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If Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World grated on you because of the transparent lack of scholarly objectivity, I recommend Timothy May’s The Mongol Art of War. May usually attempts to present “both sides” in any given scholarly debate, but he also tells you which side is the majority and which the minority. And there’s good quantitative data, like the fact that Mongol light cavalry had a range of up to 300 meters in terms of their bows. The Mongol Art of War makes it pretty obvious that courage is sometimes overrated as an ingredient of conquest, the Mongols rarely engaged in pitched battles because they weren’t exceptional hand-to-hand fighters. Rather, when battling an enemy on open field they simply barraged their opponents with missile fire until attrition wore them down. Their reputedly high accuracy from long distances meant that they could stay out of danger while simultaneously inflicting casualties on the opposition. Not to be trite but it sounds like a precursor to “shock & awe” via air power medieval style.
It seems understandable that chivalry might emerge in societies where martial elites have incentives to formalize & codify and so minimize the risks inherent in the art of war, which is after all their primary profession. In contrast, the Mongol war machine which emerged in the early 13th century was notable for its relatively exceptional social egalitarianism. The Mongol army did not consist of an elite professional war-band, but rather was drawn from vast swaths of the adult male tribal population of Mongolia (on the order of perhaps 1/2 of the adult males served in the mobile armies during the initial years). Like the Roman legions before 100 BCE this was a nation of soldiers on the march, not the soldiers of a nation. Genghis Khan’s light cavalry simply leveraged the typical skills of a nomad on a horse with bow in hand. The rapid expansion from the Yellow to the Black seas was due less to the calculated glory seeking of status seeking aristocrats than the random-walk rapaciousness of nomads whose lives had been characterized by existence on the margins of subsistence supplemented by raiding of surplus producing sedentary farmers. To some extent the emergence of the Mongol Empire was a series of raids writ-large.
Addendum: One thing I found interesting was the suggestion that one of the major reasons that Mongol expansion into the Middle East ran out of steam was lack of pasture for their horses. Each Mongol warrior might have had 5-15 horses. In South China the Mongols under Kublai Khan had to reinvent themselves because light cavalry did not offer any comparative advantage in the local ecology. And later Mongol attempts to expand into Southeast and Maritime Asia generally failed more often than not. In many parts of Eurasia the Mongols were defeated, but like the Romans before them they kept coming and eventually overcame resistance. This makes me wonder about true historical significance of the Mamluk defeat of the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut, as in many accounts this is a great historical turning point. The implication is that if the Mongols had not been defeated in this battle they would have gone on to conquer all of North Africa. But as I alluded to above in Russia there were defeats but the Mongols bounced back. In contrast they were defeated several times by the Mamluks after Ain Jalut. This to me points to ecological constraints on the comparative advantage of the Mongol-way-of-war. Of course it is also quite plausible that empires have natural limits to their size contingent upon the scalability of communication lines as well as the diminishing returns on additional increments of territory.
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I recall that a contemporary Arab commentator made the point that when the Mamluks defeated the Mongols, it was a conflict between close kin, as the Mamluks were recruited from the Turkic tribes of Central Asia (I think it was in either the history of Arabs by Albert Hourani, or else a book by Bernard Lewis.) I could be wrong in assuming that the Mamluks employed similiar tactics as the Mongols themselves – it doesn’t seem that Egypt possessed sufficient grazing land to support an army of warrior-horsemen.
If you build an empire on the promise of booty for your soldiers and followers, that creates a perpetual need for expansion. It’s politically difficult to call a halt. Also, securing what you already have can drag you into expansion. For the British, holding onto India – a country incredibly far away from Britain – dragged them into more and more territorial acquisitions, simply to secure their communications to it.
I could be wrong in assuming that the Mamluks employed similiar tactics as the Mongols themselves – it doesn’t seem that Egypt possessed sufficient grazing land to support an army of warrior-horsemen.
the book actually goes into great detail about the mamluks. the mamluks tended to be drawn from the plains to the north of the caucasus. whether that means “near kin” is up to you. to hourani or lewis a kipchak turk and a mongol might be interchangeable. as for their tactics, may presents evidence that mamluks were much more professionals than the original mongols. they would have been more heavily armed and better hand-to-hand combatants. and of course you don’t need grazing land to have an army with horses; you can feed them off grain you grow. the mongols didn’t generally do this for a variety of reasons.
