August 10, 2024 • 49 mins
Depending on who you talk to, Genghis Khan was either a sadistic madman or one of the great leaders in world history. One thing is sure, he was one of the most advanced military minds of all time. Learn all about him in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
sitting across from me, it's Charles w. Chuckis Chinkis Bryant.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And sitting to your right is ghost producer Casper Nobody.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
It was Ramsey, guest producer Ramsey. We've got like all
these new guest producers coming on, hot and heavy.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Jerry, she had to leave today and I think everyone's busy,
and so someone came in.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
There's also a distinct lack of interest I picked up on.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Boy, remember the days when people used to jump at
a chance to sit in here.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Oh yeah, Now they're like I've got to mail something.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
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?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Are you being serious?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I know it's not Dingus, but I've also seen it
spelled in a way that would suggest you pronounced it Chingus.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Oh really, I think I have heard that, But we're.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Going to go with the unerual Genghis pronunciation.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Okay, right, although his uh what was his birth name?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Timujin h doesn't even Ging's kind isn't even his real name, everybody,
so calm down. It's temujin or temujin.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Man. Did you see that statue?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I've seen it before. Yes, it's enormous.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Have you seen in person?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
No, I've not yet been to Mongolia.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
It's something else, man, Well one day though.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
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
(02:46):
rinses clean really well.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Oh good, looks like.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
There's a lot of land around it.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, Mongolia has a lot of land, a lot of
undeveloped plan from what I understand.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
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
(03:42):
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
(04:03):
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
(04:25):
favor or against him. Well, my morality just switched off
there for a second.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So you got the pro G, the anti G, and
the ally G. Right, it's the third camp.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah I missed that. Oh it's good stuff, it is.
But they tried to bring it back, remember, and it
was like, oh.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Really, was there a part two two point zero?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
But they shot new hosting segments.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yes, that were like fifteen seconds long.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
How would you like to do the ALIG version of
sysk selects.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Ooh, yeah, all right, I'm not gonna examine that one
too closely.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
All right, so we're talking about Alig, I mean Genghis Khan.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, this is the reason we're still talking about him,
not just because he killed so many people.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Austria, he banged on the door of Austria. Yeah, his
son did.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
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
(06:22):
that in context, you know, the great Roman Empire that
was about half the size of the United States.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, the Roman Empire was half the size of the
United States.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It took them four hundred years to amass that. Yeah,
in twenty five years, Genghis Khan had an empire the
size of Africa.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
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.
(07:11):
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,
(07:34):
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
(07:56):
that America just didn't even know what to do and
was overrun by them.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
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
(08:38):
well along the Onon River near Ulla Batar, which is
a great name, but that's the capital of Mongolia.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
There's five a's in that. That's a lot of a
that's a lot of a's.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And this this kid this Temujin who would grow up
to be ginghis Khan was not Genghis khm material from
the outset.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
No, he was. Well, he was a middle brother, and
apparently both younger and older brother out shown him.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah, he was very much the jam Brady of his family.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Right right, But I mean, in his defense, neither were
most of the people he knew or sure lived on
the steps.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, it's not like his two brothers like got their doctorates.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Their PhDs and kicking butt.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
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
(09:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Lawless.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, pretty lawless.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
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
(10:31):
from another tribe and be like you're my wife.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Now that's how his mother came about, right.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, there's a lot of umlauts in there. I don't
know how the umlaut represents Mongolian dialect.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Well, we're going to do a German style. So her
name is Loon.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Is that pretty German merty crue?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
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
(11:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
So it was both.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
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?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah? Is it a family if mom's like looking for
an escape route, right the whole life?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Right? Yeah, either way, it was not like people recording
one another back then.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
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
(12:26):
two brothers.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Them, yeah, because that's kind of the way it usually went.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
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
(13:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
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
(13:38):
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
(13:59):
to think that there's some some kernel of truth or
just outright truth to most of it.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll take
a break and we'll talk about what young Timojin was like.
