CLASSIC: The Hidden Tomb of Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan was one of the world's most successful conquerors, and his empire left an indelible mark across Eurasia. Yet upon his death his body was spirited away to an unmarked grave, and everyone associated with the burial -- so far as we know -- was put to death in an effort to keep the location secret. So what exactly happened to Genghis Khan? Could it be possible that someone actually knows where it is, and has somehow kept the location hidden for almost 800 years?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guys, let's start tonight's classic with a bit of a
Maya kulpa. It's pronounced Jengas Khan, not Ganghis Khan.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
How come that Ninja Turtle character's name is Ganghas Frog though, Okay,
riddle riddle me that bro.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Man, all these people want to come through and say, hey,
we've been pronouncing it wrong the whole History channel. Come on,
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, this is There are mysteries about how to pronounce
the name, and a lot of it is due to,
of course, translation into Western languages. But there is, believe
it or not, another mystery about Jengus or Ganghis Khan.
And uh, it's a mystery that is probably I don't know,

(00:46):
it might be solved, but the odds are against it.
Where the heck is this guy buried?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
I know, it's a much more juicy mystery than a
pronunciation mystery.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I mean, a guy who changed the world such that
such that his DNA is freaking everywhere the seed is.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, he said, y'all make as many statues as you want,
but you'll never find me.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
And Matt I like to picture him in that conversation,
just unnecessarily with like a Dracula style cape and he's
just like you'd never find me. But he doesn't move
from the courtroom. He just stands there with the Cape
and they all have to pretend he disappeared because he'll
kill them otherwise.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, let's jump in.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Hello, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 5 (01:59):
My name is My name is Noah.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
producer Paul the con decand but most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Let's start off on a high
note today, like up here, Sure, let's do ray me
fossil Lati, do our way to solati. Death to death. Yeah,

(02:25):
let's do that. So death, as it's often said, is
one of the main U nineteen experiences of humanity. Right,
No matter how different you are, how wealthy, poor, respected,
or ignored you are, one day you will die.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Are you a carbon based life form?

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Death awaits indeed, and one of the biggest differences between
us human beings. Listening to this and almost all other
living things, including machine consciousnesses that may be listening to
this in the future. Is that we remember and venerate
our dead, our loved ones or even our hated ones

(03:03):
who have passed. Civilizations of old channel this tremendous amount
of energy in preparing for their respective versions of the afterlife,
and then created practices that often continue in one form
or another in the modern day, Like, for instance, I
don't want to put anybody on the spot, but it's
safe to assume we have all at one point thought

(03:24):
about how we want our death to be handled by
the people who survive after us.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah, generally in this country, it's do you want to
be put into the ground your entire body in its
form as it exists, Perhaps it's modified, maybe most of
the insides have been taken out. Maybe you get burned,
which is an ancient practice of burning about.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
It, The ancient ritual of the sick burn yep goes
back farther than you think it does.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
And on a side note, I want to give a
shout out to a fantastic documentary that Paul actually made
and I helped out a little bit on it, which
was about burial and death specifically called burial.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Is it available right now? It is not available, so
you can't ever watch it ever. No, never, you will
never be able to watch it.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
So it's without spoiling it. It is fantastic. And along
the way we ran into some very strange things about
the legality of burial here in the US. But while
the specific funeral rights and rituals of some civilizations may
be lost to time, we do have something equally amazing,

(04:38):
some people say even more amazing, and that is physical
historical evidence of ancient people and their heroes, many of
whom are called villains. Today, we are talking about.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Tombs, big tombs, not just a little grave plot or
a place where you put ashes a tomb.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, man, I think we figured out that the process
or the pre of tombs goes back to mausolus. Was
it the idea of it or innate? You know, giant
tomb that's decorative like a mausoleum. That's where that name
came out.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
That's the etymology.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah, pretty interesting.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, and it sounds morbid sure for us to open
a show with this. Oh, by the way, conspiracy at
HowStuffWorks dot com, we'd love to hear your opinions of
the best way to handle a dead body.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, are you undead or a spirit? How were you buried?
How did that go?

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yes? No, and on some level it is morbid, but
we have to think about it. Some of the most
meaningful buildings in human history are actually tombs, the Pyramids
of Egypt, the taj Mahal in India, even Westminster Abbey
in the UK. And today we're not just talking about
the tombs you can visit, and we're not just talking
about tourist tips for visiting a famous gravesite. No, we

(05:54):
are exploring a genuine and successful cover up a mystery
spanning almost one thousand years that remains officially unsolved today.
Today we are searching for the lost tomb of Jengis Khan.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
The very opposite of the tomb that I was talking about,
the mausoleum, which is an above ground tomb that was
a later development. We're talking about tombs that they don't
want you to find, not big old decorative suckers.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah. Yes, and specifically this fellow named Jengis Khan, who
I hate to admit, did call Genghis Khana quite a
bit of my life.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, I think it's it's very common for us here
in the West because you know, these are two very
different languages. Yeah, and we're talking about a vast span
of time, so even if you if you spoke an
adjacent language of the time, the mispronunciation will be very
easy to run into.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
And that's what Bill and Ted called him.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
So yeah, and you see that ge just that, you know, yeah, yeah,
give me a g And also, English is such a
pirate language.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
It just rabs things arbitrarily and steals from other dictionaries.
So let's let's look at Jengis Khan from a biographical perspective.
Let's start at level one and learn some more about him.
His real name was not Jengis Khan. He was born
Timujin in Mongolia around one and sixty two CE, right correct,

(07:29):
And he was named, oddly enough, after a Tatar chieftain
that his father had captured, so it was a point
of pride to name him after that. He was a
member of a tribe called the Vorgijen. And by the way,
we are going to most likely mispronounce everything but Jengis
Khan here, and he Timushin was a descendant of Kabul Khan,

(07:52):
who briefly united the Mongols against the Chin dynasty of
northern China in the early eleven hundred.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
It's ben Con isn't in a last name, right, It's
a title or like refers to being like a king
or a houseful, like a conqueror of some sort.