For the British, holding onto India – a country incredibly far away from Britain – dragged them into more and more territorial acquisitions, simply to secure their communications to it.
you should elaborate a bit on this, as i don’t follow quite. i think one could point out that there are structural differences between a naval empire like britain’s which emerged piece-by-piece along peripheries and a land based one like the mongols who basically radiated out from the center. since they never really “leap-frogged” the mongols didn’t have to “work back” like the british and secure intermediary strong-points.
In the West, after a rather early point the Mongols of Russia were at war with the Mongols of the Middle East. I think this accounts for their failure to expand either into Egypt or into Western Europe. Even during his lifetime Jochi of the Russian Mongols was in conflict with his father, and when Jochi’s brother Tolui’s son Hulegu went into the Middle East, Jochi’s son Batu treated him as an enemy. That’s a rough sketch. Even more roughly, you can just say that starting with Batu or so, there was no Mongol empire because the Russian Mongols had seceded.
I don’t know whether I read it in Tim May’s book or elsewhere, but the Mongol basic battle plan was to have very, very few casualties while totally destroying the enemy force. Cases in which they actually suffered serious casualties were exceptional and regarded as mistakes to be corrected. Totally non-chivalrous warfare, and the opposite of the infantry warfare Victor Davis Hansen idolizes. (American warfare now, depending on long-distance weaponry, intelligence, and mobility, is Mongolesque.)
Mongol egalitarianism was meritocratic and despotic. It was Genghis’s creation and as time went on a sort of aristocracy emerged, especially in the wealthy conquered empires. Ordinary Mongols were under very strict discipline — one missionary observer said that they were motivated by fear.
The incredible Mongol expansion probably also meant that Mongol manpower was diluted by the need to garrison and govern half of Eurasia. The forces available for further expansion were less, especially if there was unrest anywhere.
While the Chinese Mongols failed in Japan, Java, Vietnam, and Burma, no other Chinese government ever threatened these places (except Vietnam). IIRC the withdraw from Java because they were overextended, not because they had been defeated.
If memory serves, Jeremy Black says the cavalry armies had the greatest ratio of mobility to mass and hence ability to concentrate force (against weakness in the ideal situation) until the rise of European multi-gunned sailing ships Mongol bows were superior to the English longbow except in rate of fire. The typical horseman army gambit was the feigned retreat to break tight enemy formations and the and a swift counter attack, a parting (Parthian) shot. Mongol armies did shower their opponents with arrows, the more prestigious nobles functioned as armoured heavy cavary. The Germans wisely declined to come out from their fortified cities despite the taunts. Fortunately for them siege engines such as the traction trebuchet were not available as the Mongols seem to have regarded their Polish excursion as a reconnaissance in force.
Tilly’s “Coercion, Capital, and European States AD 990-1992” ranks the early modern European states with regard to the quantity and cnetralization of economic power and coercive (military-police) power. Holland, for example, had a lot of economic power but proportionately less military power; Northern Italy had economic power and military power, but was disunified; Russia had little economic power but strong centralization and disproportionate military power — the economically poorest and most centralized of the militarily important European states.
The Mongols would be off the map on Tilly’s chart. Probably more centralized that any of the others (during Genghis’s time), by any standard economically less productive than any of the others, but militarily dominant.
The way to look at this is that they were Eurasia-wide specialists in coercion (means of destruction, violence, political control). Wherever the government was militarily ineffective, the Mongols replaced it with a more effective government. This rather destroys Engels’ point in “Anti-Duhring”: Mongol power depended on the slenderest possible economic base. But one result was that the Mongols were always economically dependent on the fruits of victory (plunder, taxes, tariffs, tribute). A non-triumphant Khan would lose power and his coalition would dissolve.
