Selects: Genghis Khan: Madman or Genius?
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Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's Select I've chosen our really great episode on Genghis Khan from back in June of 2018. He's maybe one of the more misunderstood characters in all of history. He's certainly one of the most significant. I mean, how many individuals can you trace a portion of the global population to? Not many, I can assure you. Anyway, I hope you like this episode. Enjoy!

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and sitting across from me is Charles W. Chuckus, Chinkus, Brian. And sitting to your right is ghost producer... Casper. Nobody. It was Ramsey, guest producer Ramsey. We've got like all these new guest producers coming on, hot and heavy. I know, Jerry had to leave today, and...

I think everyone's busy. And so someone came in. There's also a distinct lack of interest I've picked up on. Boy, remember the days when people used to jump at a chance to sit in here? Oh, yeah. Now they're like, oh, I've got to mail something. I know. Used to be like, oh, my gosh. Jerry's gone. Let me do it. Let me do it. And they grew up. Yeah. And then they grew up in –

Now we have our little dunking bird to peck the key. Yeah. The R record button. Yeah. Just going back and forth thinking about where its life went wrong. Just us. Just us, Chuck, and a guy named Genghis, Genghis Khan. Do you pronounce it Dingus or Genghis or Chingus?

Are you being serious? I know it's not dingus, but I've also seen it spelled in a way that would suggest you see... It's gingus, you dingus. You pronounce it chingus. Oh, really? I think I have heard that. But we're going to go with the general gingus pronunciation, okay? Right. Although his, what was his birth name? Timu Jin. Mm-hmm.

Doesn't even... Genghis Khan isn't even his real name, everybody, so calm down. It's Temujin. Or Temujin. Man, did you see that statue?

I've seen it before, yes. It's enormous. Have you seen it in person? No. I've not yet been to Mongolia. That's something else, man. I will one day, though. Yeah, I know. It's the world's biggest equestrian statue. And with good reason. It's like 40 meters or 130 feet tall. Yeah. That's an enormous statue. It's pretty impressive. 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 250 tons of stainless steel.

Which means it rinses clean really well. And it looks like, I saw the wide shot, it doesn't look like one of those that's, you know, surrounded by Burger Kings. Oh, good. Looks like there's a lot of land around it. Well, Mongolia has a lot of land, a lot of undeveloped land from what I understand. Yeah, this was an interesting one because depending on what kind of historian you are, he is either a revered mastermind or a scorned,

Butcher? Butcher, yeah. I know. He's actually, I think, both. Well, of course he was both. But yeah, there are definite camps for sure. Like a lot of people, I've seen them called the pro-Genghis camp. Mm-hmm.

The pro-G? Yeah. That they're all about like all the cultural transmission that happened under his rule. Yeah. Or all of the new innovative laws or religious tolerance was another one. Yeah. And yes, 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 about

But he's also directly responsible for the deaths of about 35 million people. Yeah, the anti-G. Over a 25-year period. That's a ridiculous amount of death of people who had Genghis Khan not been born and decided to –

lead a conquest yeah would probably otherwise not have died violently that's a big mark in his favor or against him well my morality just switched off there for a second so you got the pro g the anti-g yeah and the alley g right that's the third camp yeah the booyaka i missed that oh

It's good stuff. It is. But they tried to bring it back, remember? Oh, really? Was there a part two? No. Or a 2.0? That's the problem. They didn't do new stuff. It was just him introducing old stuff. And it was like, we want more new stuff. We've all seen this old stuff a bunch. It was like for a month on FX. But they shot new hosting segments? Yes, that were like 15 seconds long. So basically they said, hey, Sacha Baron Cohen, how would you like to make another X amount of dollars? Right.

By showing up for a day. How would you like to do the Ali G version of SYSK Selects? Ooh. Yeah. All right. I'm not going to examine that one too closely. All right. So we're talking about Ali G. I mean, Genghis Khan, right? Yeah. And just some large statistics right off the bat as far as his –

His influence, well, not his influence, but his rule in sheer numbers. Yeah, this is the reason we're still talking about him, not just because he killed so many people.