Speaker 5 (08:08):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
According to the Secret History of the Mongols, this fellow
Timersen was born holding a blood clot in his hand.
And that might sound weird today, but back then it
was an auspicious sign in Mongol folklore, indicating that he
was destined to become not just a leader, but a
great leader. And he did not have an easy life.

(08:31):
He was nine years old when his father passed away.
His father was poisoned after his father had taken him
to live with the family of his future wife, who
is named Borte. This marriage was super arranged, as you
can tell, and marrying for romantic notions is also a
relatively recent thing in the span of human history. So

(08:56):
he comes back, his dad dies when he's nine. He
comes back to his clan and he said, look, my
father's dad, I am the leader, and they laugh at him. Yeah,
you're nine. So he and his half brothers and survivors
of that line in the family are relegated to essentially
a refugee status until they go on a hunt and

(09:17):
he gets in a fight with his half brother over
how to split the spoils of the hunt, and he
kills his half brother, a guy named Becter. This makes
him the head of the family.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Officially, there's no one to say hahaha, no oh, right.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, officially this is presumably just like in a fit
of blind rage. Right, I don't know, I'm trying to
picture this scenario.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Well, I mean it was, right, so after a hunt,
you've just exerted yourself a whole bunch of the whole
group of them, you get back and now you're disputing
like who gets what how much? And then yeah, I
can imagine it was Well, I.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Guess that's sort of a microcosmic version of what war
is and conquering is.

Speaker 5 (09:52):
So he just sort of took that notion and spread
it out, blew it up.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
And to be clear, the high art here is a
little bit different. Unless you have a very brutal family today,
or unless your friendships are very brutal things that I
would not call friendships, you're probably going to be a
little more fair with people and not as hierarchical, but
its tradition plays a huge role in his early life

(10:20):
when we see it come out later in the wash.
So let's fast forward. He's about twenty years old and
the next terrible thing happens. There is a raid by
a group called the Tai Chutz Tai chi Utz, and
they used to be allies of his family and tribe,
but they betrayed them and when they captured him, they

(10:42):
made him a slave. He eventually escapes and he starts
to form a fighting unit with his surviving brothers and
some other aligned clans people, and this is when he
begins to form his first army. He's twenty years old.
We're glossing over some of his biographical details and focusing

(11:02):
kind of in his military rise to power, but this
is a huge spiritual aspect to this as well.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
Search jingis Khan biography on your favorite search thing.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
So he begins the slowest scent of power. He builds
this gigantic force of more than twenty thousand people. He's
just getting started. So he says, you know, tradition has
never been kind to me. It made my life very
terrible up to this point. So I'm going to destroy
some of these traditional divisions amongst various tribes, and I

(11:35):
want all the people identifying as Mongols to be under
my rule. So he starts out with these absolutely monstrous
techniques and tactics to revenge his father's death. First thing,
he orders the killing of every male of the Tatar
tribe who is more than three feet tall, more than

(11:56):
about three feet wow, so people with growth problems would
be the only male adults to survive and children.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Mean, the three foot rule was a hard and fast thing,
or do you think this is just like what the
record shows.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
It's a It translates to the spoke or the axis
of two willed kart.

Speaker 5 (12:16):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
He also found his former slavers, the tachi Utz, and
had all of their chiefs boiled alive. By twelve oh six,
he had defeated another tribe called the Naemans, and he
officially effectively gained control of central and eastern Mongolia. And
this is when the rest of the Mongols started saying,

(12:38):
I don't know this guy's kind of wild because he
was fighting wars differently than anybody else had done before.
I don't want to we don't have to spend too
much time on this except for the really cool stuff.
He had a ton of spies. He stole every technology
or tactic that his enemies used that he thought was good.
His army grew to over eighty thousand soldiers, and one

(13:00):
of the questions you would ask is how how the
heck do you communicate to eighty thousand people? There's no radio?

Speaker 2 (13:06):
And that's what set him apart, right, I mean he
was not only brutal, but crafty, just my type.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, they would use drums like other musical instruments, smoke
signals as ways to communicate pretty good stuff, flags even,
I think, and oh yeah, fire was a big deal,
so the smoke signals, but then also a torch itself,
where you're like waving a torch in certain ways or
lighting certain number of torches.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
And I think the terrain helped them too, because there
was so much flat land and the steps. You could
see pretty easily clearly what.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
The doth Raki in Game of Thrones are based off. Yeah,
this horde, the riders and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
And George R. R. Martin has been I think pretty
forthcoming about that.

Speaker 5 (13:50):
I'm gonna use can't deny it. Yeah, if he tried
to act like.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
No, no, no, this is this is my thing, the
dough raki. See it's like I think it's really you
guys are now looking at the connates through the lens
of game of thrown and song adviceive fire. So yeah,
the soldiers did were on horseback and the depiction and
fiction got that right. Depiction and fiction drop a beat, right.