IN “Tsarist Russia in the Context of World History” (in “Walls and Frintiers in Inner-Asian History”, ed.Benjamin and Lieu) David Christian argues that Muscovite Russia, like the Mongols, was dependent on expansion and exploitation of richer areas to survive. It also seems that imperial Sweden (Gustavus to Karl XII) was a predatory state of that type. (“The Military Revolution and Political Change”).
Khodarkovsky’s “Where Two WOrlds Met” and “Russia’s Steppe Frontier” tell a very detailed story, based on russian and Turkish records, of the last gasps of the steppe peoples in Russia. The Kalmyk Mongols were a threat to the settled peoples during the eighteenth century, but during that century they were gradually hemmed in, lost their autonomy, and finally mostly flrd to Xinjiang, leaving a remnant behind subjugated by Russia.
The Mongols, were overcoming big advanced states , fighting non stop made them very efficient. At Ain Jalut the commander was injured by a prisoner brought to him and allowed himself to be carried from the field of battle leaving a young inexperienced deputy to lead the Mongols.
Mongol defeats by Marmalukes were followed by a crushing of the Marmalukes by Timur who was a Mongol sort of.
but the Mongol basic battle plan was to have very, very few casualties while totally destroying the enemy force.
wow, what genius! where’d they come up with that plan of action? 😉
Mongol defeats by Marmalukes were followed by a crushing of the Marmalukes by Timur who was a Mongol sort of.
it is fair to say timur was a mongol of a sort, but his eruption was a separate event based. the original genghiside wave had subsided by this way, so you had a new ‘secular cycle’ so to speak.
I think what John is saying is that the Mongols had no problem with doing what many of their contemporary enemies balked at, like:
1. When assailing a city, capturing peasants in the surrounding countryside, and marching them ahead of them, as a human shield.
2. When assailing a city with a moat, throwing captured peasants into the moat, to form a corpse bridge, on which to cross their horses over.
and so on – mostly “Win by any means necessary” tactics.
Without the Mongols Islamic civilisation would have developed very differently. Would a centalised empire ruled fron Baghdad have evolved?
Even though nominaly in the Islamic fold Timur spent most of his time laying waste to fellow Moslem states.
Sounds just like Cressy and Agincourt to me…
Would a centalised empire ruled fron Baghdad have evolved?
huh? the mongols put the abbasids out of their misery. they were rulers of a centralized empire (or at least as centralized as ancient empires got) as i’m sure you know. why would you have expected baghdad to ever be a nexus of that sort of empire again? you wouldn’t expect the same from damascus, which was the previous caliphal capital would you?
Even though nominaly in the Islamic fold Timur spent most of his time laying waste to fellow Moslem states.
what is so nominal about his islam? and yes, his battles were mostly against other muslims, but he would be insane to go north into siberia. all other directions were dominated by muslim states, and those directions offered up real plunder as opposed to trees, furs and siberian slaves he would have gotten battling against the kafir of the north (he was famously supposedly girding up for an attack on ming china before he died). whatever the “official” theory was supposed to be, christian powers mostly fought other christian powers and muslim powers mostly fought muslim powers. why? well, that was who was close by. that doesn’t cast doubts on the sincerity of their religious faith (muslim states had been feeding on each other for 5 centuries before timur came onto the scene).
To be explicit, the Mongols almost always had fewer troops than their enemy, and they fought one enemy after another. They were able to destroy the enemy at minimum cost to themselves often enough that that was the plan they would start. When they actually did suffer severe losses, it was unusual and required a reevaluation of strategy and tactics. I’m especially thinking of Subutai’s western campaign with a rather small force in 1221-3. Just a few costly battles would have ended that campaign, even if the battles had been won.
Given how successful the Mongols were under Genghis and his successors more or less until the rise of gunpowder armies, it’s puzzling to me that steppe nomads didn’t more frequently completely overrun China, India and the Middle East in earlier centuries. (Though I guess the Aryan invasion of India was an earlier pre stirrup steppe horse warrior invasion.)