Yeah, agreed. By the time, you know, of course everyone knows he was a great conqueror who just kept branching out further and further. And this is how far he reached. Eventually, in modern day terms, he would reach Austria. Austria. He banged on the door of Austria. His son did. Just get out a world map and look at where Mongolia is. So Austria, Finland, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Vietnam, Burma, Japan, and Indonesia. Yeah.

12 million contiguous square miles. Which is the size of? Africa. Again? Amazing. Yeah. And then to put that in context, you know, the great Roman Empire, that was about half the size of the United States.

Yeah, the Roman Empire was half the size of the United States. Yeah. It took them 400 years to amass that. Yeah. In 25 years, Genghis Khan had an empire the size of Africa. Yeah, and then at the time, the population of the world was about 7 billion people. The Mongolian Empire was about 3 billion of that. So it's just astounding. It is astounding. And to put it in like true cultural or true historic context –

At the time, in say like the early, early 13th century, the Mongols were the Mongols, a bunch of nomadic tribes on the steppes of Mongolia. China was a well-established and fairly advanced patchwork of dynasties. You had like Europe growing in the – they were in the Middle Ages, but they were like the Renaissance is coming not too long. Yeah.

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 into agriculture take over Eurasia. Yeah. In 25 years. Yeah. Out of nowhere and kill 35 million people. Yeah. Out of nowhere. It'd be like if...

If Polynesia suddenly rose up and took over the Americas in 25 years, they just assembled and said, we're taking over. And they were just so ferocious that America just didn't even know what to do and was overrun by them. Yeah. And their rule was not long lasting for a lot of the reasons that – there's a lot of ironies. A lot of the reasons that they were able to spread so fast ended up being their undoing. But –

This is all just set up fodder. Yeah. We haven't even gotten into it yet. So let's do start, okay? Back in – people think the best guess is probably I think 1185 I saw. There was a kid named Temujin, 1162, I'm sorry. And he was born in a place called – well, along the Onan River.

near Ulabatar, which is a great name, but that's the capital of Mongolia. There's five A's in that. That's a lot of A's. That's a lot of A's. And this kid, this Temujin, who would grow up to be Genghis Khan, was not Genghis Khan material from the outset. No, he was...

Well, he was a middle brother, and apparently both younger and older brother outshone him. Yeah, he was very much the Jam Brady of his family. He was, because apparently little brother was a much better athlete and a better, you know, arrow shooter, or I guess you would call them archers. Kind of better at everything, and then his older brother picked on him.

He was not – he was illiterate. He wasn't like formally schooled or super smart. Right, right. But I mean in his defense, neither were most of the people he knew or lived on the steps. Yeah, it's not like his two brothers like got their doctorates, their PhDs. And kicking butt. Well, that's true. But he was – I mean reading – I wish I knew more about 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 going to go take it. Yeah. If I want that tribe gone, I'm going to go kill them. If I want those ladies and their children, I'm going to kidnap them. And that was just sort of how the land was ruled. Yeah. It was kind of not chaos, but...

brute force. Lawless. Yeah, pretty lawless. And you were loyal to your tribe or your clan and your tribe or clan was nomadic and you lived by the horse and yeah, there was a lot of war between these tribes on the steppes. Yeah, tiny wars. Like you said, kidnapping. Like you would kidnap your wife. That's how you got your wife was you'd go kidnap her from another tribe and be like, you're my wife now. That's how his

His mother came about, right? Yes, that's how he came about. His father kidnapped his mother. His father was the chief of his tribe. Oh, what's his father's name? Yasugi. Nice. And Yasugi kidnapped Hulun. Yeah, there's a lot of umlauts in there. I don't know how the umlaut...

represents Mongolian dialect. Well, we're going to do it German style. So her name is Hu Lun. Is that pretty German? Mertli Kru. 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 18 now or something. Like, this is just a normal course of events for her, so it didn't impact her? I don't know. Or...

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

recourse or say in anything at the time. So it was both. But, like, I think I know what you're saying, though. Like, you know, she had these children and they were, quote, family. But what does, you know, what does that mean in that context? Yeah, is it a family if mom's, like, looking for an escape route for the whole life? Right. Yeah. Either way, it was not like people were courting one another back then. Right. So Yasugi...

