Dr. Jack Weatherford on Lex Fridman: Why anda beats blood

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Jack Weatherford, anthropologist and historian specializing in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. He has written a legendary book on this topic titled Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. And he has written many other books, including Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China, Genghis Khan and the Quest for God, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, and other excellent books. I've gotten to know Jack more after this conversation, and I cannot speak highly enough about him. He's a truly brilliant, thoughtful, and kind soul. This was a huge honor and pleasure for me. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and consider subscribing to this channel. And now, dear friends, here's Jack Weatherford.

Lex Fridman 0:56 Genghis Khan, born in approximately 1162, became the conqueror of the largest contiguous empire in history. But before that, he was a boy named Temujin, who at nine years old lost everything, his father, his tribe, living in poverty, abandoned to the harshness of the Mongolian steppe. From a boy with nothing to the conqueror of the world. So, tell me about this boy, his childhood and, uh, the Mongolian steppe from which he came from.

Jack Weatherford 1:27 The story of Genghis Khan, like the story I think of all of us, it doesn't begin at birth, it begin... That's the beginning of life. The story begins long before birth. And, uh, sometimes it can be many generations before and sometimes only shortly before. But I think with Genghis Khan, a crucial thing is to understand how his parents met and then how he was conceived. And that is that one day a cart was coming across the Mongol territory. And only women drove carts. Men rode horses. Women also rode horses. But women owned the houses which were called gers, the tents. They owned all the household equipment, and so they had to have carts for moving back and forth. And the fact that a cart was moving meant that some woman was moving from one place to another. And in fact her husband was with her. She was a new bride and her husband, uh, was on a horse close to her. So what happened was a man named Yasuke... Yasuke, the future father of Genghis Khan. Yasuke was up on a hill. He was hunting with his falcon. The words of The Secret History of the Mongols were very clear. And he looked down and he saw her, and he could barely glimpse her, but he knew she was young and she was a new bride. And he rode back to camp, he got his two brothers, and they came racing down. And they came and f- first the husband of the woman looked around and he decided to flee. Not because he was a coward, but he figured he would probably pull the men after him. They would chase him. And they did. They chased him. He went far away. He circled around. He came back. He arrived back at the cart where his wife was. Her name was Hoelun. And Hoelun had time to think while he was riding around being chased by the Mongols. And she decided that it's more important for him to live. And she told him when he came back, "You must flee. If you stay here, they will kill you and they will take me. But if you flee, they will take me, but you will have the chance to find another wife. There are many women in the world. You find one and you call her Hoelun after my name, and you remember me when you're with her." It was a very dramatic moment. And he rode away, and he looked back and forth, and it's said that the pigtails or the braids that were hanging down were whipping back and forth from his chest to his back. Uh, he was divided, obviously, in whether he should go or stay. But the three men were approaching again, and they were headed straight for the cart this time. And they came in and they took Hoelun. She didn't say a word until her husband was over the ridge. And when he was over the ridge and she could no longer see him, she began to scream and wail. And one of the brothers said to her, "It doesn't matter if you shake the waters out of the river and if you shake the mountains with your screaming, you will never see this man again." And he was right. That was the moment that Genghis Khan's mother and father met. That's the beginning of his story in this kidnapping. And it's gonna reverberate. Every detail of it will come back again and again, not only throughout the story of the life of Genghis Khan, but it's gonna continue on with the feuds and the issues caused by it all the way into the future. And to some extent, in certain parts of the world, you could say it still exists.

Lex Fridman 5:17 So the meeting is fundamentally a sort of a mixture of heartbreak and dark criminal type of kidnapping.

Jack Weatherford 5:27 Yes.

Lex Fridman 5:28 And from that is conceived this conqueror of the- the biggest contiguous empire in history.

Jack Weatherford 5:35 What I was really interested in was: How did this happen? Who was this person? As, as, uh, Wordsworth wrote in his poem, you know, "The child is father of the man." And it's the childhood that created him, and it's that e- episode that was before he was born, but all the things that happened throughout his childhood made him into the man that he became. And so he was now suddenly...... this unusual situation was created where a child is going to be born to a kidnapped woman who is being held by strange people, the Mongols. They were not her people. Uh, and he already had another wife, her husband. He had a wife named Sorcical. He had, at that time, already one son. Later, he had another son with her. It was a very odd situation. And in fact, the father, Yesukki, wasn't even there when Temujin was born. He was off fighting the Tatars. And during this campaign against the Tatars, he killed two Tatars. One of them was maybe Temujin Uighur, which is sort of person of iron. It's what it means from the Turkic... but today, a part of also Mongolian language. So he came back. He had a baby, and he decided to name him Temujin, the person of iron, or iron man, we might call him.

Lex Fridman 7:04 After the man he killed.

Jack Weatherford 7:05 After the man he killed. So, his kidnapped mother, she's a second wife, now. Not a legal wife, but just a second kidnapped wife. And he's named for someone his father just killed. It was not an auspicious beginning. And in fact, just episode after episode in his childhood, was inauspicious. The father and mother moved camp one time when he was quite young and somehow, they overlooked him and forgot him. He was left behind. So here's this young child. We don't know what age, but could be around four or five, I think. Uh, he was left behind and as it turned out, some other people, the Taichu found him and then they kept him for a while and eventually, he was reunited with his father and mother. And it's very odd to me that I never s- have any inkling of a spark of relationship much between the father and the son. Because then when he, when, uh, Temujin is eight years old, his father decides to take him off to find a wife. Which finding a wife in the Mongolian terms means you give the child to that family, or you give the boy to that family. And he will live with them and they will raise him up and they will train him the way they want before he can marry their daughter. And so he's taking him off at age eight, but he didn't take the other son from the other wife, Baktar. He was keeping him. There was something about Temujin having been lost once and found by the Taichu and reunited with the family. And now his father takes him off at age eight, and he was gonna take him to his, to Ulun's family but he never made it. He stopped with another family, it's sort of like the first family he came across. And, uh, in the words of The Secret History, it said it was sort of like instant love. That there was fire in his eyes and fire in her eyes and he saw this girl, Borte, who was about nine years old, a little older, and he wanted to stay there with that family, according to the story. And so the father left him there with that family. But on the way home, the father decided, he saw a drinking party and he decided to join them. They were Tatars. He hid his identity. On the steppe, everybody kind of figures out who everybody is. Uh, they figured out who he was. And supposedly, they poisoned him. He got on his horse and was able to ride back home but within a few days, he died. So now, Temujin is off living with another family. And, uh, somebody comes from his family, a, a family, not a relative, but a close person named Mongolok comes to get him, take him back. And they make it through the winter, they make it through the winter. Mother Ulun by now, she has four sons and one daughter. I think the daughter had already been born or the daughter was going to be born not too long after that. They make it through the winter. The spring comes and of course, the clan is gonna move to a new camp. They go to spring camp from winter camp. And they have a, a ceremony for their ancestors. And they started the ceremony, but they did not tell Ulun. And so she came and she was angry that she had been left out. The old women said, "You're the one for whom we do not have to call. We will feed you if you come but we do not have to take care of you," letting her know that as a cap- as a captive woman, she was not a real wife in their view. And that was really the signal that when they moved camp, they were not taking her with them. And they packed up and they took her animals. They took the animals but she, at that moment, she still had one horse for a moment and she jumped on the horse and she took the banner of her husband and she raced around the people. And the banner after death contains the soul of the person, ʾsultʾ it's called. And so she raced around and they were a little bit nervous and so they camped for one night and they waited until it was dark. Then they took off and this time, one of the friends of the family came running out to try to stop them and they killed him. And Temujin cried. He was a little boy, eight years old. There was nothing he could do, he's just a little boy. And now that family is left there on the steppe, four children, possibly five already. Sorcical, the other woman with two children. They're all left there to die on the steppe. When the winter comes, they will surely all die.

Lex Fridman 12:14 How do they make it through the winter?

Jack Weatherford 12:16 Mother Hoelun, in the words of The Secret History, she pulled her hat down over her head. She took her black stick and she ran up and down the banks of the river, digging out roots to feed the gullet of her brood. She fed them through the winter. She found foods, digging up whatever she could, finding whatever she could, everything she could. And even at this young age, Temujin was already beginning to go out to collect things, to... He could get fish. He could do a few tasks to help feed the family. It was an extremely awful struggle at this point. But she saved every one of the children.

Lex Fridman 13:03 So Temujin's early years were marked by loneliness, abandonment, and, uh, struggle?