Obviously the many iterations, extensions and rebuildings of the Great Wall were done to deal with steppe warriors, but if their core military technology and basic cheap/free horse grazing lands economy had been in place for centuries, what changed to allow the phenomenal empire building of Genghis, and it’s extensions albeit in large fragments by such successor horse warrior princes as Kublai Khan and Tamerlane?
After all the stirrup and composite bow had been around since before the 5th century heyday of the Huns.
Given how successful the Mongols were under Genghis and his successors more or less until the rise of gunpowder armies, it’s puzzling to me that steppe nomads didn’t more frequently completely overrun China, India and the Middle East in earlier centuries
they did multiple times.
What changed was the climate becoming cooler and a shortage of grazing land for livestock – thus a major incentive for warfare with neighboring clans first, then neighboring states… fueled by plunder…
John Emerson
Subutai had enough to conquer W.Europe if the succession had not called him back. How many fought at the ultra-decisive Battle of Hastings? About 1/20 of the force at Subatai’s disposal.
razib
Poland-Lithuania looked a much stronger than Muscovy at one time, I don’t think an empire is so unlikely to develop out of an apparently weak state. Salinisation overwelming the Mongol -smashed irrigation system is maybe a better explaination of the decline of Baghdad.
I sure wouldn’t expect Damascus to come back after its worst disaster; when Timur massacred the entire population.
I don’t think an empire is so unlikely to develop out of an apparently weak state. Salinisation overwelming the Mongol -smashed irrigation system is maybe a better explaination of the decline of Baghdad.
it is very unlikely that an empire emerges out of any particular state or city. but, since most states are weak at some point it is inevitable that they will emerge out of out of weak states. so your musing as to a ‘what-if’ about baghdad makes as much sense as a ‘what-if’ about damascus, antioch, constantinople, etc. it isn’t incoherent or unfounded, but it’s trivial. iran was similarly devastated. isfahan was destroyed by both the mongols and timur, but it later became the capital of the safavids.
re: salination, you are right to emphasize the destruction of what are today iran and iraq’s irrigation systems. but two important complementary points:
1) you can look into agricultural history in this region and see that yield and crop type was shifting in mesopatamia for 3,000 years before the coming of the mongols. pre-modern agricultural techniques were eating into the productive capacity of the land because of difficulties of reversing salination (= lower yields, and switch to hardier and less palatable crops such as barely).
2) baghdad decline after 900 because of social and political changes rather quickly. so though environmental parameters are important, i think it’s obvious that its rise and centrality was due to political-historical circumstances (e.g., the abbasid shift to an islamic empire with a center of gravity to the east in iran and central asia with a capital at baghdad vs. the ummayad focus on syria and egypt with a capital at damascus).
I sure wouldn’t expect Damascus to come back after its worst disaster; when Timur massacred the entire population.
what does this have to do with a population? it seems that history teaches us that damascus; geographic position is pretty structurally favored by the fixed parameters of geography; that’s why there’s been a city around there for almost the whole of urban history, right?
Mongol bows were superior to the English longbow except in rate of fire
I am an avid practitioner of traditional archery and can add to this statement. I disagree with the use of the term superior, as this is contextual. I shoot both an 80 pound @ 28″ D-section english warbow and an 80 pound @ 28″ hungarian-made asian recurve composite with siyahs and a string bridge (which is basically what the Mongols would have used). As for power, the asian composite bow stores more energy than an English Warbow and at a given draw weight, draw length, and arrow weight, the asian composite will impart greater velocity to the arrow, causing greater target penetration and range. Re accuracy, I don’t find much of a difference. Re speed of fire, there is basically no difference with the caveat that shooting style can effect shooting speed. With an English warbow, one rests the arrow on the knuckle of the forefinger and uses the three fingered Mediterranean release. With an asian composite, one can shoot in this way, but traditionally one rests the arrow on the knuckle of the thumb (i.e., the other side of the bow) and uses a thumb draw with a horn or bone thumb ring to protect the thumb joint. When shooting from a hip quiver, one (or at least I) can shoot faster with the asiatic style because one doesn’t have to bring the arrow to the other side of the bow. If the arrows are stuck in the ground in front of the archer, there is really no difference in shooting speed.