(14:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
And a little bit of moxie.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
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
(15:11):
to help him out.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, he really attracted people into his orbit from what
I understand. Yeah, he was like like Gilbert Godfrey.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
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
(15:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
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
(16:16):
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
(16:39):
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
(16:59):
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
(17:20):
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
(17:41):
he went on to be one of the best he
ever had.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
I think I was like, is he messing with me?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
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
(18:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Come here, come here, you thank you for your kingdom.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Although he isn't con at this point. Still.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
No, that didn't take place until I believe twelve six.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
So he was like, hey, that's fine.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
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
(19:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
That was a big move.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Well, one of the things they did is they renounced
these old rivalries.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, and like strengthen numbers. I think they realized this
could benefit us, all right, if we're one big, powerful group.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, which is peanuts.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
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?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
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
(20:57):
article you sent that one historian he was great.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I guess in battle you needed far fewer guys.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, and just get everyone up on a horse.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
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.
(21:42):
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
(22:04):
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
(22:25):
of time doing research and spying and really kind of
figuring out a game plan.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
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,
(22:56):
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
(23:16):
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
(23:39):
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.
(23:59):
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
(24:20):
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
(24:42):
sacrifice a single person.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
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,
(25:07):
he didn't need to. And then that also reduced the
chances of loss of life, I guess.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I saw that too.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
It ticked him off, especially for some reason.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Why would you do that?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
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.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Well supposedly, kid Cotton, Oh got you to them and
set them on fire.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Well that's much better, but I'm sure the fire spreads.
It does seem apocryphal.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, I don't know if I believe that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Apocryphal. By the way, I just learned in like the
last year or so means that word made up.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
You didn't know that's you never heard the word or no.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, the Coup de Grass. Yeah, yeah, the Final Blow.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Just learned that this week.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, I think I knew that. You know, A word
I used to always get wrong was dubious?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Did you think about pot?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I don't know. Yeah, can you score me some dubious?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
You remember that? Yeah, boy, they they just went away.
I haven't heard that name.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
And I think they had like one album and that
was it.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
What was their big hit?
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I don't remember, but but it had to do with pot.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Probably, so all right, So he's got Mongolia pretty well
taken care of it.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Wait, what did you think dubious meant? I made a
joke instead of letting your answer.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
No, I don't I don't remember what I thought it meant.
But I think I just used to get it wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We'll go back to Funk dvs.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
You look pretty pretty pretty.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Well, he's like all of them, let's just go one
at a time.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah, So that's what he did.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
That's exactly what he did.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah, the Kingdom of ji Jia is how I would
probably pronounce.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It, right, dixiea chang No, yeah, thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Jija, yeah, Jija and the Tanguts. And I think this
was sort of a test, his biggest test militarily at
the time.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah, and Genghis Khan said, as you wish, that's right,
isn't that what he said?
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I think?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So? Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Article, so he's working his way up here now.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And again appropriating weapons like crossbows, catapults, and because it's China,
early versions of explosives.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
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
(31:10):
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
(31:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, he's thinking, you're going to be my slave.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, but it did not work out that way.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
No, it didn't. He actually successfully defeated the most advanced,
wealthiest society on the planet at the time, the Jinns.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Yep slaughtered thousands and thousands of people.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
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
(32:37):
over I mean ten years, I think, less than ten years.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
So it's nuts man.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
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
(33:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
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
(33:52):
the most part. This is the area it covered, Iran
is what I see it mostly compared to these days.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
They were conquerors. That's it.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Yeah, And that's not like you got to diversify.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
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
(35:17):
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?
(35:39):
And we'll talk about that after this message. How about that?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
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?
Speaker 2 (36:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
That's what he did. I think they were the first
people he conquered, right, They were the Jija people.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Okay, the first people in China and when he went.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
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
(37:27):
his last act as a living person.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah. He was succeeded by one of his son, Ogadai.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Who took that stuff all the way to Europe.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
That's one. And then also they rode over his grave
with horses. I looked up. Do you ever grown Cora? Uh?