Jack Weatherford 13:12 Yes. Even after this, uh, he was, uh, kidnapped at one point by Taichiud people. He was kidnapped and we would say, uh, I think the correct word would be enslaved. They put him into a cank, a yoke, like a, like a ox would wear. And so his two arms are in it and his head is in it, and he's trapped in this thing. And every night he would be taken to a different ger to be guarded by that family. And one night, there was a little celebration so most of the people are drinking, and he's left with a boy who's not very smart. And Temujin managed to take the cank, the wooden yoke that he's trapped in, and use it as a weapon by turning it around very quickly and hitting the boy in the head, knocking him out. That was one of the first lessons for the Mongols that, uh, anything that moves is a weapon. This is gonna go on for generations, so very important for the Mongols. If it moves, it's a weapon. He did that. He raced off in the night and he jumped into the river to hide. He still got a cank on him. He's still trapped under there. The people are looking for him. They come out and they're up and down the river, and he's hiding underneath the water for the most part, trying to breathe as best he can. But it's dark and it protects him a little bit. They give up and they say, "Okay, we'll come back tomorrow." He can't possibly escape. But the next day, he knew one family that he thought he could go to, and, uh, he was right. He went to that family and at great risk to themselves. They in fact were a captive family of the Taichiud. And at great risk to themselves, they, uh, managed to saw o- off the cank, and then burn it in their fire. And they gave him food to escape. And then he had to go find his family again. So this is the kind of life that this boy, Temujin, had.

Lex Fridman 15:18 So he, just to be clear, his... the neck is trapped and the hands are trapped?

Jack Weatherford 15:24 We think that's how it is. We just have the word. They don't say, "The head and the hands." And we know that his body is trapped in it. But from all evidence we have, it's the hands and the head.

Lex Fridman 15:36 And he's running around deeply alone with this thing.

Jack Weatherford 15:40 Yes. Yes. And then he has to go out and find wherever his family is.

Lex Fridman 15:46 So this, in part, was the foundation of his breaking with Mongol tradition that kinship is-

Jack Weatherford 15:53 Yes.

Lex Fridman 15:54 ...the most important thing above all else because here is his life story where he's abandoned over and over and over.

Jack Weatherford 16:00 Yes, by his father's own brothers. See, the men who kidnapped her, they had an obligation under the Mongol law and custom to marry her when her husband died. They did not. They should take care of her and her children because her children are the children of their brother. They count as the sons of the clan, or they should. But no, they had all deserted, all betrayed him. He learned very early on that you cannot trust family.

Lex Fridman 16:31 You mentioned that, uh, Genghis Khan's childhood, uh, Temujin was marked by extreme tribal violence. Can you describe sort of the state of affairs in the steppe? How much violence is there? How much kidnapping is there?

Jack Weatherford 16:48 The story of Temujin is not a unique story for that time. Now, as an, as an isolated family of outcasts, of course he's not participating in the various feuds and the raids of the people around him. But they are constantly raiding in the winter and for women and for horses and for any kind of valuables that they can find. It's almost like their way of getting trade goods from China, that one group raids the other in order to find out whatever they have for textiles or for metal. Mongols produced nothing. They, they could produce felt to make their tents, but they were not craftsmen. And so they had to get these items from somewhere and it was through raiding. And so even in the genealogy of Temujin, you see going back generation after generation of women having been kidnapped, children born who are not necessarily the father's child and it's unclear who the father was. And a- all of these issues go back for a long time. Later, Chingish Khan will realize, once he becomes Chingish Khan, he will realize that the true source of most of the feuding on the steppe is over women. And later he will outlaw the kidnapping of women and the sale of women, in part not only because of what had happened to his mother but what happened to him next in his life.

Lex Fridman 18:16 And this is one of the things you talk about, this... In some ways, the love story...... or, or with his wife was her kidnapping was the defining... If you could point to one place where Genghis Khan-

Jack Weatherford 18:31 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 18:31 ... the conqueror was created, it's that point.

Jack Weatherford 18:35 Yes.

Lex Fridman 18:35 His wife being kidnapped. Can you... Can you describe, first of all, his love for this woman and what that means and what the kidnapping of her meant?

Jack Weatherford 18:45 At age 16, Börte, the girl he had met when he was eight years old and she was nine, she's now 17 and she and her mother come. It- it's hard to even imagine what it was like for this 16-year-old boy who has suffered these indignities of life in every way that you can imagine and suddenly, here is the love of his life who's gonna be living with him, making him happy. He has somebody who loves him. It's not just his mother running around getting food and trying to feed the five children and plus the, the other, uh, wife and her two children. No. He has somebody who loves him. And it's all the excitement that you can imagine with the fire in the eyes and excitement and then it only lasts a few months. And so there they are and there's a lady visiting them. We don't know exactly who she is but just they called her Grandmother Kowachan. Granny Kowachan is there and Granny Kowachan is sleeping, of course, on the floor of the ger, the tent. And early in the morning, she feels the vibrations in the earth and she knows that horsemen are coming and she rouses the family. And Mother Erlene is in charge. Mother Erlene is still in charge even though Temujin is now married. She puts all of her children on a horse, she takes the baby girl, Temulen, in her own lap, and she has one extra horse, but she won't take Börte because she knows... she doesn't know who the men are, she has no idea, but they're coming, they're coming in the dark, they're coming for a woman. They know there's a girl there. This family of outcasts has acquired a wife and they know that they're coming for that. And so she leaves, Sachikö, the other wife, she leaves this old lady, Granny Kowachan, who actually has her own cart, and she leaves Börte. They pile into Granny's cart and it's only an ox to pull it, so they don't get too far before the attackers get there. But Mother Erlene is right. She's able to get her children off to the mountain, to Burkhan Khaldun, to the mountainside away from them because the men are so focused on this cart and finding out how many women are in there and who they are and all. So Mother Erlene saved her family, but at a cost. Suddenly, Temujin realizes he has obeyed his mother, but he's lost the most important thing in his life. And I do think this is the defining moment of his life. The story began back when his mother was kidnapped, but now the kidnapping of his wife, I think, is the def- what will he do? What should he do? What can he do? Is he going to just resign himself to it? Uh, is he going to go out look for another wife? And he decides that life is not worth living without Börte. He has found something good in this life. And if he has to die trying to get her back, he will die trying to get her back.

Lex Fridman 22:14 And this is the early steps of the military genius born because in order to get her back requires an actual organization of troops.

Jack Weatherford 22:26 He needs allies.

Lex Fridman 22:27 Allies.

Jack Weatherford 22:28 He goes to a man who ruled the Kariat people in Central Mongolia, kind of on the Tuul River about where the capital Ulaanbaatar is today. He goes there because that... Wang Han is his name or Torghag Khan. He goes there because Wang Han had, uh, been the lord over his father at one point and his father had gone on raids for him and so he went there. And actually, he took a gift. That's because Börte's mother had brought a sable coat as a gift for Mother Erlene at that time of the marriage. So he took the coat and he took it and he gave it as a gift to Wang Han and asked for his help. And Wang Han said yes and he said, "I will send some troops, but we need more. And you need to ask Jamukha, Jamukh, Jamukha. You need to ask him to come also." He said, "I will send a message to him to get troops."

Lex Fridman 23:28 You have to tell the story of Jamukha 'cause, uh, this, (laughs) the story o- of Genghis Khan is one of people abandoning him, being disloyal, and here is a person who's not of his kin, but, uh, becomes his, in a way, brother, uh, in a way, loyal. And as you've described, he's both the best thing to has happened to Genghis Khan and one of the biggest challenges in, in, in the later years-

Jack Weatherford 23:57 Yes.

Lex Fridman 23:57 ... to Genghis Khan. So who was Jamukha?