Climatic conditions also affect a bow’s performance. English warbows, being selfbows made of yew, are temperature sensitive and can snap in very cold weather (such as on the Eurasian steppe in winter) and lose force in very hot weather (as on the Eurasian steppe in summer). They are, however, very moisture resistant (great for Western Europe). By contrast, asian composite bows, made of wood/bamboo, horn, bone and sinew function well at temperature extremes. However, they are held together with fish glues that are very moisture sensitive and tend to come abart in damp, rainy weather (like in, say, England). Composite bows were used extensively by the Romans and introduced to Western Europe. There is a reason why the didn’t catch on, despite their superior ballistic performance.
I am very skeptical of climatic explanations of the Mongol invasions, and will remain so until explanations are matched to actual observations about climate, and until there’s a consensus about which climatic change was the mechanism for which event. One thing to remember was that warfare was a normal state for the steppe peoples, not an unusual event caused by scarcity.
What needs to be explained is the unification of the Mongols by Genghis Khan, and their increased success compared to earlier eras. My current belief is that both the original rise of the steppe nomad armies ca. 700 BC and the final rise to dominance after 1200 AD were the result of improved organization and strategy resulting from contact with the sedentary world, probably through mercenary service. (This is Wm. McNeill’s theory of the origin of the Cimmerian and Scythian nomad armies.) But I also think that there was a long, irregular learning curve 700 BC — 1200 AD.
Before 900 AD steppe peoples rarely occupied large areas of China for long. Before about 500 AD (Turkish Empire) no steppe people simultaneous ruled areas adjacent to China and adjacent to the Black Sea, and the united Turkish Empire didn’t kast long. There was some kind of escalation after 900 AD, which I suspect was the result of the rise of Sinified hybrid sedentary / nomad states.
The Mongols were a giant mafia, running a giant protection racket from Moscow to Manchuria. If you paid your taxes (protection money) and behaved, they’d keep your area safe. As a result, the Silk Road was generally free of banditry when they controlled it. However, if you misbehaved (didn’t pay up, complained, rebelled, etc.), they’d kill you, rape your women, enslave your children, destroy your home, and use your farmland for grazing horses.
Such an attitude is probably the root of their way of war. War is about cunning and surprise, like a mafia hit. The enemy should never see you coming. Their whole way of war was raiding, ambushing, and devastating civilian areas. Always hitting the enemy at their weakest spot. In many ways, they were the most rationalistic actors in the Middle Ages, with Europeans and their ridiculous, hypocritical chivalry, Muslims using slaves to fight their wars, and Chinese thinking war was some grand philosophical construct to be endlessly debated (Sun Tzu), rather than acted upon.
had the greatest ratio of mobility to mass
Er, did you mean mobility-mass product (i.e. good old Newtonian momentum – mass x speed) ? I’m not sure how a mobility-to-mass ratio would help much in military matters. The greatest mobility-to-mass ratio that I can think of is, well, flying kites.
Also I’m pretty sure that the mobility-to-mass ratio of large, fully-loaded sailing ships must be abysmal!
PhillyGuy ; I assumed that,
(1) for shooting from a horse composite bows were better than a longbow because they are shorter and carried stringed, (2) Mongols usually fired from the saddle. Is this accurate?
I saw an English longbow experiment with many arrows shot short where the ground was difficult to cover for the attacking force, this and the effect on men in armour, was said to be dependent on the number of arrows shot, so that weak points were found. It was mentioned that a yew stake in the ground will outlast an iron one because of its special properties, I didn’t make the connection to the climate just assuming that the English stuck to their wooden bow for no good reason. Bowstrings must have been very vulnerable to breaking back then, is making them from the traditional materials a lost art?