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Sure, every now and then.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
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?
Speaker 1 (38:52):
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?
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah, I think Korra is pretty good.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
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,
(39:21):
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
(39:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Interesting. Yeah, well, his legacy looms large still, not only
in his his lineage, from his loins.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
His overactive loin just leeching out goop.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
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
(40:40):
the yam Yeah, like a pony Express. Yeah, like what
different stations the pony Express, Yeah, like straight.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Up, but like six hundred years before the Pony Express.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
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
(41:10):
the Incas. Yeah, so they would learn from him and
then do that.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
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,
(41:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
It was just the number.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, he just did it better that to me though.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
It bugs me too. So we didn't come. We didn't
come across the way, did we.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Well, and there's a what one hundred and fifty foot
statue of him. Yeah, like he's still very much revered.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
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,
(43:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, they like took him out of history books.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
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
(43:42):
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
(44:04):
own leaders. Your own leaders send people to die on
the battlefield too, Yeah, if they're revered as.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Well, sure for causes that aren't not noble.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Well, it is interesting.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yeah, you can talk about this dude forever.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
All slaughter, no substance.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
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
(45:21):
don't know if it's better worse than John Wayne. It's
probably the same.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
I think it's worse or no better better.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Matt Damon two mustaches on him, But they.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
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
(46:01):
some good unknown So.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Speaking of looking like a Mongolian, Okay, got one last thing,
are you done?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
I'm done.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
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,
(46:32):
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
(46:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Interesting, So they insinuated themselves into history as basically the
progenitors of all greatness and thus justified the subjugation of
this area.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
And they did it through propaganda. They had like all
that like copied, you know, hand copied and distributed as
widely as they could.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (47:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
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
(48:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
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
(48:43):
for organ donation.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
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.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
That is fantastic. Man, what a cool guy.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Kate, I definitely had not heard
about that.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
It's a good one.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Com Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
sitting across from me, it's Charles w. Chuckis Chinkis Bryant.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And sitting to your right is ghost producer Casper Nobody.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
It was Ramsey, guest producer Ramsey. We've got like all
these new guest producers coming on, hot and heavy.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Jerry, she had to leave today and I think everyone's busy,
and so someone came in.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
There's also a distinct lack of interest I picked up on.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Boy, remember the days when people used to jump at
a chance to sit in here.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Oh yeah, Now they're like I've got to mail something.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
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?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Are you being serious?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I know it's not Dingus, but I've also seen it
spelled in a way that would suggest you pronounced it Chingus.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Oh really, I think I have heard that, But we're.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Going to go with the unerual Genghis pronunciation.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Okay, right, although his uh what was his birth name?
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Timujin h doesn't even Ging's kind isn't even his real name, everybody,
so calm down. It's temujin or temujin.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Man. Did you see that statue?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I've seen it before. Yes, it's enormous.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Have you seen in person?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
No, I've not yet been to Mongolia.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
It's something else, man, Well one day though.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
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
(02:46):
rinses clean really well.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Oh good, looks like.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
There's a lot of land around it.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, Mongolia has a lot of land, a lot of
undeveloped plan from what I understand.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
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
(03:42):
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
(04:03):
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
(04:25):
favor or against him. Well, my morality just switched off
there for a second.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So you got the pro G, the anti G, and
the ally G. Right, it's the third camp.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah I missed that. Oh it's good stuff, it is.
But they tried to bring it back, remember, and it
was like, oh.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Really, was there a part two two point zero?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
But they shot new hosting segments.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yes, that were like fifteen seconds long.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
How would you like to do the ALIG version of
sysk selects.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Ooh, yeah, all right, I'm not gonna examine that one
too closely.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
All right, so we're talking about Alig, I mean Genghis Khan.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, this is the reason we're still talking about him,
not just because he killed so many people.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Austria, he banged on the door of Austria. Yeah, his
son did.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
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
(06:22):
that in context, you know, the great Roman Empire that
was about half the size of the United States.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, the Roman Empire was half the size of the
United States.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It took them four hundred years to amass that. Yeah,
in twenty five years, Genghis Khan had an empire the
size of Africa.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
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.