Right? That's what we decided on? Yes. Yasugi was the chief, like I said, of the clan, of the tribe. A very powerful dude. And he was poisoned, actually. He died by poisoning when Temujin was nine. And that was bad news for Temujin, his mom, and his two brothers. Yeah, they were just sort of kicked out of this new tribe. And I'm not sure why. I guess because he was the son of...

Yeah. They didn't want anybody being like, oh, by the way, I'm the rightful heir. I should really be the chief of this tribe. I'm very surprised that they didn't just kill all of them. Yeah, because that's kind of the way it usually went. So, yeah, they were kicked out. So he had a rough childhood. They had to scavenge for food. I reckon it toughened them up a little bit. But as our article points out that –

He kind of gave him a will to – and probably ticked him off. So he had anger and will. Vengeance. And vengeance all rolled up into one, which says a lot about like the man that he would become, I think. For sure. So –

He and his family make it. Not all of his family. There's a story called The Secret History of the Mongols. And it was written in about 1240, 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 biography of Genghis Khan. They know a lot. A lot, because somebody sat down and wrote this. And we'll see eventually why. But the...

That's where we're getting all of this information, which is also why if you listen to the history of Genghis Khan, a lot of it sounds like a string of fables and tales wrapped together. But historians tend to think that there's some kernel of truth or just outright truth to most of it. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk about what young Temujin was like. ♪ music playing ♪

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All right, so we said that he was a bit of a crybaby, got picked on, wasn't very athletic or strong. But he had charm. He had chutzpah. He had charisma. And a little bit of moxie. Definitely, you've got to 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 trait through his life. Right. 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 guy to not only give him a horse but to help him out. Yeah, he really attracted people into his orbit from what I understand. Yeah, he was like – Like Gilbert Gottfried. It's funny because I knew I was trying to think of someone legitimately and I knew that you were headed down a different path. Did you know the opposite of that? Yeah.

What else? There was another time that he had a bride-to-be, or maybe I think he was married. Yeah, I think that's the case. And she was kidnapped because that's how it went. And so he went to the leader of another tribe and said, hey, take this sable skin. It was one of my wedding gifts. He goes, oh, nice. 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, I guess. Yeah. 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 he was held prisoner by... He was kidnapped himself and escaped by beating the guy watching him with a wooden collar that he had fastened around his neck. There's just tons of stories like that. If you put it together, you can kind of see this guy develop over time, right? Sure. But eventually... He probably hit the weights eventually. Right, yeah. 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 charisma and that vengeance to...

I guess, productive use. And he assembles like his own tribe and other tribes. He starts allying with other tribes. And the tribes that don't go along with it, he slaughters in war. And he would... He was known for having like an eye for other talent, which would aid him tremendously throughout his years as a conqueror. But...

For example, if you were a good enemy soldier and he noted that in battle, there was a good chance that you were going to end up a field commander on his side after the battle was over and he beat your guys. And there's actually a story where his horse was shot out from under him. And after his group won the battle, the Mongols won the battle, he...

And 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 Jebe now, which means arrow. And you're going to become a field commander for me. And he went on to be one of the best he ever had. And the guy was like, is he messing with me? Right. Am I about to get my head chopped off? Yeah.

But that was pretty par for the course with him. And so through these actions, he started assembling like an army and became the leader of the steps. Yeah, and people, like you said, if they challenged him, they were squashed. 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 want to say he was kind to them, but I think he kind of wanted his subjects to be happy and productive. Right. So if they didn't fight him, he was like, all right, you're part of the big extended Khan family. Come here. Come here, you. Thank you for your kingdom. Although he isn't Khan at this point still. No, that didn't take place until I believe 1206. Yeah, that's when the Mongol tribes all got together. They had a great assembly called...

uh, Curalei. And they said, you know what? You're the man. You're Genghis Khan now. We are all on your team because quite frankly, we're scared of you. Right. We're scared. We're so scared. So he was like, Hey, that's fine. Yeah. So Genghis Khan, they think Khan means ruler. Yeah. Indisputably. Genghis, they're not a hundred percent sure what they meant by it because it can mean ocean or just sea.