I read The Mongols wore a special silk jacket the threads of which were carried into the wound by an arrow and allowed them to pull the arrow out. A tv program about the defensive action (Crusades) in the Holy Land where historically Christian populations were forceably converted by Islamic armies, described a wool felt armour they wore against arrows. The tendency for authors writing about the Mongols is to think that they were superior in every respect not to give the Engish proper respect for their military technology. I am always surprised when I find out ye olde English had good reason for doing things their way. Further to dismounting to use bows, just remembered reading of a a big Crusader victory which was caused when the Arabs dismounted to press their advantage, couldn’t retreat, and gave the Crusaders a rare opportunity to engage them hand to hand.
razib, I took away an impression from a few things I had read that the Mongol’s effect on Islam was to demoralise and destoy a flourishing civilisation. From what you say they obviously gave these Islamic states too much credit for their vigour and unity immediatly prior to Mongol aggression.
toto
Lack of momentum more like, eg John Boyd’s theory; ability to quickly and inconspicuiosly transition into another maneuver faster than your opponent. Like F16.
Chinese warfare was pretty effective. It took decades for the Mongols to subjugate the Sung dynasty, even when they had most of the resources of North China, Manchuria, Korea and Central Asia behind them. Sun Tzu’s advice is practical and was used in the Gulf War. Sun Tzu did have a bias toward defensive warfare and caution.
PhillyGuy,
Is there any information about the duration over which the bundle of factors including bow development, tactics and organization developed?
I have a feeling that Temujin was one of those rare people who was first to pull together a set of disparate skills and technologies and that he did so in aid of uniting the Mongol tribes (to improve his family’s standing and his reproductive success), and then found these to be useful in subjugating neighboring peoples as well.
It is also very interesting to hear from someone who uses both technologies about the limitations of both.
Steppe peoples only really unified for the purpose of aggressive war against wealthier sedentary peoples. There was little payoff for anyone for peaceful steppe unity; government performed few non-military functions, and there was very little surplus on the steppe for the Great Khan to exploit.
John said:
I am very skeptical of climatic explanations of the Mongol invasions
Well like you said, the Mongols, and their co-ethnics the Huns before them, had the same technology and skills of horsemanship and mounted archery, so there has to be some other factor to incentivize them to go on longer and farther raiding campaigns than usual, and that was scarcity.
See “The Little Ice” by Brian Fagin, Page 82:
As Europe wen through a wetter cycle, hotter, drier conditions affected Central Asia, triggering constant movements of Mongol populations in search of fresh grazing grass.
“The Mongol invasion of Persia was devastating for all communities as the death toll was huge. A number of books, including every copy of the Sassanian Avesta, were destroyed. Most major fire temples were probably demolished at that time. Cities that escaped the worst of the destruction were the in the region of the oasis cities of Pars including Yazd and Kerman where even today the major Iranian Zoroastrian communities are found.”
of_Zoroastrians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_
Hungarian descriptions of the Battle of Mohacs, which ended one of Europe´s strongest state, say that the mongols used cattle herding techniques, circling the Hungarian army and forcing them in a circular movement into an ever smaller area. They used typical cattle herding shoutings and they carried dry grass that used to cause fire barriers. The Hungarian Army was tired off and crowded into a confused multitude and decimated by the powerful arrows of the mounted mongols. Then they applied the classic cattle butchering method of leaving a small ¨gap¨ apparently unguarded, allowing the escape of a small trickle of desperate Hungarians, when the trickle became a flood, they converted the ¨safe corridor¨ into the butchering zone. The Hungarian state never recovered. The mongols entered Europe in two reconnosaince columns – one in Poland and the other Hungary – while the main attack force led by Batu got organized in the Don steppe.
j,
The Mongols had much practice at these “herding techniques”, as not only was herding their livelihood, but also their method of rounding up and slaughtering prey on the open Steppes, where Mongol riders would string out for miles driving all manner of prey before them, then have the edges move up and around, to completely encircle prey… it’s something they would have practiced at their whole lives.
Of course they viewed settled people, or non-nomadic people, as sub-humans akin to animals, to be preyed on.
Interestingly, a similar tactic was employed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae against the Romans, and the same tactic made the Zulus under Shaka so successful, and was used to great effect by Marchall Zukov against the Germans in WWII.