Jack Weatherford 24:01 Jamukha was a boy about the same age as, as Temujin. And his family had winter camped close to where Mother Erlene was living with her children.And so the two boys met during the wintertime. In fact, they both claimed descent from the same, uh, woman about four generations earlier or five, it's a little unclear. She was Urikhankhai woman who herself was kidnapped. And actually, Jamukha was the descendant of her from the fact that she was pregnant at the moment of kidnapping. And then Temujin is descended from her through the new kidnapper, Botonchar, his ancestor. So they're both through the, as the Mongols would say, from the same womb. They come from the same historic, uh, origin. However, their lives were similar in that both lost their fathers very early. But Jamukha also lost a mother, so he grew up in the household of his grandfather. He had no siblings, uh, unlike Temujin with a whole household of siblings. He grew up with his grandfather, and his grandfather had several wives, so he grew up with a bunch of old women, which later he said he thought was, uh, an influence on his life. But the two boys meet. So they come from different backgrounds and Jamukha is not as deprived by any means as the life of Temujin, but he has a certain emo- emotional deprivation, I think, having not had mother, father, siblings, and he lives with these old, old people. The two boys meet, they become good friends playing on the ice. And so they're playing on the ice and then very early on, I think when they're about 10 or 11 years old, they decide to make a pact. It's called, uh, being coming anda. Anda is more than a friend. A friend is like ǩkhu in the language. And there are several different types of friendship, but anda is a friendship that's beyond a friendship. It's something for life. And they swore that they would be there forever to protect each other, to help each other in every moment. And they exchanged knucklebones. So each one of 'em had the knucklebone of a, a roebuck, a deer. And knucklebones are used in these games that they play, but it's also used to forecast the future. You can roll them around and, and all. And it's very strange. On the ice, I will say, in the wintertime in Mongolia, it can be up to 50 degrees below zero. And it doesn't really matter at that point whether it's either Celsius or Fahrenheit-

Lex Fridman 26:33 (laughs)

Jack Weatherford 26:33 ... or what it is. But you slide something across the ice and it's just absolutely smooth like silk and it goes on for a long way. And if you put your ear down to the ice, you hear this celestial sound that is unlike any sound on the Earth. It's just like the angels are singing under the ice. So once they've sworn this relationship of anda, then a couple years later they swear it again, but this time they're slightly older boys and they have bows and arrows. And so they exchange arrows with each other. In fact, the, the text is very specific that Jamukha took the horn, cut it off of a two-year-old calf, and, uh, he whittled it down and then he drilled a hole into it in order to make a whistling arrow, which is used, uh, for several purposes among the Mongols. It's used for signals, for one thing, from one person to another. But also when you're hunting, if you want to move the animal in a certain direction, you send a whistling arrow in the opposite direction to make the animal move. So it had a lot of uses. So the boys had exchanged roebuck knuckles. This time they exchanged... And so they had been close friends. And Wang Han said, "Okay, Jamukha should raise some troops and go with you." And he did. So the three set out some troops from Wang Han. He himself did not go. He was too old, but he sent some troops and then Jamukha and his troops, and then basically just Temujin and his family. He just had his brothers, that's all. They set off to find the Merkit people up the Selenge River, which flows into Siberia and on into Lake Baikal. They had to go through some extremely rough territory. And you see in this episode, though, Jamukha is already a little bit fierce without necessarily thinking it through carefully. Uh, he s- he gives this long speech about all the things they're gonna do to the Merkit people. "We're gonna jump through the, the tonno, the, the smoke hole in the top of the ger. We're gonna jump in there and we're gonna kill them all. We're gonna kill the men and the women and the children. We will destroy these people forever." Uh, he has a extremely militant rhetoric at least, and he's also rather critical of the other people. Wang Han's people came late and he gave them this long lecture about, "We are Mongols and if we give our word, our word is our promise forever. And rain or sleet or snow, it doesn't matter. We be there on time." And then it... So he's dressing down his superiors, he's very aggressive, but he's very helpful. So these troops, they move in on the Merkit camp. They also come in at night and so the, there's a small amount of warning because some men are out hunting sables, uh, the Merkit men, and they race back to the camp and they tell the people and the people are, are getting ready to get out as fast as possible. So Börte has no idea who's coming. She doesn't wanna be kidnapped again. This is somebody. So she and, uh, the grandmother Ko-achin again and, and so ch- they're loaded into a cart to go away. So Temujin comes in and there's a full moon that night so they could see what they're doing, and he's really searching for her. He's not paying too much attention to the battle. And he's calling for her, and he h- she hears his voice.... she knows who it is. She jumps off the cart and she runs to him, and they reunited and he grabs her, embraces her, and then he said, "This is the goal. This is why we are here. We don't need anything else." He was very clear about that.

Lex Fridman 30:31 And that was his first full-on military engagement.

Jack Weatherford 30:38 Yes, aside from the things... Yes, his first full-on military engagement. Now, um, along the way, in addition to escaping all these horrors, he had killed his older half brother, Bekter.

Lex Fridman 30:51 And that too was a deeply formative experience. So what, what was that about? Can you explain in Mo- in Mongol society-

Jack Weatherford 30:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 30:58 ... the role of the, of the older brother and the power struggle there? And, you know, not to moralize, but there's also, uh, you know, the, the ethical foundation behind the murder.

Jack Weatherford 31:12 The killing of Bekter, that's one of the things that's totally unknown outside of The Secret History of the Mongols. None of the Persian chronicles, none of the Chinese chronicles, none of them knew about this until the secret history was, uh, deciphered and translated. But Bekter was the older child of Sochigel and his son... The older brother has complete authority over the younger siblings in Mongolian society. They have to refer to him with a special pronoun all the time, "Ta," and he refers to them as "Chi." It's like a, a formality. And, and his word goes, he is the father in the absence of the father. But also it's quite common that if a man dies and his brothers... He has no brothers or his brothers do not marry his widow, then if he has a son by another wife, she will become his wife. So it would've been common that Bekter eventually, when he passed through puberty, would then perhaps marry Mother Hoelun. Now, I don't know that that happened, but I think either it did or Temujin was trying to prevent it, 'cause it was bad enough that he was the older brother, but he becomes the older brother and the stepfather. I think Temujin just couldn't handle that. And he was... Already, Bekter was ordering him around so he would take things like a fish or bird that, uh, Temujin had caught and that's perfectly acceptable in the, the Mongol hierarchy.

Lex Fridman 32:51 So Temujin would catch a fish and Bekter would take the fish?

Jack Weatherford 32:56 Yes. It's only recorded once, but it perhaps happened several time.

Lex Fridman 32:59 So that's an okay thing to do for an older brother, just take stuff?

Jack Weatherford 33:04 Yes. He can do anything he wants just about with his younger siblings. That's... Yeah. And, but Temujin is not gonna stand for it. So mostly in the record, they kind of put the blame on this fish.

Lex Fridman 33:18 (laughs)

Jack Weatherford 33:19 Which I'm not so sure that's really the blame. And, uh, the boys had actually taken the sewing needles from their mother. They were using them for fishing. And I think it was more complicated than that. But for whatever reason, he and his next brother, Hasar, decided to kill him, and they did.

Lex Fridman 33:38 Why, to you, is it more complicated than that? It feels to me like stealing of a fish is like the final straw. Here, he's being abused-

Jack Weatherford 33:48 Yes.

Lex Fridman 33:49 ... over and over and over, and the fish is a symbol of that.

Jack Weatherford 33:52 Yes.

Lex Fridman 33:52 And so here, he take- takes matters into his own hands.

Jack Weatherford 33:56 I think it is the symbol of that and it can be the thing that pushes him over-

Lex Fridman 34:00 Yeah.

Jack Weatherford 34:00 ... the edge. But it's all these other tensions of what's going on with the family because, uh, they shoot him with arrows, they kill him, but what happens afterwards is also interesting for the dynamics of what was going on before because we hear nothing from Sochigel. She and her younger son, Belgatai, they stay with the family, they don't go away. But the one who is outraged is Mother Hoelun, his mother. She screams and hollers at him in the longest kind of tirade you can imagine about, "You will never have anybody in your life ex- except your own shadow." And, you know, "You are worse than, than..." everything that she could name (laughs) that could be worse than. She was outraged and went on and on and on about it. So she was obviously extremely distressed about it. Whereas Sochigel, the mother of the boy, she may have been distressed, I don't know, but nothing is shown up in the record. So he does have this episode of having killed off his brother, but I don't think it was a deeply meaningful... I think it was important, but I don't think it was emotionally deeply meaningful for Temujin. The brother was gone, the problem was solved, Mother is extremely ticked off at him, but-

Lex Fridman 35:20 But it does show... In fact, it's interesting if it's not a big deal for him. It does show that he's willing to resort to murder to take care of a-

Jack Weatherford 35:32 Yes.

Lex Fridman 35:32 ... bad situation.

Jack Weatherford 35:34 Yes. He is capable of doing anything that needs to be done to resolve what he sees as a problem. Bekter was a problem, he resolved it at a very young age. So he'd had that experience behind him. But now, his... Bekter's younger brother, Belgatai, is on the raid with him and with Jamukha when they go to capture Börste back. So, uh, he has both loyalty and, and Belgatai stays loyal to him his entire life, his entire life. Uh, so it's very interesting.

Lex Fridman 36:11 So ƒ if we return to Börste, is it normal to have such a love story across many years when you're separated and sort of having that kind of loyalty? Because those...