So they think they were saying like supreme, like the leader all the way to the ocean. Sure. And then you run into Triton. You don't want to mess with him. Right. But up to Triton's area, this guy is the leader. So that's what they meant by like ocean leader. Right.

He wasn't Aquaman. No. So they're unified now, and he said, I have to assemble a nation here. I've got all these tribes. I want a unified people. Yeah, that was a big move. It was, and it was a smart move.

And all these old clans got together, people that were enemies joined forces. I don't know if they became best buds or anything. Well, one of the things they did is they renounced these old rivalries. Yeah. They stopped warring with each other. They stopped robbing one another. Yeah. And they started identifying not as these individual clans but as Mongols. Yeah, and like strengthened numbers. I think they realized –

This could benefit us all if we're one big powerful group. Right, but numbers is relative though, man. Sure. From what I saw at its peak, the army of Genghis Khan had about 100,000 men. Yeah, which is peanuts. It is peanuts. So why were they – should we get into why they were successful yet? Yeah. Okay. So why were they successful? Well –

A few reasons. Probably one of the biggest is these dudes could ride horses and shoot arrows like nobody's business. Yeah. They were incredible. They had an incredible cavalry. He was one of the first that whoever wrote that article you sent, that one historian, he was great. So he pointed out that he –

He realized that the cavalry didn't need to be followed by an infantry, which was a huge advantage, I guess, in battle. You needed far fewer guys. Yeah, and just get everyone up on a horse. They were incredible archers. Their accuracy was unmatched. They could fire an arrow apparently like over 300 yards accurately. Mm-hmm.

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 at the time, they were fighting people in much heavily armored apparel, so they could move around better on their horses. They were firing arrows, and they had these little short swords, and they had this thing called a hooked lance. And they were 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 lance, a very simple feature. Right. And it really changed things. It was like a modern evolution in weaponry. Right. So these are just a few of the reasons. One of the others is...

tactics and strategy. Yeah. He would scout out before battles for weeks sometimes. He wouldn't just go as, like, as brutish as they were. They would spend a lot of time doing research and spying. Yeah. And really kind of figuring out a game plan. Like, if they were going to sack a city, like, they knew where the supply lines were. Sure. Escape routes, you know, all that kind of stuff. All the stuff you need to know to sack a city. Yeah. Yeah.

One of the other things – so part one, I saw it called the quantum leap in military strategy and technology. Yeah. Okay? Yeah.

That was the first thing. The other thing is something you touched on earlier. There's surrender or die policy. Yeah. 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 going to kill everybody.

Mm-hmm. Just about everybody. They were actually pretty smart about it, too. They'd find, like, the skilled craftsmen in some cities and be like... We're going to spare your life because you're now a Mongol. Yeah. 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 have actually been a number of theories that have been put up. One is so apparently – so Genghis Khan was a – he was into shamanism. That was his religion. But he was like fervently religious about shamanism. And there was like a great god of the sky who I think is –

to Vishnu maybe in Hinduism. And this god supposedly gave him a vision that he should become conqueror of the world. And so some people have said, well, if you opposed him, you were opposing his god and so there was no room for that. And that's what made him so ferocious. Probably the best explanation though is that if one of their 100,000 horsemen died, they

That was a big deal, right? Yeah. So to save their numbers, they were better off not fighting. So by slaughtering an entire city, that word about that gets around the area. So when those guys show up to your city, there's a pretty good chance that if they say surrender or die, you're going to surrender. And so the Mongols didn't have to sacrifice a single person. Yeah, and also get the idea. I mean, we're going to talk about his major sieges later.

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 as small amount of people as possible. Right. Because they were so fierce. Yeah.

and good at what they did, he didn't need to, and then that also reduced the chances of loss of life, I guess. And then, so the smallest units, that 100,000-man army, boiled down to units as small as 10 people. Yeah. That was the individual unit, was a 10-person cavalry group. Yeah. And, yeah, you could just say send five groups in or 1,000 groups in or whatever. Yeah. There you go. And he would also...

