The Mongols

So what were the Mongols really like?
The Mongols-that is to say, roughly the ancestors of the people who live in modern Mongolia,

--were a lose collection of nomadic tribesfolk. They hearded cattle, goats, sheep, camels, and most famously, horses.

The Mongol was said to live on his horse-they learned to ride almost before they learned to walk, and their livelihoods depended entirely on the horses, which provided them with food, drink, transportation, and shelter. If a Mongol became separated from the rest of his tribe, he could survive by drinking his horses blood until they found their way home.
The Mongols lived in large, round tents called yurts or gers.

Their diet consisted almost entirely of what they could obtain from their herds and collect from the land-which is to say, a lot of milk and meat. Even their beer (called 'kosmos') was made from fermented horse's milk. (Domesticated grain being in short supply.) They did trade, of course, with their settled neighbors-when they weren't out conquering them.
Traveller's accounts of the Mongols were not particularly flattering. In particular, they were pretty much universally described as stinking, a side effect of having lived their entire lives on horseback, eating meat, drinking fermented milk and rarely bathing. The one person I've ever met who's actually been to modern Mongolia also said it smelled bad.
In appearance, they looked pretty much the same as modern Mongols, only they didn't have blue jeans or tee-shirts. Traditional Mongolian clothes were utilitarian-commonly a pair of pants, some good boots, a silk shirt if one could afford it, and a robe which opened at the waist.

The Mongols wore similar attire into battle, with the addition of armor, generally made out of boiled (i.e. hardened) leather. The leather would be cut into small pieces which were then bound together in a style called 'lamelar' armor, and is similar to armors from both Japan and Tibet.
The most important item in the Mongol arsenal was the bow, shot from horseback.

The Mongol archer was a force to be reconned with, and the Mongols earned their fearsome reputation by conquering every damn thing in sight and then killing everyone in it. At it's height, the unified Mongol empire stretched from modern-day Hungary to modern-day South Korea.

Later Mongol rulers, after the empire had broken apart, conquered even more of the world, including India. The Taj Mahal was actually built by a Mongolian ruler of India.

The last Mongol Khanate (a country ruled by a khan) actually lasted until the 1800s. You can read more about them here.

The most famous Mongol of all time and the guy who started the whole conquering expedition, of course, was Temujin, aka Chengis Khaghan, aka Genghis Khan, born in approximately 1160 AD. Please not that 'Genghis Khan' was not actually his name-Temujin was his name. Genghis Khan (or more properly, Khaghan,) was his title.

Temujin's father was also a khan, but not a khaghan, or great khan. After the death of his father, Temujin and his mother were exiled from their tribe, and spent a fair bit of time dirt poor and miserable. But pretty soon Temujin grew up, developed an ego complex, and decided that the proper order of the universe was for him to rule the entire world.

Today, scientists estimate that 1/200 people is a direct descendent of either Temujin, or one of his close male relatives.

It's not just that Temujin and his relatives fucked a lot of people, although they undoubtedly did. It's also that they killed off everyone else. Entire cities were devatstated-hell, entire countries. Chinese censuses from the time, while unreliable, report that approximately half the population disappeared during the Mongol conquest.
Few individuals have affected the tide of history with as much force and vigor as Temujin. Until the Soviet Union, no land empire matched the size of the Mongols'. And few peoples have ever been so ruthlessly bloodthirsty.
Return to the comic