lot of people i've seen him called the pro ginghist camp, the pro g Yeah, yeah, that they're they're all about like all the cultural transmission that happened under his his rule, yeah, or all of the all the new innovative laws or religious religious tolerance was another one. Yeah, and yes, you like all that stuff happened. It's not in dispute, Like there are a lot of
things that we'll talk about that were really positive. But he's also directly response for the deaths of about thirty five million people the antig over a twenty five 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. Well, my morality just switched off there for a second.
So you got the pro G, the anti G, and the ally G. Right, it's the third camp.
Yeah I missed that. Oh it's good stuff, it is. But they tried to bring it back, remember, and it was like, oh.
Really, was there a part two two point zero?
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 old stuff a 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, Sasha Barrit Cohen, how'd you like to make another x amount of dollars by showing up for a day.
How would you like to do the ALIG version of sysk selects.
Ooh, yeah, all right, I'm not gonna examine that one too closely.
All right, so we're talking about Alig, I mean Genghis Khan.
Right, yeah, and just some large statistics right off the bat as far as his his influence, well, not his influence, but his rule in sheer numbers.
Yeah, this is the reason we're still talking about him, not just because he killed so many people.
Yeah, agreed. 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. Yeah, his son did.
Just get out a 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. Yeah, in twenty five years, Genghis Khan had an empire the size of Africa.
Yeah. And then at the time, the population in the world was about seven billion people and 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 mongol were the Mongols, a bunch of nomadic tribes, tribes on the steps of Mongolia. China was a well established and fairly advanced patchwork of dynasties. You had like Europe growing in the they were in the Middle Ages, but they were like the Renaissance is coming not too long. You had the Native Americans over
in America doing their thing, Africa doing their thing. 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'd be like if Polynesia suddenly rose up and took over
the Americas 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 there 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 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 Temujin eleven sixty two, I'm sorry, and he was born in a place called well along the Onon River near Ulla Batar, which is a great name, but that's the capital of Mongolia.
There's five a's in that. That's a lot of a that's a lot of a's.
And this this kid this Temujin who would grow up to be ginghis Khan was not Genghis khm material from the outset.
No, he was. Well, he was a middle brother, and apparently both younger and older brother out shown him.
Yeah, he was very much the jam Brady of his family.
He was because apparently little brother was a much better athlete and a better you know, arrow shooter or I guess you would call them archers, kind of better at everything, and then his older brother picked on him. 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 sure lived on the steps.
Yeah, it's not like his two brothers like got their doctorates.
Their PhDs and kicking butt.
Well that's true, but he was there. 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. Yeah. If I want that tribe gone, I'm gonna go kill them. If I want those ladies and her children, I'm going to kidnap them, and that was just sort of how the land was ruled. Yeah, 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, 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, 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 wife.
Now that's how his mother came about, right.
Yes, that's how he came about. Well, his father kidnapped his mother. His father was the chief of his tribe. Oh what's his father's name? Ya Sugi nice? And Yesugi kidnapped hou Hulun.
Yeah, there's a lot of umlauts in there. I don't know how the umlaut represents Mongolian dialect.
Well, we're going to do a German style. So her name is Loon.
Is that pretty German merty crue?
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, I don't know, or is that just a ridiculous thing to even think? And like, yes, if you were kidnapped and taken 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.
So it was both.
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? Yeah, either way, it was not like people recording one another back then.
Right, So yes, Sugi right, that's what we decided on. Yes, Yes, Sugi was the chief, like I said, of the clan of the tribe, very powerful dude, and he was poison Actually he died by poisoning when Temujin was nine, and that was bad news for Timogen, 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 Yeah, they didn't want anybody being like, oh, by the way, I'm the rightful heir, right, 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 it usually went.
Yeah.
