Why the Mongols Vanished After Conquering Everything

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]The Mongol Empire was the largest land empire in history. Bigger than Rome, bigger than anything before it. But here's the weird part. It was built by one man who started with nothing. No army, no kingdom, not even food. As a child, he survived by eating rats. And yet, within one lifetime, he conquered half the known world. So, how does someone go from starving kid to ruler of millions? And more importantly, why did it all disappear so fast? To understand that, we have to go back to a place where survival itself was never guaranteed.

[00:00:34]Somewhere around the year 1162, a baby named Timujin was born into a noble Mongol family. His father, Yasug, was a powerful tribal chief. Life was good.

[00:00:44]Then the Tarters, a rival tribe, poisoned Yasug, dead just like that.

[00:00:50]Everything changed. Timujin was about 8 years old. Overnight, the rest of the clan abandoned them. On the step, a tribe followed strength. A widow with small children couldn't lead warriors or protect the herd. So, the whole group decided they'd be better off without her. They packed up their tents and rode away. Without a tribe, you had no warriors to protect you and no herd to feed you. Tamujin's mother, Hoon, kept her children alive by digging up roots and catching fish from the river. A rival clan rides into their camp one morning and grabs Tumujin. They lock a heavy wooden collar around his neck, a thick plank designed to stop a prisoner from running or even lying down properly. He's a kid in chains, but one night he escapes and slips away in the dark. When he gets to a freezing river, he lies flat in the water with just his face above the surface while his captors search everywhere. One man walks right up to the riverbank, looks down, and sees the boy hiding there. For reasons nobody fully understands, he lets him go. Years later, when Timujin has an army, he tracks that man down and gives him a place in it. The Mongols had very long memories. You're alive. Barely.

[00:02:04]Good. Now, eat something. I'm going to make them pay for what they did to us.

[00:02:11]Right now, you can barely feed yourself.

[00:02:14]One day, mother, I'll unite every tribe on this step. Start by eating your fish.

[00:02:21]Tujin survived and slowly people started showing up. Followers drawn by his loyalty, his toughness, and something I couldn't quite explain. He was building something, but the step was full of powerful rivals who had been at this a lot longer. And most of them were stronger than him. If this is your kind of story, you'll probably want to subscribe. Anyway, to understand what he was up against, you have to understand the world he grew up in. See all the empty space on the map? That's the step. A massive flat grassland stretching from Eastern Europe all the way to China. For hundreds of years, dozens of nomadic tribes roamed across it, fighting each other over the same grass and animals. There was no king or government, nobody in charge, which meant nobody was safe. A family could lose everything overnight, their animals stolen, and their camp burned to the ground. If you were born here, your home was a felt tent your mom packed onto a cart every few weeks. Everyone trained with a bow on horseback from the age of about three. And every tribe prayed to a sky god called Tangari, who blessed the winners and abandoned the losers. The Chinese empires next door loved all this chaos. Millions of step warriors fighting each other meant they weren't fighting China. So, the Chinese made sure the tribes never united. In the imperial court, a minister unrolls a map of the step and jabs his finger at two tribes camped near each other. He sends wagons loaded with silk and silver to the first tribe. The gifts by their trust. Then his messenger whispers that the tribe next door is planning to raid them. The next morning, the exact same wagons roll up to that second tribe with the exact same gifts and the exact same lawn. Within a week, both tribes are at war. Each one convinced they're defending themselves. The minister pours himself some tea. They'd been pulling this trick for centuries. How about we team up? Stop fighting. Share pasture. I shared pasture with the last guy who said that he stole my horses. I'm different. That's what he said. What if I marry my daughter to your son? Your daughter tried to stab my son last summer. She's spirited. Heart pass.

[00:04:41]Nobody could bring these people together until one boy raised in total poverty figured out how.

[00:04:50]The Tartars had murdered Timujin's father. The Kerit, another massive tribe, were led by a man called Tokru, who used to be Tujin's friend. Both had thousands of warriors. Tamujin was still the underdog. So, he did something nobody on the step had ever tried. He stopped caring about whose family you came from. On the step, the chief's son always got the best job. That was the rule. Tamujin threw it out. If a shepherd's kid fought better than a prince, the shepherd's kid got promoted.