(14:17):
But they were also uniformed, much more so than the
Doughthracki of fiction. Each each soldier would be riding a
horse often, but they all had a bow, a shield,
a dagger, alasso and this was cool. They had saddle
bags that were waterproof so they could carry supplies. But
if they were in a if they were trying to

(14:39):
afford a very deeper, dangerous or rough river, they could
empty the supplies, leave it with their support system and
make air bags to float.

Speaker 5 (14:47):
You're kidding me, no, Like what like they had a
little nipple they'd blow into.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
And because they're waterproof and they can hold air, it's
it's like that old trick we learn in boy scouts
about how to survive by turning you or genes into
a flotation device.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Oh sure, like the way when you're when you go
in the water with your genes. They fill up and
puff up in the front. This, I mean obviously incredibly
innovative stuff here, the idea of a lasso. Everything they
had had a very specific purpose, right, and.

Speaker 5 (15:17):
That's that's pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
And Ben, you mentioned off mic that they had support staff,
I guess bringing up the rear and making sure they
had the supply.

Speaker 5 (15:26):
Chain that was opened up. I mean, yeah, smart, smart maneuvering.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, the shamans who served as spiritual and medical aids,
food supplies. This was in, by the way, this is
the more peaceful time. And after watching temujen ruin these
first three tribes, the rest start to fall in line.
They sued for peace, and that's when he got the title,
which is not his name, the title we know him

(15:50):
by today, Jengis Khan, which means universal ruler, the Khan
of Khans, the.

Speaker 5 (15:55):
King of kings, like the cal of cols, like.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
The call of calls, like kl Drogo. So it goes
beyond what we think of as a general or an
admiral or something. Because the leading shaman additionally declared that
Jengis Khan was the representative of the supreme God of
the Mongols on earth. Monke Coco tengri the eternal blue sky,

(16:20):
and this meant that as far as any practicing Mongol
was concerned, it was this guy's destiny to rule the world.
They were also very religiously tolerant. They thought religion was
a personal matter, super forward facing for the time, but
with one exception. To defy the Great Khan was to
defy the will of God with all the consequences that

(16:42):
came along.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
And there's a nice little recreation vignyat and one of
the documentaries are going to talk about later where Tamajen
goes to the top of a very important mountain that
we'll get to later and asks the sky.

Speaker 5 (16:53):
God like what he should do.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
And that's supposedly where he got the inspiration to go
forth and conquer.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
And that mountain plays a huge role too, right, So
twelve oh seven he attacks a kingdom called Jeshisia, and
in twelve eleven he takes the Shin dynasty in northern China,
or he tries to. He launches a bloody campaign the
last twenty years in the west. He initially resorts to
honest diplomacy. He's give it a try, Yeah, let's give

(17:22):
it a shot. He sends a diplomatic mission to an
outfit called the Kaiism dynasty, and think think of this
as like modern Persia, Afghanistan and Turkestan. And this is
where we see trade becoming the most one of the
most significant historical results of the Empire, because they're uniting
the East and the West, which normally did not have

(17:44):
regular trade.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Which requires a little more diplomacy rather than brute force.
We need to cooperate to make things better for each
other rather than kill each other.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Right, we have to be able to know that if
we send silk somewhere leagues and leagues away, they'll return
with our emissaries alive and with the money we wanted
to trade.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
But yeah, this diplomatic mission did not turn out so great.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah yeah, because, as it turns out, establishing yourself through
very well known public acts of bloody revenge makes people
hesitant to trust you. So on the way his diplomatic
caravan was attacked by forces under the control of the
governor of O'trar. The Khan was pissed. He demanded that

(18:30):
the shaw of the cars him give him the governor.
The Shah not only said no, but he sent something
in substitution. He sent Jengis Khan, the head of one
of the diplomats he had sent.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
I know, this is outside the scope of this episode,
but I did not realize they were calling them shaws
that far back. I didn't know the history of that
term went back to this period.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
That term has evolved through a lot of different periods,
and this this guy's title was that, but it was
his title so much so that it was his name vitally,
you know. And so he gets the head of this diplomat.
That is what historians refer to as you know, we

(19:16):
should just say it the technical term. It's when she
hits the fan. So the Khan was never the biggest
fan of playing nice, launches an overwhelming attack that sweeps
through Central Asia all the way into Europe, changing the
course of history. In twelve nineteen, he sends two hundred
thousand soldiers against this dynasty, the Kuarazim dynasty, and the

(19:38):
people in the way, the people who are not immediately
slaughtered or sexually assaulted to the point of death, were
driven in front of the enemy to serve as human
shields until they starved.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
And you might be thinking to yourself, I haven't heard
of this Karazim dynasty.