Jack Weatherford 36:22 ... two-way loyalty- Yes. ... from Börte to, to Temüjin and Temüjin- Right. ... to Börte. And this is like, uh, before he was Genghis Khan. I think as children, uh, he was too preoccupied with staying alive (laughs) and getting- trying to find fish and roots to eat and things like that, to really be pining for her all the time. But for whatever reason, she came. And it could be that her family liked him in some way or that she remembered him or that she had no other suitors. 'Cause at 17, she should have been married actually. So I- I can't explain why, but it was certainly a strong love story after the fact, if not before. I mean, th- those two were loyal to each other throughout their lives. Uh, she was, I would say, the most important person to him, uh, after that. He went to literal war to get her back. He risked everything. He was willing to die. He was willing to kill, he was willing to die in order to get her back. And he got her back. And now he's re-established his relationship with Jamukha. And so they decide to stay together, and they all go off to the Khoronok Valley. And she is pregnant. This becomes a huge issue forever. It's one of those things that to this day almost (laughs) it's, uh, uh, an issue in what happens. But as he says much later in life when his own sons rebel against him and they call that first child a Merkit bastard, he defends his wife v- viciously. He's... To his own sons, he says, "You were not there. You do not know who loved who and who did not. You did not see the sky turning, uh, around. You did not see the stars falling. You did not see the Earth turn over. You don't know what was happening. And if I say he is my son, he is my son. Who are you to say otherwise? You were not there. You come from the same warm womb. And if your mother could hear your words, her warm moon- womb would turn to cold stone." So he defended her forever. But he's off now, we go back to the beginning, she's pregnant. They're in the Khoronok Valley. And he and Jamukha decide to renew their vows of being anda to each other. So this time, it's more serious and it... A ceremony in front of the whole, uh, l- we can't say tribe, it's not big enough yet for a tribe, but- but the whole, uh, clan that's there. And then Jamukha takes off a gold belt, which actually he'd stolen from the Merkit at some point (laughs) . And where on Earth they had a gol- got a gold belt, I don't know, but he took off a gold belt and he put it on Temüjin. And then, uh, Temüjin gave him, uh, a mare who had never, uh, had- had a foal, had never given birth. And it was an unusual mare who had a little growth on the front of her head, which they called a horn. So it was an unusual gift that I don't... It has meaning, but I don't know all the meanings behind it (laughs) , you know? It's sort of odd to me. But, uh, the golden belt, you can kind of, sort of think about it in different ways. But the golden belt, the belt for the Mongol man is really the sign of manhood. And in fact, this, uh, belt of dus, a woman was often then and even now called person without a belt, because that's how they were at that time. Today, women wear belts, of course. But they still use the word busui, busui- Yes. ... with no belt. So it's a very important symbol of manhood. So, uh, he gave that to Temüjin, and they celebrated. And then the words of The Secret History, "They slept apart under the same blanket, apart from the other group, and they were happy together." And then when the baby was born, Tem- Temüjin named the baby Joch, which means visitor. And some people say, "Well, it's because the child was really the Merkit child." Other people say, "No, it's because he was a visitor on the territory of Jamukha at that time." And other people can say, "Well, but Jamukha's ancestor, who had been born from the kidnapped woman who was pregnant," that they had named that, uh, Jirigedei, which meant foreigner. So it's kinda like a parallel, the visitor, the foreigner. And so Jamukha's clan wa- took the name from him, they were called Jadaran, Jadaran. And so there are all these things that sometimes we can't quite understand because we don't have the total mentality of that time and we not- we're not there. But we should say that, I mean, it's a pretty powerful part of this love story is that he- uh, the child is likely not his, and he accepted that child as his own- Yes. ... without... And defended it as it becomes much more important later- Yes. ... as his first, uh, child. Yes. He defends his child through his entire life. And, um... But not long after the birth, he and Jamukha break apart. Or really, it's Temüjin breaks apart at the urging of, uh, Börte. She said, "He lords it over you too much. Uh, he orders you around too much. You need to be free. We need to break away." And she urged him, and he loved his wife more than anything. I think that in a certain way, the most important other character in his life, adult life, would be the anda relationship, which gets, uh, being severely tested in the future years. But they run away through the night. They go all night long to escape from him. But, uh, he obviously loved Börte the most and-... took the baby, of course, with them as well.

Lex Fridman 42:43 So here's this breaking point of the anda. How did that relationship evolve?

Jack Weatherford 42:48 The two of them never claimed to break it. They had just separated. And now we have the Wang Han as the most powerful ruler on the steppe who's ruling out of central Mongolia of the Kereyit people. And so, Jamukha remains loyal to him, but at first, so does Temujin. They're both loyal to him, but they're fighting in different kinds of campaigns, uh, you know. So for a while, th- they're not fighting each other. But eventually, some things happened that separate Temujin. Temujin was making all of these great victories for Wang Han, and he was... Even got the title Wang, which means fr- from Chinese, meaning, uh, prince or king. Uh, he... Uh, Wang Han received that from the Jin dynasty because of all of these conquests against the Tatar people. So Temujin was rising up, and then he wanted his son to marry the daughter of Wang Han, and Wang Han said no. His own son, Senggum, has told the father, "No, no, no, no. We don't marry those little people. They're Mongols. They're not like us, you know. We are Kereyit people. They... We're not gonna marry them." And so then now war, you could say, breaks out, or feud really. It's more of a feud. And Temujin flee... Has to flee far away into the east to a place called Balhuna. And he goes to Balhuna. And at this time, then Jamukha is going to fight on behalf of his lord, Wang Han. The two of them do not meet in combat, but now their forces are fighting each other.

Lex Fridman 44:37 And they didn't see that... I mean, there's an obvious tension there. There's an obvious, if slight, breaking of loyalty, right?

Jack Weatherford 44:46 Yes. I- it's hard to know what's going through their mind at that point. We only have it later on when the, the relationship is being resolved in unfortunate ways, that they claim that neither one of them ever truly broke it because they never harmed each other directly. And in fact, th- then Temujin eventually defeats Wang Han. So he takes over central Mongolia, he's starting to really rise up now, and he has the title from his own people of Chinggis Khaan. They give him that at, uh, um, Black Heart Mountain by the Blue Lake. It's a very beautiful, special place, but he takes that title. That, that's not a title that anyone had ever held that we know of, Chinggis Khaan. It was a new title that he just, uh, thought up or somebody thought up or somebody thought it had auspicious meaning behind it. It's very close to the word Tenggis, which means the sea. Uh, it coulda had something to do with that. Uh, Mongolians really like, we might say, puns of... They like words with multiple meanings. And that's very important to them. The more meanings a word has, the more power that word has. So it has different meaning in different languages. So in Mongolian, it sounds like strong, chin, Tenggis. But in the Turkic, and there are many Turkic people, including the Merkit themselves are mostly Turkic people, that the, uh... It sounds like, uh, the sea, Tenggis, Tenggis.

Lex Fridman 46:17 So it's exciting to them when there's this double meaning-

Jack Weatherford 46:21 Yes.

Lex Fridman 46:21 ... and then the, the, the double meaning plays with each other, and that excites them.

Jack Weatherford 46:25 Especially with names.

Lex Fridman 46:26 Yeah.

Jack Weatherford 46:26 And like today in Mongolia, or, well, I've been there so long, I think the fad has passed now, but about 20 years ago, it was popular to name children Michelle, girls, because it's a French name, an American name, and it means smile in Mongolian. So it's the power of three great languages and three great civilization-... And so many names are like that. And so I think Genghis, it doesn't have one meaning. I think it means powerful, it means the sea, I think it means many different things. But so he had become a khan, and he was ruling over him. And so Jamukha now switched loyalties to the next kingdom over called the Naiman people, who are farther west. And, um, he becomes the, uh, the protege, you could say, of the Naiman people. But when Genghis Khan attacks the Naiman, Jamukha deserts the Naiman. He tells them, "These people have, uh, snouts of steel, and they eat humans alive." And he was telling them all these horrible things about the Mongols, (laughs) you know? And, uh, uh, Tayang Khan, the leader of the Naimans, he was rightfully scared about them, (laughs) and he was left there, and he, in fact, was very quickly also defeated. So Jamukha has now fought against Temujin in this campaign, and he's off with some of his people, Jardigan clan people. He's off with them, and they see the turning of the tide, you know? And... But he now wants to become the great khan of the steppe. He has very follow-... Very few followers, but he takes the title Gurkhan, which is a very old, ancient, important title. But, but because, uh, Wang Han is gone, Torghul Khan gone, that he can take this title and pretend to be the great khan of the steppe and all. But his own people turn against him, and they capture him, and they think they will take him to Chinggis Khan, now Genghis Khan. They'll take him, and, uh, they'll be rewarded perhaps for turning him in.... and Chingish Khan does reward them immediately. He kills them all because they have betrayed their leader who is his <|sv|>

Lex Fridman 48:58 Unda.