[00:05:24]He shared loot from battles equally, too. Instead of letting the big bosses grab the best stuff first, you promoted a shepherd over me. He's a better commander than you. My family has led warriors for three generations. And he won me three battles in one summer. Huh?

[00:05:44]The other chiefs won't stand for this.

[00:05:46]The other chiefs already work for me.

[00:05:49]You're going to get yourself killed.

[00:05:52]People keep saying that. And yet, and when he beat a rival tribe, he didn't wipe them out. He split their people up and mixed them into his own ranks so they couldn't regroup and rebel. Your enemy's son rode beside your son. Over time, they stopped being enemies. This was completely new on the step. Every other conqueror before him had either slaughtered the losers or pushed them out. Tumujin absorbed them. Within a few years, warriors from half a dozen different tribes were fighting side by side under the same commanders, and most of them had been trying to kill each other a season earlier. In 12003, Tahru turned on Tumujin. Convinced he was getting too powerful. Big mistake.

[00:06:35]Tumujin destroyed the Kit in a battle that lasted 3 days. Within 2 years, every rival had fallen. In 126, all the tribes gathered at a great assembly called Kural Thai. Basically, a huge meeting where step leaders made big decisions together. They gave Tumujin a new name, Genghask Khan, meaning roughly universal ruler. Every tribe on the step now answered to one man. And right next door sat kingdoms with enormous walls and millions of people. Genghaskhan had noticed.

[00:07:13]Those kingdoms had every advantage on paper. Walled cities, trained soldiers, way more people. The Mongols had horses and bows.

[00:07:22]Turns out that was more than enough.

[00:07:25]Every Mongol warrior had been training on horseback with a bow since he was a toddler. They could hit a target at full gallop. Each warrior kept three to five spare horses and swapped between them mid ride, so the animals never got tired. A Mongol army could cover 100 miles in a single day. No other army on Earth came close. Their favorite battlefield trick was the fake retreat.

[00:07:49]They'd charge at the enemy, then suddenly panic and run away. The other army would think they'd won and chase after them. But chasing meant breaking formation, spreading out, losing all discipline. And that's when the Mongols would spin around and fire arrows into the scattered mass. It worked almost every single time. General, the Mongols are retreating. Ha, I knew they'd run after them. Sir, shouldn't we hold formation? They're running away. This is our chance. It's just the last three armies that chased them all got wiped out. We're different. That's what they said, sir. Charge.

[00:08:30]2 hours later, the general's army no longer existed. The whole army was organized into neat groups of 10, 100, a thousand, and 10,000. Orders moved down using flags and signal arrows, so every soldier knew exactly where to be, even in the chaos of battle. But the sneakiest weapon arrived before the army did. Mongol spies rode ahead to spread terrifying stories about what happened to cities that fought back. By the time the real soldiers showed up, half the enemy was already shaking. Outside a small fortress on the edge of the step, the defenders line up on their walls and watch the horizon. A dust cloud appears.

[00:09:11]Then shapes. Thousands of riders stretching as far as anyone can see. The fortress commander feels sick. His whole garrison has 200 men. But what he doesn't know is that half the riders out there are stuffed dummies tied to spare horses. Sacks of straw in armor bouncing along on saddles. The Mongols used this trick constantly, making armies look two or three times their real size. Several kingdoms surrendered without a fight.

[00:09:42]Half the army they were terrified of was basically scarecrows.

[00:09:48]The first target was western Shia, a kingdom sitting right on the Mongol border in what's now northwest China.

[00:09:54]Big walls, confident defenders. The Mongols had never attacked a walled city before and had no idea how to get through. So they tried everything. One commander ordered his men to dam a river and redirect the water straight at the city walls. The idea was to flood the defenses and wash them away. It half worked. The water damaged the walls, but also flooded the Mongol camp. They learned from the mess, captured enemy engineers, and forced them to build proper siege weapons. By 129, Western Shia surrendered.

[00:10:28]Next came the Jin Dynasty, which ruled northern China and had about 50 million people. The Mongols had maybe 1 million total. How many soldiers do they have?

[00:10:39]Maybe a 100,000, sir. We have 600,000.