He would also, as he went, he would pick up whatever weaponry and tactics that other armies used and

and use those because one thing that was pretty clear in reading this, Genghis Khan did not like walls in walled cities. I saw that too. It ticked him off, especially for some reason. Why would you do that? No. So he got catapults and things like that, and he would do some awful things like with ladders and catapults. He would fling diseased animals. I don't know he wasn't the only one to do that. But –

Some of this seems like lore, though, the thing with the cats and the birds. Yeah, he told one city that he'd spare them if they gave him 1,000 cats and 10,000 birds. Yeah.

And they gathered up their 10,000 birds, which I guess they had, and 1,000 cats and gave them to him. And then he set the cats and the birds on fire and flung them over the walls to start fires in the city. Well, supposedly tied cotton to them and set that on fire. Oh, well, that's much better. But I'm sure the fire spreads. It does seem apocryphal. Yeah, I don't know if I believe that. Apocryphal, by the way, I just learned in like the last year or so means made up. That word?

you didn't know that's you never heard the word or no i've heard it plenty of times i just didn't realize i always assumed it meant like biblical and end of time oh interesting because it's resemblance to apocalypse

I've got one more for you. What's that? I just this week learned what coup de grace actually means. I thought it meant like the cream of the crop, the ultimate. It's the death blow. Like there's nothing after it, not because it's the best. Right. Because you just had your head cut off. Yeah, the coup de grace. Yeah. Yeah, the final blow. Just learned that this week. Yeah, I think I knew that. You know a word I used to always get wrong was dubious.

Did you think it meant pot? I don't know. Yeah. Can you score me some dubious? Did you ever listen to Funk Dubious? They were like this rap group from the 90s. Yeah, I remember Funk Dubious. They were great. All they wanted to do was have fun in the midst of like the whole gangster rap thing. Funk Dubious. Funk Dubious. I totally remember that. Boy, they just went away. I haven't heard that name in... I think they had like one album and that was it. What was their big hit?

I don't even remember, but I'll bet it had to do with pot. Probably so. All right. So he's got Mongolia pretty well taken care of at this point. What did you think dubious meant? I made a joke instead of letting you answer. No, I don't remember what I thought it meant, but I think I just used to get it wrong. We'll go back to funk dubious.

So he's got Mongolia pretty well under control. And he is insatiable, though, Genghis Khan is. He starts looking around, and he's like, China is big. You look pretty pretty. And I think even though they are wealthy and tough and have a lot of dudes –

I think I can take them because I'm Genghis Khan. Which is a nutso thing to say at that time. Sure. Especially depending on which of the dynasties in China you were talking about because I think there were at least three major ones. Well, he's like, all of them. Let's just go one at a time. Yeah. So that's what he did. Yeah, that's exactly what he did. He started with the – I'm sorry, everybody. I'm having trouble keeping up with all of the names. But the Tenguts? Yeah.

Yeah, the kingdom of Zizia is how I would probably pronounce it. Not Dixie Chang. No. Yeah, I forgot about that. Zizia. Yeah, Zizia and the Tanguts. And I think this was sort of a test –

His biggest test militarily at the time. Yeah, it was... He'd been fighting other tribes on the steppes to consolidate them and killing off the resistors. They didn't have cities. The Tenguts were the first ones that he encountered that had, like, cities with walls that were fortified that he needed to figure out how to lay siege to. Yeah, and he did to the point where the king finally said...

All right, you are my master, here are my troops, and here's a princess bride as well. Right. Because I've heard you get around. Yeah. And Genghis Khan said, as you wish. That's right. Isn't that what he said? I think so. Okay. So then next he said, all right, how about this other region, the Qin Kingdom?

And he faced a 70,000-man army, and it said virtually wiped it out in this article. So he's working his way up here now. Yeah. So he actually hit the chins twice from what I understand. And this HowStuffWorks article says it happened in 2013. So I'll bet the chins were quite surprised to see Genghis Khan show up five years ago. Yeah, I wonder why. I mean, it says he came back and got a bunch of silk and gold and got a bunch of engineers. I wonder if that was the...

the purpose of that mission. Maybe. Was like, hey, I don't think we properly raided them. Yeah, because this was two years after the first one. I guess that's all it was, that he wanted some more silk and gold. And, again, appropriating weapons like crossbows, catapults, and...