Jack Weatherford 49:00 It's a very (skratt) strange encounter. And so supposedly, Chingish Khan says to him, "Come back to me. Save me. Be beside me. Protect me. Be my shadow. Be my safety guard in life." And supposedly, Jamukha says, "But I did betray you when my people fought against you, and you will always know that, and you will never completely trust me. I will be a, like a louse underneath the collar of your tunic. I will be like a thorn in the lapel of your del." He said, "Kill me without shedding my blood. Let me die. And if you do, take my remains up to a high place and bury me, and I will be the guard. I will be the protector for you and your people forever." So they... Obviously, Timujin did not participate in the killing, but he ordered the killing, and, uh, he was either... It's not specified how he was killed without shedding the blood, but the Mongols had several ways because the most honorable way to die was without shedding blood. The blood contains part of the soul and if you lose it, you're losing your soul before you die. So they usually wrap them up in felt carpets and then beat them to death or trampled them to death with horses, something like that. There are a couple of other methods, but I think that's probably the method by which Jamukha was killed. And so he was killed and then Timujin had hi- or Chingish Khan had his remains taken up and buried in a high place. This is over near Tuva, which is today part of Russia. But until the 20th century, it was a part of Mongolia. The Tuvan people, very, very close culturally to the Mongols.

Lex Fridman 51:04 It seems that both of them, under the under relationship, had a deep value for loyalty. And so the way... You know, it's not worth living after you've been disloyal, which is the, uh, the Jamukha perspective, right?

Jack Weatherford 51:21 He had become very practical at this point, and he understood that you needed complete total loyalty and trust with everybody around you. And I think for this reason, he was willing either, say, to accept the, the plea of, of Jamukha and when Chingish Khan was asking him to come back and to be his, uh, shadow and to be his, uh, uh, safety guard again, maybe that was just a formality that he knew would be rejected. Or maybe when Jamukha offered to be killed without shedding blood, that was a formality that he thought would not be followed through.

Lex Fridman 52:05 Nevertheless, uh, to me, just reading your work and understanding this history, this relationship seems like a really, really important relationships that defines the nature of loyalty-

Jack Weatherford 52:17 Yes.

Lex Fridman 52:17 ... and for Chingish.

Jack Weatherford 52:19 I would say in both negative and positive ways, it was the most important relationship of his adulthood aside from Börte. But that relationship really did not seem to have many negative aspects. They sometimes disagreed on things, but small things. Uh, so she was po- she was by him and she was positive in every regard so far as we know forever. Although she was not submissive, but she was always on his side. And Jamukha, he was just a little too hot-headed for me, you know, I mean, (skratt) in my evaluation of, of him that, uh, these things like, "Oh, we're gonna drop down on the market and we're gonna come through the smoke hole, kill everybody." You know? And he had a flair for the dramatic, even in a way giving the gold belt to Timujin. But Jamukha also, he explained himself at the end of life, and he said, "You know, we both lost our father, but I also lost my mother. And you had a strong mother to raise you. I did not." He said, "You had Börte. You have a very strong wife to help you. And my wife..." He just used a word like prattler, like she just sort of complains and prattles along. "And we did not have a relationship." So I think something about that rings true, that there were some, some elements of that that were true. But he... Jamukha certainly didn't have the intelligence and the real genius for dealing with people, dealing with soldiers especially in warfo- warfare that, uh, Timujin had.

Lex Fridman 54:02 Yeah, there's... In that relationship, there's a contrast because Chingish Khan did not accumulate riches or, uh, accumulate power in a way that was for the sake of the riches or for the sake of the power.

Jack Weatherford 54:16 Yes.

Lex Fridman 54:16 It was always very practical in-

Jack Weatherford 54:18 Yes.

Lex Fridman 54:19 ... what is the way to maximize the success of this operation?

Jack Weatherford 54:24 Yes. Yes. He... I often wonder what happened to the gold belt. (skratt) It disappeared from the story, you know? And a gold belt doesn't just disappear, (skratt) you know? What happened to that? It's so interesting because Timujin was never interested in material goods. And when, as Chingish Khan is the ruler, uh, he became... In some ways, you could say he became the richest man in the world because he controlled the most wealth flowing through him. But he always dressed simply.He always lived in the tent and he said, "I eat what my soldiers eat. I dress the way my soldiers dress. I live the way my soldiers live. We are the same." So, yeah, he had no interest in the wealth. And Jamukha, uh, he had sided before with Wang Han, which was very advantageous because they had more trade goods and wealthier people and all. But he just didn't have the temperament, I think, that was gonna be helpful for Genghis Khan's continued rise.

Lex Fridman 55:23 That is one of the powerful things about the Genghis Khan stories. He came from nothing.

Jack Weatherford 55:27 From absolute nothing.

Lex Fridman 55:29 And he didn't, from what I see and understand, become sort of corrupted by the riches or change. He fundamentally remained the same-

Jack Weatherford 55:38 Yes.

Lex Fridman 55:39 ... person who does not have value for material things.

Jack Weatherford 55:42 Yes. He changed and matured in various ways over life, as we all do, or we hope we do. But he never became avaricious in any way. He was never greedy. He was never acquisitive. He kept the simple life. And, uh, part of the simple life for him meant that no one was allowed to write about him. No one was allowed to make his likeness. They couldn't paint a picture of him. They couldn't make a, a, a statue of him. No building could be built dedicated to him. No palace, no tomb, no temple of any sort. Not even at the point of death, uh, the simplest gravestone. Nothing, nothing.

Lex Fridman 56:19 It's fascinating that a kid, like a boy that doesn't know the world, would have the intelligence to understand how corrupting that is. Like the moment you, somebody builds a statue of you, it's like a slippery slope towards becoming, not seeing the world clearly. Not seeing, uh, surrounding yourself with sycophants that don't tell you the right, the, the, the information. Not being able to select the right people to lead the armies.

Jack Weatherford 56:46 Yes.

Lex Fridman 56:47 Or to l- uh, to lead the territories that you conquer. So it, it's interesting that he had the foresight of don't record, don't worship.

Jack Weatherford 56:57 Yes.

Lex Fridman 56:57 That's because that's a dangerous road to go down for a leader.

Jack Weatherford 57:00 And i- it's very hard to explain how he stuck to that, how he got it. You're so easily corrupted by power and, uh, um, and yet he maintained this very fierce attitude towards... His relationship was with the people around him, his guard mostly, the, or his private part of the army, you know, that went with him. The central part of the army. That was his relationship. His family. He had four wives. This was what was important to him. And in fact, no portrait was painted until 1278. Well, by then, he'd already been dead for 51 years. And then no statue until the 21st century.

Lex Fridman 57:46 Just incredible. But let's, uh, let's go to the document that you referenced several times, The Secret History.

Jack Weatherford 57:53 The Secret History is a very unusual document. And, and I happen to love it very much (laughs) . But I said, you know, Genghis Khan allowed nothing to be written about him in his lifetime. People couldn't take notes. Even the army wasn't... He, Genghis Khan ordered the invention of the alphabet for the Mongol people, and it was adapted from the Uyghur people. And, uh, so to this day it's often called the Uyghur alphabet, the Uyghur alphabet. So he had ordered that and he'd ordered his children to learn to read and write, and some did. I think most did not, but some did. But one of the things he did with every campaign, even the one at the market when he, uh, rescued Borte, was he always adopted one orphan and that child became a full member of the Mongol nation in his household. His mother, Hoelun, would raise the child. So she eventually had a whole household full of boys of dif- different tribes, but they all became very high ranking members of the government. And one was a Tatar boy who turned out not to be so great as a soldier, uh, but he could read and write. He was the best. And later, eventually he became the supreme judge appointed by Genghis Khan, of course. And so when Genghis Khan died, he recognized it was important not just to write down the law. That's all Genghis Khan allowed to be written in blue books, only the law, nothing about him or campaigns or military anything. But, uh, Shigi Hutuk was his name. Shigi Hutuk realized that this was gonna be lost, that this is a great historic thing that has happened, so he compiled the work. Part of it, he, I don't know, other people contributed, helped him. It's a little bit unclear. Uh, the Mongols, they don't specify. That's... They always tell you exactly where something happens so we know exactly where (laughs) it happened in Mo- Mongolia. You can still go to that spot where he wrote it. That's very (laughs) important to the Mongols. Uh, and we also know it's the year of the mouse, so it was, uh, 1228. Genghis Khan had died in '27. So he wrote down... It begins with what we would say are the, uh, the myths. Although I'm not sure they're myths, but the origins of myths. It begins with the marriage of gray-blue wolf with a tawny deer. Then some people say, "Well, that's some kind of myth." It's totemic. And Mongols mostly, they look at me, I asked them about this, they said, "What? He was named (laughs) Blue-Gray Wolf, she was named Tawny Deer. They married." You know? (laughs) Very practical about it, and they think they're real people. Maybe they were or not, I don't know. But so this earlier history is just the genealogy as it should be. Who knows? But it's also in there because, like Bodonchar, they call him Bodonchar the Fool, the ancestor of Temujin. He's cast out because he's just so...... dumb. The rest of the family doesn't want him. And his father is, is undetermined who he was. He kidnapped a Uyghur woman. She has this child who becomes an ancestor of Temujin. So it's a confusing mess, but I, I tend to think it's probably accurate. It has a lot of good information. And by the time you get to the life of Temujin, the reason we know these intimate things is because that person, Chingishutuq, he was there sleeping in the same ger with the people. So we even see in there, he will record instances where Börte sits up in bed and tells her husband, "Okay, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. You can't do this anymore. We can't take..." (laughs) You know, uh, it's all recorded, right? So it's a very intimate document.