[00:10:44]What exactly is a problem? They move faster than anything I've ever seen.

[00:10:48]They're nomads. They live in tents. They also just conquered Western Shia.

[00:10:54]Western Shia is tiny. They've learned to break walls and they're bringing engineers.

[00:11:00]I'm sure our walls will hold. The walls did not hold. The Mongols picked up new tricks with every city they took.

[00:11:08]Prisoners who knew how to build catapults were put straight to work.

[00:11:12]Gunpowder weapons, they figured those out, too. And one by one, the fortresses along the Great Wall started falling.

[00:11:20]Some were stormed, others were starved out, and more than a few commanders looked at what was coming and simply opened the gates. The Mongols poured through the Great Wall, and once they were past it, northern China was wide open. City after city fell in rapid succession. By 1215, they'd captured the Jin capital, modern-day Beijing. But just as Gangaskhan was finishing up in China, a message arrived from the west.

[00:11:47]Someone very far away had made a spectacularly stupid decision.

[00:11:56]After smashing through China, Genghaskhan actually wanted peace with his western neighbors, the Quarasmian Empire. A huge and wealthy kingdom covering most of modern-day Iran and central Asia seemed like a perfect trading partner. So he sent a caravan of about 450 merchants to a Quarasmian border city called Otar loaded with goods, a peace offering. The governor of Otrar, a greedy man named Enelchuk, took one look at all those riches and couldn't help himself. He accused the merchants of being spies, arrested every single one and took everything they had.

[00:12:33]Genghaskhan, trying very hard to stay calm, sent three diplomats to the Quarasmian ruler, Sha Muhammad. The message was simple. Punish your governor, return our goods, and we'll forget the whole thing. The Sha's response was unbelievable. He killed one of the diplomats. Then he shaved the beards off the other two, which in Mongol culture was a deep humiliation, like spitting in someone's face. Then he had all 450 of the original merchants executed. Ma, the sha has killed our ambassador. He did what? He also shaved the beards of the other two envoys and the merchants adorar.

[00:13:12]Executed all of them. I sent a trade caravan. I asked for peace. He seems to have chosen war. Then he will get the last war his empire ever fights. I'll ready the horses. In Mongol law, ambassadors were sacred. Genghaskhan stopped his entire war against China mid-c campaign and turned his full army west. The Mongols invaded in 1219 with everything they had. Samarand, one of the richest cities in the world, surrendered in days. Buchar burned. The Sha fled in panic and eventually died hiding on a tiny island in the Caspian Sea, sick and alone. His entire empire, which had taken generations to build, was completely wiped off the map in about 2 years. All because one greedy governor couldn't keep his hands off a trade caravan. Genghaskhan had now conquered everything from China to Persia. But he was getting older and one very big question kept him up at night.

[00:14:18]What happens to all this when I'm gone?

[00:14:24]In 1227, Genghask Khan died around 65 years old. Most of them spent on horseback conquering everything in sight. Now came the hard part. The Mongol Empire had no automatic rule about who takes over. Any male relative could claim the throne. So every time Akan died, the whole empire held its breath. Genghis had picked his third son Our as successor. But Mongol tradition said it had to be confirmed at a Kural Thai first. Until then, senior widows held real power during the gap. And Genghask Khan's youngest son, Toflui, kept the seat warm as regent for 2 years. There was tension. Everyone knew Tlui was the better fighter, but Our was better at keeping people happy and holding things together. And right now that mattered more. In 1229, Ogurude was confirmed as great Khan. And he turned out to be one of the most generous leaders who ever lived. Dangerously generous. He'd give away entire treasuries to visiting merchants, hand out military budgets as gifts, and throw feasts that lasted for days. He also built the empire's first proper capital at Kakorum, a city in central Mongolia that became a crossroads for traders, diplomats, and craftsmen from across the known world. Under Ogur, the empire got its first real postal system, a census for tax collection, and a network of granaries to prevent famines. The Mongols were learning how to govern, not just conquer. But Our had one serious weakness. He drank constantly and his family couldn't stop him. You drank 12 cups last night. I only had six. You're using cups the size of bowls.

[00:16:16]Technically, they are balls. The deal was six cups.