Because it's China, early versions of explosives. Right. And so he's using all this stuff. He's not married to just the hook, pole, and 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 his control. He now...

controls a significant portion of China, all of the steppes around Mongolia. And he's got his sights set on the biggest one of the three, the Jin Dynasty. Yes. And he actually got in contact with them or else they got in contact with him first, but the emperor of the Jin Dynasty. This is an advanced civilization at this point.

Very wealthy. Maybe the most advanced and wealthy civilization on the planet at the time. Maybe. Genghis Khan is a backwoods redneck horse rider who just happened to get lucky a couple of times. Caught the other two dynasties slipping. Well, sure. That's what the emperor of the Jin Dynasty is thinking. Yeah, he's thinking, you're going to be my slave. Yeah, he's like, you've done pretty good, kid.

I'll tell you what. I'll let you look over my land in the south. You'll be my vassal. And here's a princess bride. I hear you like them. Yeah, but it did not work out that way. No, it didn't. He actually successfully defeated the most advanced vassal

wealthiest society on the planet at the time, the Jinns. Yep, slaughtered thousands and thousands of people. Well, that's how you do it, I guess. And these three campaigns, these are huge, enormous campaigns. China was extremely populous at the time, and the number of people who died, most of the people who died under Genghis Khan's rule through war and conquest happened during these three China campaigns. Yeah. About 30 million people died there.

And this is over, I mean, 10 years, I think? Less than 10 years? Yeah, I think so. That's nuts, man. Yeah, so he wanted to continue going, I guess, west. In 1219, he made his way through modern-day Central Asia, like Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iran. And the Shah Mohammed there said...

He killed an ambassador that they had sent forward from a trading caravan, and he had a big walled city, and he's like, I'm going to be fine. I'm not sweating this guy. Right. And he burned the city down, Genghis Khan did, including a thousand of the soldiers who were in a mosque hiding out.

Killed about 100,000 people. But of course, like you said earlier, he spared the skilled craftsmen and workers. Right. And this is the Khwarazm – I didn't even practice this one. The Khwarazm – Khwarazm? I think so. Empire, which its capital city that he sacked is now in Uzbekistan. But I've seen it called mostly like Afghanistan, Iran, Iran.

For the most part, this is the area it covered. Iran is what I see it mostly compared to these days. Yeah, and things are starting to get a little out of hand at this point, and it's basically sort of due to the fact that

He went too far. There were too many people, too much land. When you control your – I think the guy who wrote that article you sent said that they weren't producers of anything. The Mongols. Yeah. Right. Or tradesmen. They were conquerors.

That's it. Yeah, and that's not like you got to diversify. From what I understand, they didn't have a written language. They didn't do anything. They just conquered people and took over your land and then leached off of you. Yeah, which is a good skill to get going. But if that's all you can do, I think he likened it to a shark needing to feed. Right. Like eventually you run out of lands to conquer and then on the interior, it's such a huge problem.

corporation at this point, it gets unwieldy. So Genghis Khan recognized this at some point. He saw that he had basically a change of heart about agriculture, about walled cities, about a sedentary lifestyle. And I think he mostly saw like, oh, you can make way more wealth this way. So he turned from conquering as much toward figuring out how to administer this area that he conquered. Again,

Eurasia is conquered. It's under this guy's, this guy's, had never, never been united before and hasn't been united since. Even under Soviet, Soviet rule. Mm-hmm. The Genghis Khan's empire was bigger. Yeah. Than that, right? And so he's put it together and he's like, what do I do now? And we'll talk about that after this message. How about that? Yes. Yeah.

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Okay, Chuck, so Genghis Khan has conquered Eurasia and said, what now? What now, Eurasia? What do you guys want to do now? I'm done with killing. Not really, though. Well, he died. Yeah? I guess that's right. Yeah, and this is, no one knows quite how he died still. Some people say he had a fall from a horse and was injured, eventually died. Other people said it might have been typhus.