Lex Fridman 1:01:32 Mm-hmm.

Jack Weatherford 1:01:32 And this is one reason that it was secret. It was only for the family. They were trying to uphold Genghis Khan's prohibition against putting out information about their family. So it was secret for a very long time, so much so that scholars began to think it didn't exist. And then in the 19th century, a Russian academic who was working in, uh, China at the time, in Beijing, he discovered a manuscript which was very, very odd, that people didn't think was anything because it's all Chinese characters, but it makes no sense in Chinese. But he recognized, but if you read it, pronounce it, it makes sense in Mongolian.

Lex Fridman 1:02:17 (laughs)

Jack Weatherford 1:02:17 And so (laughs) it was in this code that had been used to record the information in Chinese.

Lex Fridman 1:02:23 So they were recording the sounds?

Jack Weatherford 1:02:26 The sounds, correct. They used Chinese characters to record sounds-

Lex Fridman 1:02:30 Yeah.

Jack Weatherford 1:02:31 ... which is always problematic in some little areas. You're (laughs) not exactly sure what the name is or something like that. But, uh, it was a very unusual document. And then once they found it, they, they realized that some of the Persian documents had incorporated part of that already. So that was very helpful to me 'cause some of the Persians I trust very much, and, uh, I like their work very much. And so it was helpful that it had already existed, and all of it, some of it existed in, uh, Mongolian, other Mongolian sources that were written later. Some of it was, uh, just incorporated. So it seemed to be, uh, fairly genuine, but it wasn't 100% pure. It had... Little things had happened to it along the way. Uh, some things had been snipped here or there, and a few words changed or... Like sometimes for Temujin, they call him Genghis Khan. Well, he wasn't a Han then. And sometimes they call him Han, which is like chief, and other times Khagan, which is emperor. Well, in Mongolia (laughs) it's a big difference, you know? So there are little things like this that move around that you're not sure why, but it's a document that I have great faith in. It was not published in English until 1982, but Francis Woodman Cleaves at Harvard University translated it in the '50s. It was ready for publication, and he was having trouble with the publisher, and so it didn't appear for nearly 30 years. There were supposed to be two volumes. The first volume is the translation. The second volume was going to be the, uh, notes. And the second volume was lost. To this day, it hasn't been found. I would love to see that, but, uh, anyway, it... Now it's in all languages just about in the world.

Lex Fridman 1:04:14 Can you clarify? So there's two volumes. The 19th century Chinese manuscript covers the first volume.

Jack Weatherford 1:04:23 Uh, yes. That was translated and then published by Harvard University. But the notes were just the notes from the scholar, Francis Woodman Cleaves. Those were his notes, not Mongolian notes.

Lex Fridman 1:04:34 Gotcha.

Jack Weatherford 1:04:34 There, there are Chinese notes that went with it because the Chinese had trouble understanding a lot of things. And it, and they also, they disapproved of some things, so they would try to put their own notes in the margins to kind of correct the story and explain away why the Mongols women would be often marrying their stepson. It just did not match with Confucian ethics, you know? So there are several things like that that they try to skip around, but so it's interesting just to read the Ming Dynasty notes that are attached to it.

Lex Fridman 1:05:09 Mm-hmm.

Jack Weatherford 1:05:10 But the document itself, Mongolian Ɓulgan sorich, it's just so important. And for me, it was the guiding document. I didn't want to be guided by anything else first. Everything else I would check or correlate and fill in blanks and give more information. But I went to Mongolia to travel around to those places because they are so exact in there, and to feel it. And it's so important, I think, because, you know, history does not live in books. History does not live in archives or even libraries, as much as I need them for my work. But history lives in the people. History lives in the memory of the people and their culture. And for example, the episode with the kidnapping of Börte, so I went to that place and I didn't know when it happened, what season it happened. It was very important for figuring out the births that came afterwards (laughs) and other events that were being correlated. Very important to me. And so I'm just talking to the people who live in that valley, the nomads there. They said, "Oh, it's clear. It, it was the winter." I said, "Oh, where did you read that?" Said, "No, Granny Khwagchin was on the ground, and she could feel the vibrations." She said, "Look, this is summertime now. You're not gonna feel any vibrations. The ground here is so soft." Suddenly, a whole important piece that I've been searching for just came together from some nomad sitting there next to his horse.

Lex Fridman 1:06:43 (laughs)

Jack Weatherford 1:06:44 And he was absolutely right. It could only happen in the winter. I mean, that, that also correlates with the time that reading was done, so it correlates with other historic factors. But then that gave me the, the time basis for figuring out a lot of other things. History lives in the people.

Lex Fridman 1:06:59 Just to linger on that point, you visited different places that were important to the story-

Jack Weatherford 1:07:06 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:07:06 ... of Genghis Khan. What did it feel like? What are some memorable things about just the experience of standing there?

Jack Weatherford 1:07:16 Yeah. I really set out mostly to visit the cities he had conquered across Central Asia (laughs) and all. And there was so little to learn. I mean, everything was kind of known of whatever the chroniclers had recorded. The archeologists had re- found whatever they had found. And I get there, and he hadn't spent much time there. He didn't identify with it. I wasn't feeling anything. But in Mongolia, I would go to these places and I would know if Genghis Khan came back today, he would know exactly where he is. There's no road, there's no sign, there's no building, there's no, uh, power line going to... Nothing. And just to smell the air, to feel it, to see the animals and to see what, well, what kind of animals live here, what kind of plants are growing here, you begin to get a, a feeling for how he was thinking. And then you begin to see, "Ah, I know which direction they came from. The only direction they could come from was that way." You, you begin to see it and his life starts to unfold in a very dramatic way that I have the text, but the text is like, it has no scenery, no props, nothing like that. The Mongols all understand their way of life. They don't like, uh, need to explain anything. They know which way the ger faces with the sun, and they know all these things. But for me, that's how I learned it. It was from being with the people. It was the most important thing. And this was in... Starting in the 1990s. And the people, they were... At this time, they were amazed that, uh, I would come. The Soviet era had just ended. Socialism had, was just ending. Democracy was starting, and Genghis Khan had been forbidden to them for almost the entire century. And every known descendant of Genghis Khan was killed in Mongolia. Following the secret history, that became the key to writing what I wrote. Take the history, which is difficult to understand. You have to go over and ƒ"n iding, I often never understand different parts or, or I change my mind and think it was yes, now it's no. And, and, uh, but The Secret History is a valuable document. And to me, also, it's the opening document of Mongolian written language. And I think it's very important how do people begin their written language.

Lex Fridman 1:09:40 Mm-hmm.

Jack Weatherford 1:09:41 And they begin it with the words, uh, (foreign language) . From highest heaven came the destiny of the Blue Wolf, who was married to the tawny Deer, and their descendants, who came from the great sea to live at the base of Mount Burkhan Khaldun.

Lex Fridman 1:10:03 And then integrating the, the spiritual elements of nature, the mountains and the great sea, and this kind of just like a deep connection to nature that they have.