[00:16:22]And I had six big cups. I'm getting you a thimble. I'll just drink faster.

[00:16:30]The machine held together. The Jyn dynasty in China was finally finished off in 1234.

[00:16:36]And then Ogadeay pointed his armies somewhere the Mongols had never gone before. West deep into Europe. The Europeans had absolutely no clue what was coming.

[00:16:51]Mongol armies under Pat Khan, one of Gangghdan's many grandsons, and a brilliant general called Subutai pushed west through Russia. They burned everything. In 1240, they destroyed Kiev, one of the biggest cities in Eastern Europe. Then they kept going into Poland, into Hungary. Most Europeans didn't even know who these people were. A combined Polish and German army marched out to meet them at the Battle of Legit in April 1241.

[00:17:23]Crushed, done in a single afternoon. One day later, hundreds of miles away in Hungary, King Bella's army faced the Mongols at the Battle of Mohi. Same result. Two major European armies destroyed in two days in two different countries. The Poles lost when yesterday. What about the Hungarians also yesterday? Different battle. Two armies in the two days. They move faster than our messengers. So, who's going to stop them? I was hoping you had an idea.

[00:17:57]My idea was to hope that the Poles would stop them. We about it. Total panic.

[00:18:04]Kings packed bags. The Pope wrote desperate letters. There was nothing between the Mongols and Western Europe.

[00:18:11]Then a Mongol messenger arrived with news from home. Our goodday Khan was dead. Too much drinking had finally caught up with him and Mongol traditions said all senior leaders had to ride home to choose the next great con. So the Mongols just turned around and left.

[00:18:29]Europe was saved by one man's drinking problem.

[00:18:35]Baghdad in the 1250s was the intellectual capital of the world, center of the Islamic Golden Age, where scholars, poets, and scientists had gathered for 500 years. Libraries crammed with books, markets overflowing with gold. If you wanted to find the smartest people alive, this was the place. The Mongols were heading straight for it. Led by Hu Leu, a grandson of the great Khan himself. They sent a message to the city's ruler, the caiff al- Mustasan. The caiff was basically the most important leader in the entire Muslim world. Like the Pope, but for Islam. The message was simple. Surrender or else. My Mongols have sent to surrender and you'll live. Surrender Baghdad. They're bluffing. They flattened the Huarasmian Empire, Samarand, Buchar, all of it.

[00:19:30]>> We are the center of Islam. God will protect us.

[00:19:34]>> They worship the sky. They don't care about that. God did not protect Samaran.

[00:19:40]>> Send the Mongols away. Tell them Baghdad does not kneel.

[00:19:44]>> I really wish you would reconsider.

[00:19:47]>> I have spoken.

[00:19:48]>> The caiff listened to the people who told him what he wanted to hear. That went about as well as you'd expect. H Lego's army surrounded the city and tore it apart in weeks. The legendary libraries holding centuries of knowledge about maths, medicine, astronomy, and philosophy were destroyed. The caiff was captured and killed. 500 years of history gone. But in 1260, the Mamluks, a powerful army from Egypt, defeated a Mongol force in modern-day Israel. the first real crack in the idea that the Mongols couldn't lose. Meanwhile, the wealthiest place on earth was still standing, southern China, and a Mongol prince named Kubla had a plan for that.

[00:20:36]Southern China was ruled by the Song Dynasty, a remarkably advanced civilization, fortified cities along massive rivers, a powerful navy with hundreds of warships, early gunpowder weapons. These people were seriously tough. Kubla Khan took on the job. But there was one hilariously awkward problem. The Mongols needed a navy. A horse people from a landlocked grassland building boats.

[00:21:04]My son have a navy. Fine, we'll build one. We're from the step. We ride horses. Then we'll learn to ride boats.

[00:21:16]Boats don't really work like horses. Get me Chinese ship builders. The Chinese are the ones we're fighting. Get me the ones we've already conquered. H, that might actually work. Kubli recruited engineers, ship builders, and generals from the parts of China the Mongols already controlled. He built a fleet from scratch. City by city, river by river. The songs were pushed back. It took 20 years, but by 1279, southern China fell. Kubla founded the Yuan dynasty, which meant the Mongols were now the official emperors of all of China. Riding high on success, Kublai tried to invade Japan. Twice, both times, he assembled one of the largest naval fleets the world had ever seen.

