Genghis Khan was himself a tengrist but he was very religiously tolerant.
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In today’s terms, I think Khan would be considered secular in his administrative polities.
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http://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-bad-were-mongols.html This looks interesting: it compares several historical accounts.
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“According to Jack Weatherford in ‘Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World’ these figures are ‘preposterous’. David Morgan in ‘The Mongols’ is as sceptical, but less emphatic, regarding these estimates as not statistical information but instead ‘evidence of the state of mind created by the character of the Mongol invasion’.
Weatherford states that ‘conservative scholars place the number of dead from Genghis Khan’s invasion of central Asia at 15 million within five years’, however ‘even this more modest total…would require that each Mongol kill more than a hundred people’. If we took the chroniclers estimates, according to Weatherford this would mean ‘a slaughter of 350 people by every Mongol soldier’ (this would trump even the 87 people killed by Arnold Schwarzenegger during the course of the movie Commando).”
Even a conservative estimate at 15 million is pretty damn amazing.
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Without further research, I’d be satisfied with a:
15 million – 40 million
estimate for Khan’s body count.
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I’m going by “Conservative historian” vs a broader estimate.
This seems to put a range of 15 million – 40 million.
These are impressive numbers. I don’t see a benefit to sticking to 40 million with certainty just as I do not see a cost of the possibility of it being 15 million.
Cost/benefit analysis wise: I’m ok with the range. It’s an amazing amount of dead for so few warriors.
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I wonder if there was an increase in the calcium levels of the soil?
All of those people didn’t die in a normal time-scale. The bodies had to go somewhere.
So, there should be a HUGE spike in calcium deposits in the soil. That would definitely affect local vegetation.
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For historical purposes, I’d probably stick with the more conservative estimate of 15 million, with consequences that may have lead to up to 40 million dead as a consequence for the invasions.
It’s similar to how I’d treat any war casualties: You have the number directly killed and then the numbers dead as an indirect result.
I think both numbers are important to keep in their context and show up together.
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But this is my bias: There is a lot of hyperbole in news and historical accounts alike: and I try to push aside the hyperbole when I can to see something reasonable. Exaggeration sells but I prefer more modest estimates.
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It’s good to keep all of the numbers, the sources and the ranges: In the Wikipedia write up, the estimates are 151,000 – over 1,000,000. I consider both numbers are likely correct, and by having the upper and lower ranges, it allows all of the views of the conflict to be taken into account.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Tables
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Quite true, and people will debate the low and high numbers until they’re red in the face but if one accepts “this is an acceptable range” then discussions can move forward.
There’s so much exaggeration. I remember the Serbia/Albanian situation in the late 90s. I heard these numbers that would grow and grow and grow.
10,000!
100,000!
death camps!
all from political leaders, scientists, pundits, take your pick.
I remember when a team from Spain painstakingly went through the mass graves and counted the number of people.
The number they came up with was a little over 4000.
This is still a lot of people, but it’s not 100,000 people.
So, that leaves a range of 4000-10,000 but it’s not 100 ppl, nor is it 100,000 people.
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Quite true, quite true. It’s when people start talking strangely like, “Hitler never killed anybody”, when the person talking about Hitler killing people was referring to Nazi Germany under his rule.
It becomes a diversion tactic and stalls conversation.
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waaaait a minute… you like Hitler don’t you? Come on… admit it.. don’t be shy. You got a crush. I understand. He’s got a cool stache.
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Hitler’s a Justin Bieber and he has a strong fandom. People like his persona.
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