There are a few other theories floating around out there, but... Yeah, like shot in the knee with an arrow is my favorite. Yeah, which I guess just infection. I would die from pain. Yeah. It's interesting, though, in August of 1227, when he was on his deathbed...

Like one of the last things he did was say, you know, remember the Tanguts? Go kill all of them. Right, that's what he did. I think they were the first people he conquered, right? They were the Zizia people. Okay, the first people in China. And when he went to go attack the Kuarzem Empire,

Yeah. He demanded that they send some troops as reinforcement, and they said no. He defeated the Khwarazm and turned around and went right over to Zizha and was like, you guys are toast. Yeah. You're in trouble. And that was his last act as a libertarian.

a living person yeah he was succeeded by one of his son uh Ogadai who took that stuff all the way to Europe oh yeah like he had a bunch of sons uh-huh 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 200 men something like 0.5 percent of the total global population is directly descended from him that's amazing

It's amazing and gross. That's a lot of people. Yeah, he was about 65-ish when he died, and no one knows where he's buried. No. Because they killed everyone on the way to the funeral. That's one. And then also they rode over his grave. With horses? I looked up. Do you ever go on Quora?

Sure, every now and then. It's great, man. Yeah. Like you can usually tell who knows what they're talking about of the answers, the multiple. And frequently it's most of the people. It's a very – it's a good serious – like it's a good place to get info that you should then go double check. Yeah, I agree though. It's not like the old days of what was the terrible one years and years ago where you would ask –

Yahoo questions? Yeah, probably. Or Yahoo, yeah, something like that. Yeah. And there are a lot of platforms like this. This is a pretty good, it's not corrupt yet. How about that? Yeah, I think Quora is pretty good, actually. So I went on Quora. This one you can't really look up. But this one guy, two people, like the question was, why was Genghis Khan buried in secret, I think. And two people said they didn't want his grave robbed.

Makes sense. They wanted to make sure that the transfer of power to his son was complete, so they had to keep his death a secret. That makes sense. Yada, yada. This one guy said, don't be idiots. He was a little arrogant, but he said, like, don't be idiots. Genghis 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 mountainside for the vultures to pick over. It wouldn't have buried him with grave goods. He would have been embarrassed with that. So he's the only person I saw say something like that, but it gave me pause. It made me wonder if the hidden grave is just, you know, just more lore about Genghis Khan and off the mark. Interesting. Yeah.

Well, his legacy looms large still, not only in his lineage from his loins. His overactive loins just leeching out goop. But depending on who you're talking to, um...

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. Yeah. Which is, what's it called? The Yam? Yeah, like a Pony Express. Yeah, like just different stations. The Pony Express. Yeah, like straight up. But like 600 years before the Pony Express. Yeah, exactly. But depending on who you're talking to, some people lay...

almost all of modern warfare at his feet. Yeah. Which is sort of interesting because you can sort of draw a line back to

his tactics that eventually would become the Crusades or the slaughtering of the Aztecs and the Incas. Yeah, so they say – Like they would learn from him and then do that. Right, because it was more that cultural conveyor belt thing. Right? So they say that he conquered the Khwarazm Empire, came in contact with –

and taught them ferocity, which the Europeans learned during the crusade. And they took that ferocity back to Europe and then eventually to the New World, which they used on the Native Americans they found there. And somebody said, no, the Europeans were already well-versed in ferocity and brutality and warfare. They didn't need to learn it from Genghis Khan.

That doesn't mean that's wrong. Right. But it's the suggestion that the Europeans were naive to brutality and warfare is incorrect. Well, it's complete BS. And the author of that article also makes a good point. And like you can't look and judge him by today's lens. He wasn't any more brutal than anyone else back then. It was just the number. Yeah, he just did it better.

That to me, though, so I guess then maybe my problem is 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 great man history, you know. It bugs me. It bugs me, too. We didn't come across that way, did we? No, but just by carrying on the tradition of talking about this guy and, you know.