(07:11):
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,
(07:34):
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
(07:56):
that America just didn't even know what to do and
was overrun by them.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
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
(08:38):
well along the Onon River near Ulla Batar, which is
a great name, but that's the capital of Mongolia.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
There's five a's in that. That's a lot of a
that's a lot of a's.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And this this kid this Temujin who would grow up
to be ginghis Khan was not Genghis khm material from
the outset.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
No, he was. Well, he was a middle brother, and
apparently both younger and older brother out shown him.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah, he was very much the jam Brady of his family.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Right right, But I mean, in his defense, neither were
most of the people he knew or sure lived on
the steps.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, it's not like his two brothers like got their doctorates.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Their PhDs and kicking butt.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
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
(09:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Lawless.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, pretty lawless.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
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
(10:31):
from another tribe and be like you're my wife.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Now that's how his mother came about, right.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, there's a lot of umlauts in there. I don't
know how the umlaut represents Mongolian dialect.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Well, we're going to do a German style. So her
name is Loon.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Is that pretty German merty crue?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
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
(11:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
So it was both.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
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?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah? Is it a family if mom's like looking for
an escape route, right the whole life?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Right? Yeah, either way, it was not like people recording
one another back then.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
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
(12:26):
two brothers.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Them, yeah, because that's kind of the way it usually went.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
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
(13:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
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
(13:38):
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
(13:59):
to think that there's some some kernel of truth or
just outright truth to most of it.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll take
a break and we'll talk about what young Timojin was like.
(14:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
And a little bit of moxie.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
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
(15:11):
to help him out.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, he really attracted people into his orbit from what
I understand. Yeah, he was like like Gilbert Godfrey.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
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
(15:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
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
(16:16):
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
(16:39):
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
(16:59):
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
(17:20):
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
(17:41):
he went on to be one of the best he
ever had.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
I think I was like, is he messing with me?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
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
(18:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Come here, come here, you thank you for your kingdom.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Although he isn't con at this point. Still.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
No, that didn't take place until I believe twelve six.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
So he was like, hey, that's fine.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
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
(19:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
That was a big move.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Well, one of the things they did is they renounced
these old rivalries.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, and like strengthen numbers. I think they realized this
could benefit us, all right, if we're one big, powerful group.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, which is peanuts.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
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?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
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
(20:57):
article you sent that one historian he was great.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
I guess in battle you needed far fewer guys.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, and just get everyone up on a horse.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
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.
(21:42):
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
(22:04):
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
(22:25):
of time doing research and spying and really kind of
figuring out a game plan.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
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,
(22:56):
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
(23:16):
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
(23:39):
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.
(23:59):
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
(24:20):
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
(24:42):
sacrifice a single person.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
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,
(25:07):
he didn't need to. And then that also reduced the
chances of loss of life, I guess.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I saw that too.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
It ticked him off, especially for some reason.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Why would you do that?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
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.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Well supposedly, kid Cotton, Oh got you to them and
set them on fire.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Well that's much better, but I'm sure the fire spreads.
It does seem apocryphal.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, I don't know if I believe that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Apocryphal. By the way, I just learned in like the
last year or so means that word made up.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
You didn't know that's you never heard the word or no.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
What's that?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, the Coup de Grass. Yeah, yeah, the Final Blow.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Just learned that this week.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, I think I knew that. You know, A word
I used to always get wrong was dubious?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Did you think about pot?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I don't know. Yeah, can you score me some dubious?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
You remember that? Yeah, boy, they they just went away.