Jack Weatherford 1:10:15 Mongolia is a world that, for the most part, is the same as when Genghis Khan was there. We cannot say that for hardly any other place in the world. Uh, I mean, certainly not for America, where just a few hundred years ago, it was entirely different. People, languages, everything. But you can't say it for, for London or Moscow or, or Constantin... Istanbul, Constantinople, uh...

Lex Fridman 1:10:39 (laughs) .

Jack Weatherford 1:10:39 All of these things have changed so much. But Mongolia is still Mongolia. It's one of the largest countries in the world in, in space, uh, with f- the fewest number of people, about today, 3.3 million. And they're spread out, and they live in their environment in such an intimate way. This was important for learning about Genghis Khan, how he thought, how he hunted, how he strategized for war. You learn that from the people today because they are still there. They're still living.

Lex Fridman 1:11:10 What's the open Mongolian steppe like? As we return to the feeling of Temujin and Genghis Khan, what's it like looking at this place that has not changed since this time?

Jack Weatherford 1:11:22 The first thing I think about the steppe is that you can see forever in every direction. There's no building, nothing to stop your line of view, and it's like being in the ocean in many ways. So you have this extremely open space, and the wind is usually blowing through it, but it's extremely fresh. It's coming out of Siberia, it's coming out of the Arctic. It sweeps down across Mongolia. Uh, cold as the dickens sometimes, but it's always fresh.

Lex Fridman 1:11:53 (laughs)

Jack Weatherford 1:11:53 Always fresh. So you have the, the wind coming in. You have the smell of the wind, but also then there's grass. The smell of grass becomes very important. Now, because of the particular location, from one year to another, one area may have grass one year and th- and then drought the next year, another area has gra-... So you don't always know. If it's not grass, it's dust. You have dust going in. The dust doesn't smell so good (laughs) . It doesn't feel so good. Uh, but that's, uh, just one more part of the country. The waters are mostly pure. Now unfortunately, there has been pollution in, in this century from mining in several areas. But even when I was there, or even today when we go to some place like the Selenge River where we talk about the Merkid Livot. So it's a place of pure waters, and that's how Mongolians define their world is by the water. They don't... Genghis Khan does not give lands to his sons to rule. He gives waters and people to rule. They do not refer to the Earth as land. They refer to the Earth as ƒ"*Le.... ocean, the sea. And so water is very important, and to learn the rules about water. You don't camp by water. If you camp by water, your animals and you are gonna be polluting it, messing it up. So they're back, maybe in our modern terms, about a kilometer back. You take the animals to the river to drink, and then you take them away. You do not bathe in that river. You take the water away from the river, and you bathe away from the river so you do not pollute the river. The rules are very strict and very clear, and they're from the time of Genghis Khan about how to deal with... Well, also, it's dangerous to live close to the river because there are flash floods in the summertime. You could suddenly have it, and it could wipe away if your camp is right there by the water. So the people, they live with nature in a way that I don't see anywhere else in the world. And even today with the changes with the cellphone and with the solar panels, and they can get TV out in the middle of the steppe, still they're living a similar life. The young people, of course, wanna drive a motorbike, but they're still herding cows and yaks and camels. If it's on a motorbike, okay, they're still doing it the Mongol way.

Lex Fridman 1:14:28 But then if we go to the time of Temujin, uh, Genghis Khan, another component is the horses. Can we talk about their relationship with the horse? And I'm thinking about this open steppe, uh, from a young age, they've been... All Mongols are trained, uh, to master riding horses. As you write, "While standing on the horse..." So they learn how to (laughs) ride while standing on the horse from a young age. "While standing on the horse, they often jousted with one another to see who could knock the other off. When their legs grew long enough to reach the stirrups, they were also taught to shoot arrows and to lasso on horseback, making targets out of leather pouches that they would dangle from poles so that they would blow in the wind. The youngsters practiced hitting the targets from horseback at varying distances and speeds. The skills of such play proved invaluable to horsemanship later in life." Can you speak to the relationship of Genghis Khan and the Mongols to horses?

Jack Weatherford 1:15:36 The Mongol and the horse are inseparable. I wrote one line in, in a book that the editor removed because that was insulting. I said, "A Mongol and a horse, they live together, they know each other with every twitch of the muscle, and they smell the same." Well, I was saying it just not to be (laughs) insulting about anything, but they have that deep intimacy. And the horses do know their owner from the smell. This is very important. It's also important for Genghis Khan because they made the, the flags, what they call the Ɓult, out of the horse hair from their own horses. And so in battle, they used it for a very practical purpose, and that is the horses would return to their source because they knew the smell of their flag. It was other members of their own herd. So the language itself, I have never ever mastered all the words, just for the colors of horses, much less for all the other things about it. I can remember, Mongolians, being out there in the countryside, they say, "Oh, I want to learn English." I say, "Okay. Yeah, that's nice. Um, you teach me some words in, uh, Mongolia." I teach them the words, okay. They say, "What color is that horse?" I say, "Brown."

Lex Fridman 1:16:47 (laughs)

Jack Weatherford 1:16:47 They would say, "Brown." I'd say, "Yes, okay." "What color is that horse?" "Brown."

Lex Fridman 1:16:54 (laughs)

Jack Weatherford 1:16:54 Then they say, "But, but you said this color was brown. What color is this?"

Lex Fridman 1:16:57 Yeah.

Jack Weatherford 1:16:58 I say, "Well..." (laughs) I mean, I, I, I... It's just amazing. I mean, they have words based on sort of how smooth the coloring is and the, the variation in the texture and all the different... Today in England, sometimes you can put them together. We say like yellow-brown or brown-brown or bl- You know, but the words for horses by, of course, by sex, and then they, they have three because they have geldings, and so they're very important, too. And by age, and by whether or not they've reproduced in the case of the females, all these things are important parts of the horse. And the horse, a few years ago, the, a presidential candidate ran under the slogan, "Raised in the dust of many fast horses." It just resonates with the Mongolian spirit, and the dust itself is important. The Mongolians, they will wipe the sweat and the dust off the horse and wipe it onto their own forehead, which is the most sacred part of the body where the soul resides. This is how intimate the relationship is with the horses. And they're hard on them in some ways. They train them very well. They ride them very hard. But the horses are also trained for that. They use a very small crop. There's a, it's a little bit like a stick with a slight whip at the end that they hit the rump of the horse, never anything else. They're horrified at Western people who use metal spurs and, uh, metal to harm the horse in the stomach. And to harm the head of a horse, they say it's a capital crime. I mean, obvi- I don't know anyone who was ever executed for it. But you never ever harm a horse's head. So the horses are important in every way, even religiously important with the making of the fermented horses milk, that the mother goes out every morning, and she throws some to each of the four directions to start the day. And they use it for every kind of thing that... But, you know, some things puzzled me, that in my watching, I remember one day being with a very nice family. It happened to be on a gelding day when they were out there gelding the...... would-be stallions who don't get to be stallions. But, uh, the, one of the... Uh, this f- family, they had a bunch of boys and, uh, only think there were about one or two girls. There were, like, four or five boys. And one boy was maybe, uh, 11 years old. He fell from the horse. You could see it, not so far away. He fell from the horse and he didn't get up. No one moved. In fact, they all kind of turned attention away. And I thought, "What am I supposed to say? This boy fell down, somebody go get him." No. And then the boy was trying to hobble back. He still had the reins to his horse. He was... Right, but he couldn't remount. And he was trying to hobble back. So his little brother went out to help him come in, and they came into the ger and they sat down. The mother just turned her back. And I'm thinking, "How on earth can you do this? This is a child. This is your chi-" You know, but two weeks later, by chance, another boy who is practicing for Naadam, the annual races, like this boy had been doing, he was off in an area right close to a forested mountain area. And the horse bolted, took off through the woods. He was knocked off by a tree and then the horse went deeper into the woods. The boy followed him and the boy became lost. The boy was 12 years old. He was lost for two weeks and he lived. I would have died in 48 hours. He lived. He said, well, he slept in the daytime when it was warm. He walked at night when it was cold. Even though this was the summertime, the nights can be quite cold, especially on a mountain. And he sang loudly all night long to keep the wolves away and he knew what to eat and then he walked until he found water moving and then he would follow that water down to the ne- He lived. And I realized the boy falls from the horse, his mother's not gonna be there. She knows that. And it's probably hard for her, too, to see her boy suffer, but she knows.

Lex Fridman 1:21:13 Just a small tangent. Uh, there's a wrestler named Kerrie Collett, and he tells this story about mental toughness that the first time he saw truly mentally tough people was when he visited, uh, Mongolia for a wrestling tournament. And he remembered that they were taking showers in ice-cold water. And, you know, all the other wrestlers that would take the shower and then when the water hits them, you could see a little grimace. With the, with the Mongols, there was just noth- it, it was emotionless. Sort of like, uh, ice-cold water or any other kind of hardship-

Jack Weatherford 1:21:52 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:21:53 ... it, you build a hardness to that.