You definitely keep his little flame burning. Well, and there's a, what, 150-foot statue of him. Yeah. Like, he's still very much revered. Well, let's talk about that. 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 in Mongolia, he is known as the founder of Mongolia. Yeah. Basically the greatest leader Mongolia has ever known and possibly the world if you're a Mongolian.

And during that, during the Soviet occupation of Mongolia, you were not allowed to talk about him. Yeah, they like took him out of history books. Yeah, because they were trying to stamp out any kind of nationalism in Mongolia at the time. So the moment the Soviets left, the Soviet Union dissolved,

They were like, Genghis Khan, Genghis Khan, Genghis Khan. Yeah. They built a statue of him. They named him an airport after him. They put him on currency. So he's definitely revered over there. But I think that the author of the article, I think his name is Frank McLean. I'm almost positive. It's a really good article. Yeah, it's great. Frank McLean. He wrote this wonderful article called The Brutal Brilliance of Genghis Khan. But he points out like,

Whatever you think of the guy, even if he was the same as his contemporaries and it still seems alien to you, like think about your own leaders. Your own leaders send people to die on the battlefield too and they're revered as well. Sure, for causes that are not noble. Right. So the point 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 he? Well, it is interesting. Yeah, you could talk about this dude forever. Yeah, he also makes the point, too, that the Mongols were what he called culturally unbalanced. So he's like, you know, at least the Europeans, while they were slaughtering and killing, were giving us the divine comedy and Carmina Burana and these great cathedrals and operas, whereas the Mongols were just...

Barbarian raiders and butchers all slaughter no substance. That's a t-shirt. Yeah very famously - in the movies Genghis Khan was played twice once by John Wayne. Yep, believe it or not in the conqueror and then Omar Sharif Okay said Egyptian also not close to Mongolian right?

I don't know if that's better or worse than John Wayne. It's probably the same. I think it's worse. Or no, better. Better? Well, now it'll be Hugh Jackman. No, I think Hollywood's changed somewhat. But like five years ago, they would have been like, what about Jason Momoa? Or Matt Damon. Put one of those Fu Manchu mustaches on him. Or they just pick Momoa because like he looks tough. Who's he? And he looks sort of ethnic. He's a guy that plays Aquaman. Ah, I got you. And is on... Very versatile ethnically. He's in Game of Thrones. Probably, but...

And I even looked up Mongolian-American actors to see if there was anyone out there who they could tap into. And I don't think there are a lot of them. Oh, okay. There probably have to be some good unknown. So speaking of looking like a Mongolian, okay? Got one last thing. Are you done? I'm done.

The Mongolians were really, really good at propaganda. And one of the ways that they showed this was in Iran, in modern-day Iran, the Khwarizm Empire. When they subjugated it, one of the things they did is they said, we don't have an alphabet. We don't write things down. But you guys do. And we want to put that to good use. You have great artists here.

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 wrote this huge compendium, a universal history of the world. But the Mongols had them illustrate, like illuminate the text. And they had them, whenever they drew a leader or a conqueror or an army,

They drew them as Mongols. Oh, interesting. So they insinuated themselves into history as basically the progenitors of all greatness and thus justified the subjugation of this area. Wow. And they did it through propaganda. They had like all that like copied, you know, hand copied and distributed as widely as they could. Wow. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. There you go.

That's it. All right. If you want to know more about Mongolia or Genghis Khan or any of that stuff, you can type those words into the search bar, HowStuffWorks. Pick up a book, you dingus. And since Chuck said that, it's time for Listener Mail. Hey, guys. Recently listened to the show about burying Ferraris. Wanted to share another cool story about an almost buried car. In 2013, Brazilian billionaire Count Chinquingho Scarpa

Oh, my. Oh, my.

Wow. Wow.

and a use of social media and buzz marketing to create awareness for organ donation. That is fantastic, man. What a cool guy. Really interesting. Anyway, guys, big fan of your show. Learned a lot from your stories over the years. I want to take this chance to share this cool story with you. And that is from Kate Miller.

Who's looking forward to more stories. Yeah, thanks a lot, Kate. I definitely had not heard about that. It's a good one. If you want to let us know a cool story, we want to hear it. You can send us all an email to stuffpodcasts at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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