So, yeah, they were kicked out, So he had a rough childhood. They were not They had to scavenge for food. I reckon it toughened him up a little bit, but as our article points out, that it kind of gave him a will to and probably ticked 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 for sure. So he and his family make it so, not all of his family. There's a story called the Secret History of the Mongols, and it was written in about twelve forty, 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. We'll see eventually why, but 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 tails wrapped, for sure, 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 Timojin 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 to talk people into helping him out, and that became sort of a trade through his life. And they give a couple of examples. 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 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 a different what else. There was another time that he had a bride to be or maybe I think he was married 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.
Yes, he said, not only am I going to help you get your wife, You're going to go on to do great things and I want to be there with you. Love me. So there's just tons of stories like that, like early stories where like he was held prisoner by he was kidnapped himself and escape by beating the guy watching him with a wooden collar 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, sure, but eventually you probably right, yeahs. 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 to I guess productive use, and he assembles like his own tribe and other tribes.
He starts align with other tribes, and the tribes that don't go along with it, he slaughters in war, 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 going to 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 group won the battle, the Mongols won the battle, he wanted to know who shot that arrow, and the guy on the other side stood up and said it was me. And he said, you your name is Jebbe 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 he ever had.
I think I was like, is he messing with me?
Yeah, but 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 squad. 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. 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 Khan family.
Come here, come here, you thank you for your kingdom.
Although he isn't con at this point. Still.
No, that didn't take place until I believe twelve six.
Yeah, that's when they the Mongol tribes all got together. They had a great assembly called Kurilai, 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 you.
Right.
So he was like, hey, that's fine.
Yeah, so ginghis khan. They think the khan means ruler. Yeah, indisputably Genghis. They're not one hundred percent 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 to 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 wasn't Aquaman. 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. And all these old clans got together, people that were enemies 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. Yeah, and they started identifying not as these individual clans but as Mongols.
Yeah, and like strengthen numbers. I think they realized this could benefit us, all right, if we're one big, powerful group.
Right, But numbers is relative though, man like Sure, from what I saw at its peak, the army of Genghis Khan had about one hundred thousand men.
Yeah, which is peanuts.
It is pea nuts. So why were they Should we get into why they were successful yet or this? Yeah, okay, why were they successful?
Well? A few reasons. Probably one of the biggest is is these dudes could ride horses and shoot arrows like nobody's business. Yeah, they were incredible. They had an incredible cavalry. He was one of the first that whoever wrote that article you sent that one historian he was great.
Yeah.
So he pointed out that he 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.
Yep.
They were incredible archers. They could their accuracy was unmatched. They could fire an arrow apparently like over three hundred yards accurately. These horses were awesome. They were grass fed, they could live off the land. They had this armor that was really lightweight and flexible. So you know, at the time they were fighting people and 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 they hooked lance. And they're like a lance is all right, 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 land. It's a very simple feature and it really changed things. It was like a modern evolution and weaponry. So these are just a few of the reasons. One of one of the
others is tactics and strategy. 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 knew where the trade lot or the supply lines were, sure, escape routes, you know, all that kind of stuff, all the stuff you need to notice. Saca city one of the other things. So part one I saw it called a quantum leap in military strategy and technology. Yeah, okay, that was the first thing. The other thing is something
you touched on earlier. Or they're surrender a die policy. Right, So their military prowess combined with their tactics and 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 going to spare your life because you're now a Mongol.
You got to move to Mongolia, by the way. But they would just kill so many people that a lot of historians have tried to figure out why were they so ferocious, And there'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 I think is analogous to Vishnu maybe in Hinduism.
And this god supposedly gave him a vision that he should become conqueror of the world. And so some people have said, well, you know, if you opposed him, you were opposing as god, and so there was no room for that, and that's what made him so ferocious. Probably the best explanation though, is that if some if like one of their one 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 word 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 going to surrender. And so the Mongols didn't have to sacrifice a single person.
Yeah, and also get the idea. I mean, we're going to talk about his major 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, right, because they were so fierce and good at what they did, he didn't need to. And then that also reduced the chances of loss of life, I guess.