While Mongol hunting had some economic importance, it was primarily military training.
Pconroy, I look at the climatological explanations every few years, and I’ll look at your source, but to date none of them have panned out. Problem #1 has been the absence of a longitudinal climate study of the steppe. There’s a lot of ad hoc reasoning based on scanty cherrypicked data. Problem #2 is a bit of vagueness about specifically how the climate change caused the invasions. Do nomads attack because their hungry and desperate, or because they’re well fed and strong? Does cooler rainier weather help or hurt nomads? And so on. Problem #3 is a fundamental misconception: the assumption that nomads would be peaceful and stay at home if something didn’t trigger them. War was normal and honorable on the steppe, and didn’t need a reason, and attacks on the sedentary world were the most profitable by far.
The best climatological explanations are by Lattimore in “Inner Asian Frontiers of China”, I think, and Paul Buell. Both explain the changes in terms of changes in the relative sizes and the relative locations of prime grazing vs. prime agricultural land, but as I remember, they’re not compatible.
What has to be explained is the success of a given invasion. (Failure doesn’t really need explanation.) My belief now is that from 700 BC to 1300 AD there were five learning curves: first, the development of cavalry warfare tactics and weaponry; second, the development of large scale, disciplined, efficiently organized steppe armies; third, the development of hybrid states with the advantages both of the steppe and the agrarian economies; fourth, the steppe adaption of sedentary methods of warfare such as siege engines; and last, the exploration by the steppe peoples of the inner Eurasia as a whole, from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea to the Yellow Sea. These processes went on especially from 500 AD to 1200 AD.
their method of rounding up and slaughtering prey on the open Steppes
yes, mongols applied their steppe hunting techniques to slaughter settled armies. Hunting was considered as training, and they had evolved to become very good hunters. Mongol warriors and their ponies failed in tropical or subtropical climates, in jungle, in deserts, in mountains.
Mongols are particularly unsuited to modern life and are condemned to marginality. There will be no more Mongol invasions.
The need for pasture seems a reasonable explanation of cyclical mongol aggression.
J, as I just said, steppe aggression does not require an explanation. After 200 BC or so, the steppe peoples invaded the civilized world to the extent they were able to. What needs to be explained is why the steppe peoples were successful during some eras and not during others and why they collected tribute during some eras, raided in other eras, and occupied territory in still others.
Steppe peoples quickly saturated whatever pastures they had, but even when they had enough pasture, they still raided and invaded if they could, because pastoral life at its best lacked many amenities, luxuries, and near necessities easily available in the civilized world.
Part of the problem with the “not enough pasture explanation” is that it interprets a strength (more military manpower, more horses) as a weakness (overpopulation). It is a fact that steppe peoples made war when their horses were fat and strong, and backed when their horses were lean and weak.
The reason why there will be no more Mongol invasions, as I also said, is that for over a century horse cavalry hasn’t been a factor in warfare at all, and was of steadily diminishing significance starting no later than 1600 AD. (“Cavalry” in today’s world ride tanks, helicopters, or airplanes). Nothing to do with the Mongols being “unsuited to modern life”. I almost suspect an ethnic grudge here.
…an ethnic grudge? If it appeared like that, I am sorry.
More than availability of grass, nomads need political organization and leadership. When the tribes are fractured and fighting each other, no foreign raid (leaving the families unprotected behind) is feasible. When a network of alliances is finally established, every able bodied nomad wants to take part in the adventure.
Was there an Aryan Invasion of India as mentioned in a comment.
Razib, what is your take?
Was there an Aryan Invasion of India as mentioned in a comment.
i doubt it was like the mongol, hunnic or saka invasion. but it seems plausible (likely) that there was a large movement of indo-european speaking peoples from the northwest. though i don’t believe they were necessarily “raw” steppe dwellers (see the mediating influence of the margiana-bactrian civilization).
Genghis Kahn was an absolute ruler who spent a lot of time “exercising his perogative” if the theory about him being the ancestor of 1% of Asian men is true.