I haven't heard that name.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
And I think they had like one album and that
was it.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
What was their big hit?
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I don't remember, but but it had to do with pot.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Probably, so all right, So he's got Mongolia pretty well
taken care of it.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Wait, what did you think dubious meant? I made a
joke instead of letting your answer.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
No, I don't I don't remember what I thought it meant.
But I think I just used to get it wrong.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We'll go back to Funk dvs.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
You look pretty pretty pretty.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Well, he's like all of them, let's just go one
at a time.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah, So that's what he did.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
That's exactly what he did.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah, the Kingdom of ji Jia is how I would
probably pronounce.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It, right, dixiea chang No, yeah, thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Jija, yeah, Jija and the Tanguts. And I think this
was sort of a test, his biggest test militarily at
the time.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah, and Genghis Khan said, as you wish, that's right,
isn't that what he said?
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I think?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So? Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Article, so he's working his way up here now.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And again appropriating weapons like crossbows, catapults, and because it's China,
early versions of explosives.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
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
(31:10):
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
(31:34):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, he's thinking, you're going to be my slave.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, but it did not work out that way.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
No, it didn't. He actually successfully defeated the most advanced,
wealthiest society on the planet at the time, the Jinns.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Yep slaughtered thousands and thousands of people.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
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
(32:37):
over I mean ten years, I think, less than ten years.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
So it's nuts man.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
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
(33:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
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
(33:52):
the most part. This is the area it covered, Iran
is what I see it mostly compared to these days.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
They were conquerors. That's it.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Yeah, And that's not like you got to diversify.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
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
(35:17):
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?
(35:39):
And we'll talk about that after this message. How about that?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
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?
Speaker 2 (36:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
That's what he did. I think they were the first
people he conquered, right, They were the Jija people.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Okay, the first people in China and when he went.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
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
(37:27):
his last act as a living person.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah. He was succeeded by one of his son, Ogadai.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Who took that stuff all the way to Europe.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
That's one. And then also they rode over his grave
with horses. I looked up. Do you ever grown Cora? Uh?
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Sure, every now and then.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
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?
Speaker 1 (38:52):
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?
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah, I think Korra is pretty good.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
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,
(39:21):
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
(39:43):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Interesting. Yeah, well, his legacy looms large still, not only
in his his lineage, from his loins.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
His overactive loin just leeching out goop.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
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
(40:40):
the yam Yeah, like a pony Express. Yeah, like what
different stations the pony Express, Yeah, like straight.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Up, but like six hundred years before the Pony Express.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
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
(41:10):
the Incas. Yeah, so they would learn from him and
then do that.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
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,
(41:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
It was just the number.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, he just did it better that to me though.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
It bugs me too. So we didn't come. We didn't
come across the way, did we.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Well, and there's a what one hundred and fifty foot
statue of him. Yeah, like he's still very much revered.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
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,
(43:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, they like took him out of history books.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
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
(43:42):
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
(44:04):
own leaders. Your own leaders send people to die on
the battlefield too, Yeah, if they're revered as.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Well, sure for causes that aren't not noble.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Well, it is interesting.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yeah, you can talk about this dude forever.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
All slaughter, no substance.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
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
(45:21):
don't know if it's better worse than John Wayne. It's
probably the same.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
I think it's worse or no better better.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
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.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Matt Damon two mustaches on him, But they.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
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
(46:01):
some good unknown So.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Speaking of looking like a Mongolian, Okay, got one last thing,
are you done?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
I'm done.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
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,
(46:32):
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
(46:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Interesting, So they insinuated themselves into history as basically the
progenitors of all greatness and thus justified the subjugation of
this area.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
And they did it through propaganda. They had like all
that like copied, you know, hand copied and distributed as
widely as they could.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (47:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
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
(48:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
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
(48:43):
for organ donation.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
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.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
That is fantastic. Man, what a cool guy.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Kate, I definitely had not heard
about that.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
It's a good one.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Com Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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