[00:22:05]Both times, massive typhoons smashed his ships to pieces. The Japanese called the storms Kamakaza, meaning divine wind, because they believed the gods had sent them. The greatest land empire in history beaten by the weather twice.

[00:22:23]Conquering the world turned out to be the easy part, though. Now somebody had to actually run it.

[00:22:31]The Mongols had conquered a territory stretching from the Pacific to Eastern Europe. Dozens of languages, dozens of religions, dozens of legal systems, all under the control of nomads who, until recently didn't even have their own writing system. The smart move might have been to burn it all down and start fresh. Instead, the Mongols did something nobody expected. They kept everything running. Conquered a city?

[00:22:57]The same officials who ran it yesterday still ran it today. They just answered to a Mongol governor. Now, you could keep your religion, too, whether you were Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or anything else, as long as you paid your taxes and prayed for the Khan.

[00:23:14]This was unusual for the time. Most conquerors forced their religion on everyone. The Mongols genuinely didn't care what god you worshiped. They had Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and shamans all living under the same laws.

[00:23:28]What mattered was loyalty and tax revenue. They built a network of roads and relay stations across the entire empire. Riders on fresh horses carried messages thousands of miles and weeks. A message could travel from China to Persia in under 2 weeks, faster than anything else in the world of the time.

[00:23:47]They created a special passport called a PISA, a metal tablet that worked like an access all areas pass. You showed it at any checkpoint and nobody bothered you.

[00:23:57]Bandits on the roads were hunted down by Mongol patrols, making the roots safer than they'd been in centuries.

[00:24:04]>> You You're a beaver?

[00:24:06]>> Yes. Please don't kill me. Huh? Kill you? You're coming with us. Where? East.

[00:24:13]The Han needs beavers. But my family is here. They're coming too. You'll have a workshop, a house, and materials. So, I'm a prisoner. You're an employee. A well-paid one.

[00:24:28]>> Do I have a choice?

[00:24:30]>> No, but you'll have silk. The most prized luxury in the empire was a fabric called gold briade, making it required Chinese silk, Tibetan gold, and master weavers from Baghdad. Three ingredients from three corners of the empire, all in one workshop. That one piece of cloth tells you everything about how connected this world had become.

[00:24:57]For centuries, the Silk Road had been a nightmare to travel. It was a network of ancient trade routes connecting China to Europe. Crawling with bandits, border taxes, and local warlords. Getting goods from one end to the other was basically a death wish. Then the Mongols took over and overnight the whole thing changed.

[00:25:16]For the first time in history, one single power controlled the entire route from the Pacific coast to the edge of Europe. Traders who used to bribe their way through dozens of hostile kingdoms could now travel under Mongol protection the whole way. Trade exploded with Chinese silk heading west and Persian spices heading east in quantities nobody had seen before. And it wasn't only goods moving along those roads. Ideas were traveling too. Printing technology from China. Medical knowledge bounced between civilizations. Gunpowder, which the Chinese had invented, started making its way toward Europe. The world was getting smaller fast. I just got back from China. Took me 4 months. 4 months?

[00:26:02]Last time I tried, it took me 2 years.

[00:26:05]Yeah, the Mongol roads are incredible.

[00:26:07]Fresh horses every 50 m. What about bandits? Mongol patrols. The bandits are more scared than we are.

[00:26:16]So, the people who burned half the world made it safe to travel?

[00:26:22]Yep.

[00:26:23]That's kind of weird. Tell me about it.

[00:26:28]Around 1271, a young merchant from Venice named Marco Polo set off for the court of Kubla Khan. He traveled for years and saw things no European had ever seen. Palaces covered in gold, cities bigger than anything back home, paper money, which Europeans hadn't even heard of. This era became known as the Pax Mongolica, Latin for Mongol peace, the first real age of globalization. But along those same roads, something else was traveling. Disease, the Black Death, a terrible plague that would eventually kill tens of millions across Europe, spread along Mongol trade networks. The very connections that made the empire great helped spread one of the worst disasters in human history. And before the plague even arrived, the empire itself was starting to crack.