Speaker 5 (19:52):
Yeah, well there's a reason.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
I mean, they were wiped from the record more, I
mean from history, you know.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yeah, in twelve twenty one, they were erased from the
face of the earth. No living thing was spared on
the way to that erasure. The livestock was slaughtered along
with all the men, women, and children. The army piled
their victims' skulls in these large pyramid shaped mounds. And
then in twelve twenty one, yes, the Kahn erased the
dynasty from the face of the planet. And after that

(20:21):
the Empire entered into what passed for peace at the time.
There were a lot of progressive laws about crime, religion, trade,
there were even environmental considerations. That's pretty amazing.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yeah, but it doesn't change the fact that everything that
all of the citizens of that let's call it, I
don't know, civilization, it was all built on blood. Like
every blood bones rape that it's like blood money, it's.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Conquis I mean, you can't you know the people that
were taken I don't know the people that weren't killed,
that were assimilated into this culture and then had their
families taken from them, from them couldn't have been super stoked.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Right on the rulers here, right, And this governing structure
is set up so that the conquered people are required
to offer tribute, and a lot of times that's going
to be in terms of agricultural resources, because this empire
is hungry, right, And the empire will also expect that
vassal states or communities supply tribute in terms of troops.

(21:23):
When the Tenga dynasty of Shisia refuses to send troops
for the Khan's big war against that other dynasty, he
rides out, sacks their capital, puts down the rebellion, and
just to make sure people get the message, he executes
the entire extended ruling family and he ends their bloodline
as well. So that's two dynasties wiped from the face

(21:48):
of the earth. And soon after that the Khan himself dies.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Well, damn, that'senti climactic.

Speaker 5 (21:57):
He gobbles so much and then it's just like, I'm out.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
It's Andrew the Great died at thirty two, thinking he
was a failure.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Think about all those twenty seven year old rock gods.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Oh Okay, when you put it like that, I guess
it makes sense.

Speaker 5 (22:09):
But yeah, he's done.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
So how does he die?

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Man? Well, experts disagree on exactly how the con expired,
and that's one of the reasons we're making this whole
episode the details surrounding his death where he's laid. There
are a lot of questions here. There's a whole idea
that perhaps he fell off a horse because he was

(22:34):
an old he was an aging man, he was getting older,
and he died because of you know, maybe a wound
he had received in battle that wasn't fully healed or something.
There's an idea that perhaps he couldn't breathe very well
as he is getting a little bit older.

Speaker 5 (22:50):
He's got old.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Was he supposedly when he died? Is this Well, he
died in twelve twenty seven, and since he was born
way back in the day in eleven six six two,
that makes him that.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Would be about sixty five.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
Yeah, not too shabby for this day. Sixty five years old.
That's a great age. One after the Beatles song, which
is nice, and he didn't get to he didn't get
to hear that song.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Sadly, well, you know, assuming that he died, but because
you'll hear some people say, hey, what if he just
never died.

Speaker 5 (23:27):
But just on that island with Tupac.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
And yeah, there's a there's a whother thing the idea
to I don't know if it's not a joke. It's
kind of a joke, but it's not the whole shot
in the knee thing. You got took an arrow to
the knee, and he no longer is a used to
be an adventurer, but he can't anymore.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
I thought you would like that one that I had to.
I had to put that in there. That comes from
Marco Polo. Marco Polo had written about the Rise and
Fall of the Khan and he heard that just like
the city guard in Skyrim, the con was shot in
the knee and then he got infected.

Speaker 5 (24:03):
Oh, I do remember that.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
He says it like it's like every character says that
same s.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
Used to be an adventurer. I took an arrow to
the knee.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah, and it's we don't know if the folks who
made that game meant for that to be such a reference,
but we're going to pretend it is. And please join
along with this.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Well, it's certainly better than just falling off your horse
when you're meant to be this badass like leader rider guy.
You know that would be pretty embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Especially with the cultural importance based on horsemanship.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
So, following his tribal customs, the parts of the tradition
that he did adhere to, he was buried without markers,
somewhere allegedly near the place of his birth. According to legends,
the funeral escort carried him to this burial site killed
anyone they saw along the way and anything they encounter.

(25:00):
The slaves who built the site were killed. The soldiers
who killed them were killed by a different troop without
you know, I don't think those that first wave of
his soldiers knew, effectively creating this century's version of an
air gap security systems like.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
That scene in the Batman movie with the Joker, the
heath Ledger Joker, that heist they pull off where everybody
kills everybody else until there's nobody left.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
Oh wow, but spoiler.

Speaker 5 (25:31):
Have you don't seen this movie?

Speaker 3 (25:32):
I've seen it. I cannot remember that part.

Speaker 5 (25:33):
It's us.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
I think it's in the trailer.

Speaker 5 (25:36):
I think so.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
The empire goes on. Khan has bestowed supreme leadership to
his son Ogi Dai, who controls most of eastern Asia,
including China. He's divided the rest of the empire amongst
his other children. One gets control over Central Asia northern Iran.
The youngest gets a small piece of land near Mongolia.

(25:59):
His other son, who had died before him, had already
taken control of modern day Russia. With a son named Batu.
They created the legendary thing called the Golden Horde, and
that is more of I think that's probably the closest
thing George R. R. Martin's going for, because those forces
meet European forces and tactics.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, and even in Game of Thrones there's the Golden Company,
which is another kind of Horde that's more for higher.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, they're a mercenary crew. And this empire eventually reaches
all the way to the gates of Vienna in Austria.
Until this is how fragile history is. Until the word
of the Khan's death reaches Batu, he's summoned back to Mongolia.
He turns east, and we can only imagine that most