And then so the smallest units, those that one 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. Yeah, 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 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 was pretty clear in reading this, Genghis Khan did not like walls in walled cities.
I saw that too.
It ticked him off, especially for some reason.
Why would you do that?
No, so he you know, he got catapults and things like that, and he would you would do some awful things like with ladders and cattle bolts. He would fling diseased animals like that wasn't I don't know, he wasn't the only one to do that. But uh, some of this 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 their 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, kid Cotton, Oh got you to them and set them on fire.
Well that's much better, but I'm sure the fire spreads. It does seem apocryphal.
Yeah, I don't know if I believe that.
Apocryphal. By the way, I just learned in like the last year or so means that word made up.
You didn't know that's you never heard the word or no.
Plenty of times I just didn't realize. I always assumed it meant like biblical and end of time. Oh, interesting, because it's resemblance to apocalypse. I've got one more for you.
What's that?
I just this week learned what coude 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, right, because you just had your head cut off.
Yeah, the Coup de Grass. Yeah, yeah, the Final Blow.
Just learned that this week.
Yeah, I think I knew that. You know, A 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. Yeah, I remember they were great. They were they All they want to do is have fun in the midst of like the whole gangster at Funks.
You remember that? Yeah, boy, they they just went away. I haven't heard that name.
And I think they had like one album and that was it.
What was their big hit?
I don't remember, but but it had to do with pot.
Probably, so all right, So he's got Mongolia pretty well taken care of it.
Wait, what did you think dubious meant? I made a 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 dvs.
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.
You look 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 nutso thing to say at that time. Sure, especially 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.
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 ten Goods.
Yeah, the Kingdom of ji Jia is how I would probably pronounce.
It, right, dixiea chang No, yeah, thinking about that.
Jija, yeah, Jija and the Tanguts. And 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 to consolidate them and killing off the resistors. They didn't have cities. The Tangats 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 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, right, because I've heard you get around.
Yeah, and Genghis Khan said, as you wish, that's right, isn't that what he said?
I think?
So? Okay.
So the next he said, all right, how about this other region, the Chin Kingdom, And he faced a seventy 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 it happened in twenty thirteen, so I'll bet the Chins were quite surprised to see Genghis Khan show up five years ago.
Yeah. I wonder why. I mean, it says that he came back and got a bunch of silk and gold and got a bunch of engineers. I wonder if that was the purpose of that mission. Maybe it 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. It was that he wanted some more silk and gold.
And again appropriating weapons like crossbows, catapults, and because it's China, early versions of explosives.
Right, And so he's using all this stuff. He's not married to just the hook poll in, just the saber. He'll try out anything he sees works, right. Yeah, So he's knocked out the first two dynasties, he's brought them under him control. He now controls a significant portion of China, all of the steps around Mongolia. Yeah, and he's got his sets, his sights set on the biggest one of the three, the Jin dynasty. Yes, and he 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, maybe. Ginghis Khan is a backwoods redneck horse rider who just happened to get lucky a couple of times, caught the other two dynasties slippin'. That's what the emperor of the of the Jin dynasty is thinking.
Yeah, he's thinking, you're going to be my slave.
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 here here's the princess bride. I hear you like him.
Yeah, 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 Jinns.
Yep slaughtered thousands and thousands of people.
Well that's how you do it, I guess. And these three campaigns, 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 ginghis Khan's rule through war and conquest happened during these three China campaigns. 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 Muhammad 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 going to be fine. I'm not sweating this guy, right, And he burned the city down Genghis Khan did and including a thousand of the soldiers who were in a mosque hiding out, killed about
one hundred thousand people. But of course, like you said earlier, he spared the skilled craftsmen and workers, right.