Genghis Kahn was an absolute ruler who spent a lot of time “exercising his perogative” if the theory about him being the ancestor of 1% of Asian men is true.
ntral.nih.gov/articlerende r.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&rendertype=abstract&artid=1180246
http://www.pubmedce
We have identified a Y-chromosomal lineage with several unusual features. It was found in 16 populations throughout a large region of Asia, stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea, and was present at high frequency: ?8% of the men in this region carry it, and it thus makes up ?0.5% of the world total. The pattern of variation within the lineage suggested that it originated in Mongolia ?1,000 years ago. Such a rapid spread cannot have occurred by chance; it must have been a result of selection. The lineage is carried by likely male-line descendants of Genghis Khan, and we therefore propose that it has spread by a novel form of social selection resulting from their behavior.
and though genghis khan was no doubt very “busy,” probably the compounding effect of incredible prestige of genghiside lineages is the critical factor. there were an enormous number of descendants of genghis khan 1 century after his death, and the prestige of this lineage continued for many centuries across much of inner asia (e.g., timur was not a direct line descendant, but rather from one of his granddaughters. to increase his prestige her married two other descendants to cement his lineage).
Genghis Kahn king of the Kazars, it all fits!
Prestigious lineages calls the prophet Mohammad to mind, probably no one has had such a ratio of reproductive success in their lifetime to “reproductive success” after death, well not unless we count Genghis’ dad.
Would a Y-chromosome affect the attributes of those carrying it . I have read that certain names are more common among high achievers. Palmer is said to be the English name with the highest rank ( it may be a corruption of a trainee knights title). A more obvious example is “Clerk”. which was James Clerk Maxwell’s real second name (his father took the name Maxwell from a relation, childless uncle if I remember correctly, to secure a a substantial bequest).
Regarding the Aryans, we know that something happened, but we’re not sure what. Razib recently reviewed an excellent book on the topic that I forget the name of. Long story short, the cavalry nomad lifestyle originated later than the Aryan invasions, ca. 800 BC, probably north of the Black Sea. The first steppe nomads were, however Aryans — Northern Iranians such as Scythians.
Why does Aryan sound some much like Iran? Could it be the same? Could Aryan is corrupted word`Iran’?
Why does Aryan sound some much like Iran? Could it be the same? Could Aryan is corrupted word`Iran’?
same root. the indo-iranian peoples (from kurdistan to india) denoted their free classes as “arya.” so it kind of means “free people” (or noble or whatever).
aryan:iran as
english:england as
turks:turkey
j, the battle of mohacs was in 1526 and involved the Turks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mohacs
Speaking of Aryan influence on India, it seems the liberal ones managed to walk across Adam’s bridge to Sri Lanka to spread their culture.
To The Mad Hungarian: Muhi on the Sajo river is it, thanks for the correction. A csatával foglalkozó könyvek és tanulmányok tucatjai ellenére még masem tudjuk, hol volt pontosan a magyar tábor és az összecsapáshelyszíne, de abban sincs egyetértés, hogymi volt a vereség oka.
Mondjak hogy c csata elott a magyar táborban mar általános fejetlenség uralkodott. Sokancsak ekkor döbbentek rá, hogy az egész tatár sereg támadása zúdult rájuk. Ha nem tör ki a pánik, hatékonyan védekezhettek volna,hiszen a tábort jól meger-dítették, és ha éjszakáig kitartanak, talán sikeresen kitörhettek volna. Ami ezután következett, az már atatárok által többször sikeresen alkalmazott lélektani harc volt. A tábor körülszáguldozó lovasok tömege, akik kedvük szerint lottek mindenkire, aki felbuk-kant és a gyújtónyilak nyomán fellobbanó tüzek a kiszolgáltatottság érzését keltették.A jól bevált taktika ismét meghozta a sikert. A nyugati oldalon nyitvahagyott gyuru sokakat csábított menekülésre, akiket az üldözo tatárokkíméletlenül legyilkoltak.
Mohi. Mohi. Mohi.