(26:49):
of the people in all points west of Vienna went.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
That seems like this doesn't like a dumb move, Like
if you're already like ready to go, you've made it
this far that really shows the ancestor, you know, the
respect for ancestors in this culture, Like they're just stopping.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
What we're doing.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
We're done, We've got to go back and take care
of dad. That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
And the empire soldiered on for a while, but you know,
fame and power messes with people, and the cons descendants
eventually broke off into smaller regions called khanates that did
cooperate but later became competitive. The trade system, most importantly
began to break down, and the rulers began to be

(27:34):
seen by the common folk as increasingly assimilated with the
people they were supposed to be ruling. So like they
would say, the Mongolians who are ruling part of China
are no longer really Mongolian. They're soft.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
So they kind of died with a whimper and not
a bang, no big final blood war, just a little bit,
just kind of faded into the background.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Kind of there was one factor that was bloody and
it was not human, and humans just helped it along.
At the same time these empires begin to fall and assimilate,
the Black Plague strikes. It destabilizes the world trade networks
that were already suffering, are falling into massive disrepair as

(28:15):
everybody's trying to figure out why everyone around them is dying.
About thirty percent of China's population falls to the plague,
as well as anywhere from twenty five to fifty percent
of the population in Europe. So yeah, it's it's a
grizzly rise a grizzly fall. But regardless of whether you

(28:37):
think he is one of the world's best military commanders,
a global hero, or an infamous villain, when thing's for sure,
Jengis Khan changed history. So what happened to him?

Speaker 3 (28:49):
Well, that's the thing nobody really knows except for those
people that got, according to legend, assassinated immediately after they
buried him.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
That is so hardcore today.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Right now, the search continues officially, Yeah, outside of you know, maybe.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
The secret keepers.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Maybe there is a group of a small group of
secret keepers, and we'll learn about that right after a
quick word from our sponsor.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Here's where it gets crazy. According to oral folklore and legend,
the Empire went to great lengths to erase the location
of the CON's tomb from the world. As we mentioned,
the funeral escort killed people, they encountered all the way
to and from the site, which is a little complicated
because the people who knew the way there got killed

(29:41):
when they were there, and then the other people who
killed the slaves and the soldiers who killed the slaves,
they probably never saw the tomb at least according to
the story.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
So again, well, well, well before this, in three fifty
three BC, we had Greek cultures that were generating they're
dead with these ostentatious monuments that were there for everyone
to worship and see. Totally different style of burial. Here
they are killing their countrymen to keep them from spreading

(30:13):
the word of where this leader would have been buried,
and for what reason. We'll get to that.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Yeah. Then, for another cultural reference, killing people who construct
a tomb of a leader is unfortunately not uncommon. There
have been other cases in ancient cultures where slaves were
killed not to keep a secret, but as a sacrifice
to serve the leader in the afterlife.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
I was going to ask, do you think they were
like surprised or were they going into this knowing they
probably weren't going to come back.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
That part has lost the history and stuff to it's
you know, it's easy for us to say, well, I
wouldn't do that if I knew what was going to happen,
you know, with the benefit of looking back from twenty eighteen.
But the fact in matter is we don't have documentation
that tells us anything about the understand or the motivation
of the slaves or the.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Soldiers, because there's very little documentation about Con at all.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Right, there's the Secret History of the Mongols, which is
often considered not one hundred percent accurate, and it leaves
a lot of things out, but it's you know, we've
this far back in history, there's a constant search for sources.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Right, you got to put it together based on artifacts
and just kind of like finding stuff and putting the
pieces together and saying this is probably how it went down.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, and based on what the people who, what kind
of frame of reference or cultural perspective the earlier investigators
were coming from, Like we're still we got to be clear.
This stuff we're talking about here is the realm of legend.
The tomb was allegedly hidden, and folklore gives us conflicting
methods of camouflage. In one story, an entire river was

(31:54):
diverted over the CON's grave so that no one could
find it. Ever, in another version, they had horses trample
across the ground and then they planted trees on the
site so that you couldn't find any clear traces of
somebody digging. And then another story says that permafrost itself

(32:15):
erased all traces of the site. There's another guy in
sixteen sixty two, a work called the Ordini Topchi that
argues Genghis Khan's coffin was empty when it arrived in Mongolia.
It's very it's a conspiracy theory that has echoes in
the modern day. And then there's another Atlan Topchi that

(32:40):
from sixty oh four that says only Genghis Khan's shirt
tent and his boots were buried.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Shirt shoes, tent, no service, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
In the afterlife. Yeah, but essentially after he died, people
began searching for this tomb. One leg said that was
found as soon as thirty years later. This is the
weirdest one I found was it was found thirty years
later because a camel was buried with the Kahn, a
young camel, and that the camel's mother found the grave

(33:13):
and started weeping over the death of its child.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
It sounds like a fairy tale.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Sounds very Pixar Mamby Disney movie esque. Probably not true,
but it is possible that the burial site was somewhere
around wild camel.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Routes, and then the tears seeped into the soil and
the camel was resurrected by the power.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Of love as long as the children watching nearby clap
their hands. That's probably not true, but we do have some.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
Prove true that I'm saying the camel thing is so real.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, I hope it is, man, I hope it's right.
I hope it is.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
I would love to hang out there so deep in
Disney movies, now, that's gotta be real.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
What are the good Disney movies?

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Uh, Coco, Coco's pretty good, which when my son calls
it the Boy with the Bones.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, oh I remember that. Yeah, that's a solid one.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Have you see Incredibles too yet? No, there's a short
before it that will get you, my friend. It's called Bow.
It's about a dumpling.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, beautiful.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
So the thing about Disney films and Pixar films as well,
is that, oh I just realized pretty soon every film
is going to be a Disney film.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Yep, they're buying.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
They're buying it all they might buy us.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
They already did.