And this is the Karsam Quaras and didn't even practiced this one, the Karism quarism. I think so empire, which 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 it's basically sort of due to the fact that there was he went too far, there were too many people, too much land. 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, right, 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, they didn't do anything. They just conquered people and took over your land and then leeched off of you.
Yeah, which is a good skill 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 of recognized this. At some point. I saw that he had basically a chain range 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 hasn't
been united since, even under Soviet Soviet rule. The Genghis Khans Empire was bigger than that, right, 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. How about that?
Yes?
Okay, chuck, So Genghis Khan has conquered your Asia and said what now? What now Eurasia? What do you guys want to do now? I'm done with killing? Not really?
Well he died, yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah, And this is no one knows quite how he died. Still. Some people say he had a fall from a horse and was injured eventually died. Other people said it might 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 well, infection, I would die from pain. Yeah.
It's interesting though. In August of twelve, twenty seven, when he was on his deathbed, like one of the last things he did was say, you remember the Tanguts, go kill all of them.
That's what he did. I think they were the first people he conquered, right, They were the Jija people.
Okay, the first people in China and when he went.
To go go attack the kar Zem Empire. Yeah, he demanded that they send some troops as reinforcement, and they said no. He defeated the Koora Zem and turned around and went right over to Jija and was like, you guys are your toast. You're in trouble. And that was his last act as a living person.
Yeah. He was succeeded by one of his son, Ogadai.
Who took that stuff all the way to Europe.
Oh. Yeah, he hit 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 hundred men, something like.
Zero point five percent 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.
That's one. And then also they rode over his grave with horses. I looked up. Do you ever grown Cora? Uh?
Sure, every now 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 multiply and frequently it's most of the people. 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 I agree though, it's not like the old days of what was the Terrible one years and years ago, where you would ask a question, yeah, who questions? Yeah, probably are you out here?
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 Korra is pretty good.
Actually, so I want to encore this one's you can't really look up. But this one guy two people like. The question was why was ginghis Khan buried in secret? I think? And two people said they didn't want his grave robbed. Sense They wanted to make sure that the transfer of power to his son was complete, so they had to keep his death of secret. That makes sense, YadA ya da. This one guy said, don't be idiots. He was a little arrogant, but he said, like, don't
be idiots. Ginghis Khan was a 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 those before, where they just left him on the mountain side for the vultures to pick over. They it wouldn't have buried him with grave 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 the hidden grave is just, you know, just more lore about Genghis Khan and off the mark.
Interesting. Yeah, well, his legacy looms large still, not only in his his lineage, from his loins.
His overactive loin just leeching out goop.
But depending on who you're talking to, well, he definitely did some things. He opened up trade right the west, got things like noodles and tea and playing cards. He perhaps founded the very first version of what would later be a post office, which is what was it called the yam Yeah, like a pony Express. Yeah, like what different stations the pony Express, Yeah, like straight.
Up, but like six hundred 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, Yeah, which is sort of interesting because you can sort of draw a line back to his tactics that eventually would become the Crusades or the slaughtering of the Aztecs and the Incas. Yeah, so they would learn from him and then do that.
Right, because it was more of that cultural conveyor belt. Right. So they say that he conquered the Karzam Empire, came in contact with Islam, and taught them ferocity, which the Europeans learned during the Crusade, and they took that ferocity back to Europe and then eventually to the New World, which they used on the Native Americans they found there. And somebody said, no, the Europeans were already well versed in ferocity and brutality and warfare. They didn't need to
learn it from Gingis Khan. That doesn't mean that's wrong, right, But it's the suggestion that the Europeans were naive to brutality and warfare is incorrect.
Well, it's complete bs And the author of that article also so makes a good point, and like you can't you can't look and judge him by today's lens. He wasn't any more brutal than anyone else back then.
It was just the number.
Yeah, he just did it better that to me though.
So I guess then maybe my problem is is like celebrating people who've killed tons of people. Yeah, like that's what I have a problem at at base sure, because it's a great man, great man history. Yeah, it bugs me.