Jack Weatherford 1:21:56 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:21:57 And I suppose that falling from the horse is just an example of that.

Jack Weatherford 1:22:00 Yes, yes.

Lex Fridman 1:22:00 There's a mental hardness and a mental toughness.

Jack Weatherford 1:22:03 You have to be able to s- to take care of yourself. And with the weather, for example, the... Often, in, in that time and still today, some people, if they can have the privacy to do it, they... The men will strip naked in the first heavy snow and roll around in the snow in order to prepare for the coming winter.

Lex Fridman 1:22:22 (laughs)

Jack Weatherford 1:22:23 And I, and-

Lex Fridman 1:22:23 Yeah.

Jack Weatherford 1:22:24 ... the valley where I live, the wrest- a lot of wrestlers come there to train in the summertime for the competition. And, and the water's very cold coming down from the mountain. And every day, when there's a break, they go down. They take... Again, they do not get in the water, never. But they take the water and they pour the cold water over themselves. And yes, that's refreshing to them. Refreshing.

Lex Fridman 1:22:49 Well then, uh, getting back to the horses. The value they had for the horses and the horse riding skill they developed throughout their life created one of the most unstoppable military forces in history. So if we just talk about the mounted archery-

Jack Weatherford 1:23:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:23:04 ... that they've employed in war. Um, the Mongols were able to do targeted shooting accurately at 200 meters or more while riding fast, you know, uh, up to speeds of 60 kilometers an hour, I read. So, uh, there's a lot to say. Like, y- you know, you have to time... And just watching some of the videos, it's just incredible how stable you can be on top of a horse. And I guess you're supposed to be shooting at a moment of the gallop when all four of the feet of the horse are off, off the ground. And so you have to time all of that. You have to position your body to maintain balance and then there's the skill of the actual holding and shooting the bow accurately. And there's obviously the technology of the bow, the composite bow, the recurve bow. They've also, I read, used crossbows later. They've adapted the technology.

Jack Weatherford 1:23:57 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:23:57 And there's a particular kind of, uh, thumb draw that you use for shooting with a composite bow that works for a horse. (laughs) 'Cause the thing is bouncing up and down, right? So you have to, like, not drop the arrow. It's just incredible to be able to shoot while the horse is going 60 kilometers an hour. Anyway, can you speak to this kind of exceptional excellence that the Genghis Khan and the Mongols had for, uh, m- riding horses and, uh, engaging in war, uh, o- off of the horse?

Jack Weatherford 1:24:31 The Mongol, the horse, and the bow were a perfect combination and it was the most lethal weapon known to the world before the modern era. It was incredible, the synchronization and the timing of the movements and also the years of skill. The fact that from absolute birth, the Mongols would be on a horse. And by three years old, they would probably be riding alone on the horse. Now, when I first went to Mongolia in the 1990s, at that time, all jockeys on horses for races had to be under six years old. That was the age limit. The cutoff was six years old at that time. And so you had some as three years old racing out there. It's absolutely incredible. And of course, at that, at that age, they can't even have a saddle because it can't even be used. So they're just... All they're doing is staying on the horse. The horse has been trained to do what it has to do-

Lex Fridman 1:25:28 (laughs)

Jack Weatherford 1:25:28 ... and they just stay on it. But by staying on it, they, they learn the horse, they become one.... and not just one horse with one rider, but one rider with several horses. They, usually five is the number that you should have, uh, for you when you go off to battle. And this ability they did shoot. You have to defend your animals. There are wolves around, there are fox and other thing, and in some areas, there were even tigers and, uh, uh, other animals that would come in. And you had to be able to shoot to defend it against other people who might be raiding you. So they became excellent archers. They had composite bows that were very powerful, much more powerful than those of most sedentary people. Now, I say all that 'cause it's very important, but those are all sort of nomadic traits of the great steppe anyway. I mean, in an earlier version, you had the Huns who came out of Mongolia. And Hun is just the Mongolian word for human, Hun. That's, to this day, that's what they say for a human being. So they came out of Mongolia, and, uh, uh, all the early Turkic groups came out of Mongolia. And they had the similar skills. So you have this perfect weapon, but also you have to have perfect strategy in how to coordinate it and organize it and use it. And this is where the genius that I cannot explain (laughs) at all, but the genius of Genghis Khan came in. Other people, I think, were v- had been very good in earlier times, a number of Turkic leaders, and also, um... or even Attila the Hun who, of course, was actually born in the West, but, but they were charismatic leaders and very dramatic leaders. And it wasn't that they were so excellent in their strategy, they were very good in warfare, and that's what carried them through. Genghis Khan's army was extremely good in warfare, but small. He never got probably above 100,000. At the most, 110,000. That is small. When you're going against China that has millions just in the army, not to count and the country, and you're going against Russia, and you're going against the Middle East and Persia and Afghanistan and these areas, your whole army has to be as finely tuned as each rider, each bow, and each horse. That's the weapon. But the army becomes the super weapon of Genghis Khan, how he organized it and how he used it and the strategies that he put together.

Lex Fridman 1:28:04 Yeah, when you have a small army, just think about that, a small army that conquered the world.

Jack Weatherford 1:28:13 It would fit in a stadium today in America.

Lex Fridman 1:28:18 So there's extreme efficient coordination of units, mostly cavalry, right?

Jack Weatherford 1:28:24 All cavalry.

Lex Fridman 1:28:25 Oh, it's all cavalry.

Jack Weatherford 1:28:26 He had no infantry and he had no, uh, baggage train. He had, uh, no backup commissary. Uh, early on, no engineer corps. Later, one was added much later. Uh, but no, all cavalry.

Lex Fridman 1:28:40 And, uh, so there's light cavalry and heavy cavalry, and, uh, they're breaking down units using the decimal system, 10, 100, 1,000. So, um, there's a kind of hierarchy where you delegate authority, but to the degree there's commands, they must be followed strictly.

Jack Weatherford 1:29:03 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:29:03 So for, like, extremely efficient, accurate, precise deployment of these, uh, troops in the battlefield and the dynamic movement of the troops, including all the interesting tactics that were utilized, you have to have really good communication and coordination. And for that, orders must be followed.

Jack Weatherford 1:29:23 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:29:25 Uh, is there something to speak to that? Like, how do you tune this kind of system to where everybody is working together so well?

Jack Weatherford 1:29:31 I think the first point is the extreme loyalty of the people whom Genghis Khan chose. His kinsman, as we said, had deserted him. His anda was a questionable relationship. But the, all the others that he found were just common people, herders or hunters, very common. And they were loyal to him and never, ever revolted against him. Never betrayed him. So he had extreme loyalty. And then as you mentioned, he organized this decimal system, so the smallest unit of the army was the orloft, the 10, the squad of 10 men. They were put together and then the head of that squad, he had total control over it. But the men knew that they were going to protect each other. And they had to come back with every member or everybody. You don't leave anybody behind. So this was extremely important. So if you submit to the orders of the man in charge, you know that he's risking his own life for you also. And you know that your brother on the left and on the right is risking his life for you. The army was, they were organized with five horses each man. They had their bow and they had a lot of arrows, as many as they could have, but they also retrieved arrows at the end of their battle. And they also would retrieve the enemy arrows. This was a great advantage, by the way, when they hit Russia, because the Russians could not use Mongolian arrows. They couldn't knock them in their, in their bow. But the Mongols could use Russian arrows, but... So all these little things, but it's not even just the arrow now. Also, they had to carry needle and thread. Every soldier had to be able to sew. And sometimes that could be a torn garment, it could be a piece of skin or a wound that somebody has. It was a very odd thing when you think about the army of Genghis Khan and they're carrying everything themselves, they don't have any pack train behind them. And that one (laughs) of the things they have to carry is needle and thread in order t- to sew up things.

Lex Fridman 1:31:36 So complete self-reliance in that regard.

Jack Weatherford 1:31:38 Yes. They also carried dried dairy products.... arult, it's called. Where they dry curd and they can keep it for a couple of years even. But you dry it and then when you need it, you can put it in a flask of water. You ride all day, it joggles up and down, boom, boom, boom, and turns into a kind of thick protein. It's said that the Mongols could easily go three to five days without ever building a fire. They had enough food there with... So all these little things at the lowest level were important, as well at the highest level of his loyalty of his men to him. And it went all the