Speaker 5 (34:33):
Please buy us Disney, Please buy us Disney. I will.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
I will not say no to tickets or a mascot costume,
that's for sure. But the the thing about these films,
these Disney films, is that they are proven historical resources.
We can look at them, we can see what happened
in them. It's not just oral folklore. And we have
some documentation from this time, oddly enough, via Marco Polo.

(35:01):
He wrote about his travels and he wrote about what
he saws, the attitudes of Mongolian people themselves, and the
speculation over the side of the grave. According to him,
people Mongolia did not know where the tomb was as
early as the late thirteenth century, so even just a
few decades after the death, they were saying, we all
know where he is.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
He's gone.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
And he was like, Marco, oh, snap, I think we
are poll lowering the bar on the puns to day right.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Marco did have a guess, though, and in the Travels
of Marco Polo he writes that and there's been an
invariable custom that all the grand cons and chiefs of
the race of Jingus Khan should be carried for internment
to a certain lofty mountain named Autai, and in whatever
place they may happen to die, altho, it should be

(35:58):
at the distance of one hundred days journey. They are
nevertheless conveyed thither. Oh Marco Polo what a.

Speaker 5 (36:07):
And I do believe the illustrious gone may have died
from an arrow to the knee.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
I like the Julip this guy's sipping. Also, Matt, that
that accident totally. I me convinced you're about to go. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
I only do one voice, so it's great.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
But the precision, Matt it's doing it drips like butter.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
It's the true voice of history.

Speaker 5 (36:34):
Matt Mint, Julip Frederick.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Taking a big old journey across Mongolia and the steps.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Over there mountain all time.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Oh man, I want to make a video game and
just have you narrate all the characters.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
I'm down with that. Hey, developers out there, please let
me voice your game and Ben Ben'll do it, and
I'll do it, and Paula do it.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
No, it'll just be you, and it'll just be a
game full of old men. Sauntering around the Mongolian waste.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
It's including the love it.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Oh yes, it'll be the West World game and I'll
just play the old guy.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Oh okay, okay, Now everybody knows there's an old person
in a TV show.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Just let me play Dellos' grandfather.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Who.

Speaker 5 (37:16):
So it's over for me now.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah, But people are probably programmed where they they haven't
gotten to the level of consciousness that they can't hear
that spoiler.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Now you're jelling me.

Speaker 5 (37:25):
You guys are killing me.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
So in nineteen thirty seven, rumors surfaced that the Soviet
government had found and stolen a banner from this Buddhist monastery,
this remote Buddhist monastery, and the banner had clues leading
you to the grave site. Nothing came of that.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
Who let those guys have that?

Speaker 1 (37:45):
No one they took it.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
They probably started the rumor themselves. They're a little braggadocious
over there in the Soviet Union. If I'm gonna be honest, it.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Might be in thirty seven when we did the Great
Game yea podcast about Shambhalah. This probably associated with that.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
It's just some disinfo, man.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
The searches continued and they had that same pattern that
we see in so many of these sorts of investigations.
They were all these tantalizing clues. Somebody finds a button,
they find a gold coin, they find like an ancient bow,
but they find no concrete proof leading to the grave.
There's a very sad story here. An amateur archaeologist named

(38:25):
Mary Kravitz dedicated decades of his life to searching for
this tomb, and he was basing a lot of his
research and his excavations, which were quite expensive, on the
writings of a fifteenth century French jesuit. He was convinced,
based on this guy's records, that the site would be

(38:47):
near the CON's quote favorite place the confluence con flu
E NC of the Kerlin and quote Brucie rivers the
place named burkhon cal Dune over his right shoulder. Kravitz
couldn't find a river named Brucie, which most people would

(39:08):
think to mean that he's just confused the name or
that it doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, Brucie, man, And isn't the Caldoon, the the the
the Burken Caldoon the mountain in question right earlier from
the reaching his hands up to the sky God.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
So everybody believes that it's got to be somehow related
to this mountain. But he did find something called a
toponym Barun Brooch or West Brooch. And a toponym is
a place name that is derived from a topographical feature.

Speaker 5 (39:43):
Oh cool, that is really cool.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
That's a new one for me.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
It's t O P O N Y M.

Speaker 5 (39:51):
And I guess yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
And this area was about one hundred kilometers east of
Burkhan Kol Dune', so not that far. Kravitz died without
ever finishing or failing. His search for the two never quit.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
But yeah, yeah, exactly. And it makes you think about
all those people who have spent their life looking for
something like the Holy Grail, like putting all of their
life's work into something like that, or what what are
what are some of these other legendary things?

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yeah, things that don't want to be found.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
But thankfully, Morey's young grandson, Lenny went on to become
an incredible rock star, a rock god. Yeah, sports leather
pants like no one's ever done in the history of had.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Wonderful children, And if you listen to most of his albums,
you'll see that the lyrics are actually about the search
for the tomb of Genghis.

Speaker 5 (40:51):
The whole thing. Are you going to go my.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
Way that's about Genghis Khan they have, then none of
this is true.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
This is true, I should say. The one fault is
he wrote it about Genghis Khan rather than Jengis Khan.
And that's what's kind of fail.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Pronunciation fails. It's better when we catch ourselves though, Isn't
it agreed?