[00:27:20]In 1259, the great monk Khan died. And here was the problem that had been baked into the Mongol system from the very beginning. No clear rule about who inherits. Any male relative could claim the throne. Two of Genghaskhan's grandsons both wanted the job. Kubli, who was busy conquering China, and his younger brother, Eric Bo, who controlled the Mongol homeland back on the step and thought the empire should stay true to its nomadic roots. Both brothers held their own Kural Thai. Both declared themselves Great Khan. Two great cons at the same time. The Empire had to pick a side. You've gone soft, brother. You wear silk. You eat Chinese food. I eat Chinese food in a palace that rules an empire. This step is our empire. Our grandfather rode horses, not sedan chairs. Our grandfather also wanted to rule the world. You can't do that from a tent. The other hanates agree with me.

[00:28:20]The other hanates will do whatever benefits them. They always have.

[00:28:25]>> You've forgotten what it means to be a mongol. I figured out what it means to be an emperor.

[00:28:33]In a camp on the Mongolian step, a young commander is staring at two letters. One from Kublike, promising gold, land, and a governorship in China, and one from Eric Bo, calling him a true Mongol and appealing to his honor. His lieutenant asks him which side they're joining. The commander holds both letters up. "Which one pays better?" he asks. The lieutenant points to Kublies. The commander burns the other one. Across the empire, hundreds of commanders were making the exact same calculation. Kubli won in 1264 when Eric Bo surrendered, but the damage was done. The empire cracked into four separate pieces. The Golden Horde controlled Russia and Eastern Europe. The Elcanate ran Persia and the Middle East. The Chagatai Kanate held Central Asia. and Kubla's Yuan dynasty ruled China. They shared a bloodline. They shared almost nothing else.

[00:29:35]Each of the four Kates was surrounded by the culture it had conquered and slowly quietly those cultures started swallowing the Mongols whole. In China, Kubla Khan's descendants adopted Chinese court ceremonies, hired Chinese advisers, and followed Chinese customs.

[00:29:52]Within a few generations, the grandchildren of step warriors spoke Chinese better than Mongolian. In Persia, the Ilanate converted to Islam and started living like Persian kings.

[00:30:03]On the step, the Chagatai Karnate couldn't agree on anything. Half wanted to stay nomadic. The other half wanted palaces with fountains. The AA held a banquet last night. Chinese music, Chinese poetry. So, he's the emperor of China. He's a Mongol.

[00:30:22]>> He's both.

[00:30:23]>> You can't be both. Our grandfathers slept under the sky.

[00:30:28]>> Our grandfathers conquered this place so we wouldn't have to sleep under the sky.

[00:30:34]>> And what happens when we forget how to write?

[00:30:37]>> Then I guess we're just Chinese.

[00:30:41]>> That's exactly what I'm afraid of. In a courtyard in the Yuan capital, a teenage Mongol prince is having a writing lesson. He's been living in the palace his whole life. The horse instructor, an old step warrior, watches him bounce around in the saddle and winces. "Grip with your knees," he says. The prince falls off. The instructor looks up at the sky. Genghaskhan conquered the world on horseback. His great great grandson can't stay on one. In the 1350s, a massive rebellion exploded across China.

[00:31:15]A man named Ju Yuang Jang, who grew up dirt poor as a monk's helper, rallied millions of Chinese rebels and drove the Mongols out. By 1368, the Yuan dynasty was finished. The Mongols were chased back to the step they came from. The Ilcanate had already collapsed in 1335.

[00:31:32]The Golden Horde was fading as Russian princes pushed back. But out of the wreckage, a warlord named Timur rose in Central Asia and built his own empire.

[00:31:43]Centuries later, Timur's descendant, Babur, founded the Mughal Empire in India. The name Mughal literally comes from the word Mongol. And a famous study claimed roughly one in every 200 men alive today carries DNA linked to Genghaskhan's family. The Mongols didn't disappear. They were absorbed by the very cultures they conquered. The bloodline is still out there. The Mongol Empire was honestly one of the craziest stories I've ever read about. But somehow Latin America almost becoming one giant country might be even crazier.