It bugs me too. So 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 little flame burning.
Well, and there's a what one hundred and fifty foot statue of him. Yeah, like he's still very much revered.
Well, let's talk about it that there. 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 Mongolia, he is known as the founder of Mongolia. Yeah, the great basically the great, the greatest leader Mongolia has ever known, and possibly the world if you're a Mongolian. And during that during the Soviet occupation of Mongolia, you were not allowed to talk about him.
Yeah, they like 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 Ginghis Khan, Gigis Khan, ginghis Khan. Yeah, they built a statue of him, they named an airport after him, they put him on currency. So he's definitely revered over there. But I think that the art that the author of the article, I think his name is Frank mclinn almost positive Ale, Yeah, it's great. Frank mclinn. He wrote this
wonderful article called the Brutal Brilliance of Ginghis Khan. But he points out, like, whatever you think of the guy, even if he was the same his contemporaries, and it still seems alien to you. Yeah, Like think about your own leaders. Your own leaders send people to die on the battlefield too, Yeah, if they're revered as.
Well, sure for causes that aren't not noble.
Right. So the the the point is is, I guess, don't hate on Genghis Khan, hate the game, not the player, right, I guess. So, wow, boy, this guy took a deep left turn, didn't it.
Well, it is interesting.
Yeah, you can talk about this dude forever.
Yeah. He also makes the point too that the Mongols were what he called culturally unbalanced. So he's like, you know, at least the Europeans, while they were slaughtering and killing, were giving us the divine comedy and Carmena Barana and these great cathedrals and operas, whereas the Mongols were just barbarian raiders and butchers.
All slaughter, no substance.
That's a T shirt. Yeah, very famous. In the movies, Kingis Khan was played twice, once by John Wayne believe it or not, in the Conqueror, and then Omar Shariff. Okay, he said Egyptian also not close to Mongolian. Right, I don't know if it's better worse than John Wayne. It's probably the same.
I think it's worse or no better better.
Well, now it'll be Hugh Jackman. Now. I think hollywoods changed somewhat, But like five years ago they would have been like, what about Jason Momoa.
Matt Damon two 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 a very versatile of thrones. Probably, but and I even looked up Mongolian American actors to see if there was anyone out there, uh huh who they could tap into. And I don't think there are a lot of them. Oh, okay, probably have to be some good unknown So.
Speaking of looking like a Mongolian, Okay, got one last thing, are 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 koorism Man Empire, when they subjugated it. One of the things they did that they 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.
Oh.
Interesting, So they insinuated themselves into history as basically the progenitors of all greatness and thus justified the subjugation of this area.
Wow.
And they did it through propaganda. They had like all that like copied, you know, hand copied and distributed 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.
House stuff works, pick up a book, you dingus. And since Chuck said that, it's time for listener man, Hey, guys, recently listened to the show about bearing Ferraris one share
a cool story about an almost buried car. In twenty thirteen, Brazilian billionaire Count Chinquing host Scarfa made headlines when he announced he wanted to bury his five hundred thousand dollars Bentley like the Pharaohs did with their precious possessions, so he could supposedly ride 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 buries Bentley, But moments before the car is lowered in the ground, the count pulls a major plot twist and announces he won't be bearing the car and he reveals cheue intention to create awareness for organ donation.
Wow.
Because people are buried with something valuable, they're organs and it was all a stunt and a use of social media and buzz marketing and create awareness for organ donation.
That is fantastic. Man, what a cool guy.
Really interesting anyway, guys, A big fan of your show, learned a lot from your stories over the years. I want to take this chance to share this cool story with you. And that is from Kate Miller, who's looking forward to more stories.
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Kate, I definitely had not heard about that.
It's a good one.
If you want to let us know a cool story, we want to hear it. You can send us all an email to Stuff Podcasts at Houstuffworks dot com and has always joice at our home on the web. Stuff Youshould Know dot.
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