Speaker 5 (41:13):
This is lean into it.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
So there are other possible locations. Marco Polo has that,
admittedly vague but amazingly performed by Matt Mention of Altai.
Other theories include something from Luan dynasty, which the Yuan
dynasty is Mongol descended. You know how we're talking earlier

(41:36):
about ruling populations that were thought to have assimilated to egregiously.
This is one example. And the Yuan dynasty believe that
all Mongol Khans were buried in the area of Genghis
Khan's tomb, a site known as Chinyan Valley. But there's
no in all their records talking about this valley. There's

(41:59):
no specific mention of where that tomb is. They just
talk around it as if they know where it is.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
So like the valley beyond.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
Yeah, but was it exclusive to t Djengus, him being
the big, the big Kahuna, that they would.

Speaker 5 (42:12):
Hide his tomb or would they like that? Would they
have hit all of their burials like a valley of
the cause?

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, there's well again, the tradition is not to mark them.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah, that's right where you were born too, write like
where you originate.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
There's another bit of folklore that says he's buried at
the peak of or on a peak rather in the
Kenty mountains, and that's Burkhan Koldoon. He had hidden from
enemies on that mountain as a young man. That's where
he made that spiritual pledge right to return there in death.
So for centuries it seemed like this was going to

(42:48):
be a hopeless fool's Errand it's a huge country. It's
not very populated. It's almost as if the huge humans
sprinkled there or just to give us a sense of
scale about how vast and empty it is.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
And it's a very unforgiving terrain.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
It's a very unforgiving ter rain. But there was there
was something that seemed set to change the expedition's game
that arrived very recently, and that is the emergence of
cutting edge technology, which will dive into after a word
from our sponsors, and we're back.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
And entered doctor Albert Lynn. He is the let's say,
he's the most well known example of somebody who's using
technology in the hunt for this lost tune.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
And you you're a huge fan of this guy, right, Matt,
I am.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
I've I've only spent let's say, it's probably all forty
eight minutes with him roughly that I've spent with him
on screen.

Speaker 5 (43:55):
Okay, no, no, no, no, no, okay, wow.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
I love the work that he's doing, seems very admirable
and going back to his roots.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
A full backstory about yeah, led him to this ultimate
journey as using grad school and he went back to Mongolia, yes,
and bought a horse and ended up like staying with
these nomadic people and kind of hearing about this potential
for a hidden sight that we're talking about and it
intrigued him. Oh, yeah, a lot, obviously.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Well, it's it's really awesome. It's something we've discussed on
the show a lot before, using light ar and other
new technologies to be able to find hidden tombs, hidden
archaeology that exists out there in the world and he's
actually doing it, and he convinced in this case National
Geographic to go out and you know, fund his research
and fund his journeys. Pretty awesome.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeah. Light ar is stands for light detection and ranging.
It's a remote sensing method. You've probably heard when we
talked about law civilizations, how this technology has been used
and luckily for Lyn and Co. This has rest by
leaps and bounds. Nor were you mentioning that drone that
used light.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
R Yeah, he's got a really like early When I
say early, I think this is in what two when
the doc came out.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, he started his search I think started in eight.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Yeah, so you know, at that time drone technology was
it's like the military thing we always talk about, where
it's they hold back stuff or they only have like
the good stuff for the big boys in the military,
and then it eventually trickles down to what I like
to call prosumer technology, where it's going to be quite
expensive to get a good one. Uh.

Speaker 5 (45:35):
And they had one.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
They had I'm not sure exact Matt. You may have
mentioned what the model might have been of the drone.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Oh No, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (45:41):
The Actually it was definitely a.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Really tight drone equipped with some kind of light our
technology that they could use to do topographical like aerial maps.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
I'm pretty sure Jonathan, our own Jonathan Strickland went to
CEES that you were a version of ce S at
the time and talked about those first prosumer drones.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, I think you were correct. They also used satellite imagery.
They had some assistance from some satellite companies, and with
this and the LDAR, which they describe as non invasive
ground based imaging, they were able to identify and study
dozens and dozens of archaeological sites, including some ancient burial mounds,

(46:26):
none of which so far have turned out to be
the con.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
We should point out too that it's a big deal,
big important part of this as that the Mongolian government
they won't let anybody dig. There's no dig policy. So
this was his solution to like, let's do a virtual dig.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
Yeah, and they also so very quickly they run into
this problem. We're gonna let's talk a little in depth
about this because this is the most well known recent
search and the one that has the highest probability of success.

Speaker 5 (46:56):
Honestly, he did it very smartly.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Yeah, So He also crowdsourced. Their team said, look, we're
getting way too many images. We're getting way too much
stuff to go through. If you are interested in this,
you do not have to be a PhD level archaeologist.
We want to use you as what doctor Lynn called
a human computation network. So they got thousands of quote

(47:18):
citizen archaeologists, that's what they called them, to review more
than eighty five thousand images from this that they had
gotten through this company called Digital Globe, that's their satellite partner.
And these were images of that forbidden zone that's the
name of it. That's where you cannot dig, and parts

(47:40):
of that area used to be entirely restricted to royal
families a mongolia. So it's a big deal for people
to even be able to go out there. And he
published a paper about this called Combining GOI one Satellite
Remote Sensing UAV, Aerial Imaging and geophysical surveys in a
nom detection applied to Archaeology sex CE.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
It's really cool.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
The kicker, right is these anomalies because when you look
at the aerial footage, there's stuff down there that's clearly
man made.

Speaker 5 (48:11):
He says, if it's like squared.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Off looking su or it's these little nipple looking things,
little bounds kind of.

Speaker 5 (48:17):
That's quote unquote like odd.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
But he said the sheer amount of data was just
two too too, too much for a team of however
many he had access to to to mess with and
just to mine through it all. Hence the crowdsourcing. So
he basically got a bunch of people to do a
bunch of gruntwork for him for free.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Well, the images were roughly one pixel to one meter.
That's amazing, so like you're literally looking at all of
the land space.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
That's a lot of computer enhance.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah, but then what did the aggregate look like when
all the results were in all these clicks, all these people, yeah,
taking on these deals. What did they get back that
made it interesting?

Speaker 1 (48:57):
They had a distinct lack of a two of Genghis
cons too, but they.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
But they saw clusters of things that could kind of pinpoint.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Right, so they were able to yeah, map out civilizations
places where it may be more likely for the tomb
to uh be located, especially if the folks from Nuan
dynasty were correct and that there was some sort of
knowledge of the tomb's location and that the cons were
secretly buried.

Speaker 5 (49:24):
There was a thing about it being betwixt two rivers.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Or something, and so back to and the proximity to
the mountain of course.

Speaker 5 (49:30):
Right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
I think they found what he redescribed as an iron
age tomb, but it had just been picked clean by
grave robbers, he said, looking for barrowheads or something. Yeah. Yeah,
but you're right, Ben, they you know, all this cool tech.

Speaker 5 (49:45):
Yeah, didn't amount to a whole hillo hilicon.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
One other helicon of one of the other really cool
things they had where the lidar actually back in backpack
style or something. So they're walking around across these areas
that have been you know, clustered together, with a bunch
of different people seeing them, and they're walking just with
a lighter on their back.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
I want to do that, Bat, I want that for you.
I feel like you've earned that.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Actually kind of rolling cart version of it too that
I saw in the video that I was a little
confused about what it was. But they definitely had a
lot of tech and that was a big part of
the of the of the show was how much gear
they had, you know.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
And we can't downplay what they found because they found
a lot of amazing, astonishing things. They just found those
as a result of searching for the thing that they
have yet defined. And that's because there are and this
is maybe the strangest part of today's story. There are
some massive problems with the search. Noel, you and I
like we briefly mentioned the terrain because, first off, spoiler alert,

(50:48):
Mongolia is the definition of remote. Most of the country
outside of the capitol Lambartour does not have roads or
root cities. There's still many communities living in the nomadic
tradition on the steps. And then just for comparison, I
found this fascinating and this really set it in stone

(51:12):
in my mind. Mongolia is more than seven times the
size of Great Britain and it has about two percent
the amount of roads that Great Britain has.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Wow, it's so funny. I recently took a flight over
the Great Salt Flats in Salt Lake City and that
was the closest kind of terrain that I could kind
of compare to this. It's not desert, but it's very
like you look down and it's like there's nobody down there. Yeah,
there are no roads, and it's like I felt like
I was flying over the moon and it was beautiful,

(51:45):
but it's also like very alien. I have a feeling
there's a similar quality over there in Mongolia.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
There was one yeah, when I drove through the salt
flats on a completely non sketchy thing, and it was
one of the few times in my life I thought, Man,
if the car breaks down, that's it. It's over for me.

Speaker 5 (52:07):
Yike.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
They think a good point too in the documentary how
they take older trucks and stuff because they're easier to
fix out in the field, and there would be like, no,
you're not going to find a volkswagon shop, you know.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
And even with those trucks that have like four x
four capability and stuff, they have to send some people
on horseback, yeah, to different sites, right stuff.

Speaker 5 (52:28):
Yeah, so, oh, I see what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Because they couldn't get right up onto it with the vehicle,
they had to like send out parties.

Speaker 5 (52:34):
Yeah, it's totally true.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
What we need to do is have teams that go
in behind the search, teams that can set up supply lines.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Oh yeah, there we go, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
I think that's how we conquer this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
So that was the smartest little detail of CON's brigade
that I'm like, wow, that is they really had it
figure it out.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
There's also some speculation that climate change played a role
in the expansion of the empire because they did they
were running out of resources agriculturally to feed people. Sure,
and I always I hadn't considered that, And maybe that
played a role in the later environmental laws that he instituted.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
There was another video that Auto played after the documentary
talking about it was an Australian fellow who tried to
follow the path that the Mongols would have taken, and
he kept running into the problem where there wasn't enough
grass for the horses to graze on, so that the
horses would get skinny over time.

Speaker 5 (53:29):
And you could picture that happening. Wow for real, like
back in the day.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
If it's like the resources aren't there, you can't feed
your horses, You can't feed your horses, you can't only
going on with this nomadic lifestyle.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
The only way is forward to find the way they
call them in Song of Ice and Fire excusing Game
of Thrones, the sheep people.

Speaker 5 (53:49):
Yeah, the lamb's men people. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
And here here's the strangest, most disturbing part One of
the reasons, possibly one of the reasons that the tomb
is yet to be found despite all this blood, sweat, tears,
and amazing technology applied to the question, is that some people,
many people, do not want it to be found, especially

(54:14):
native Mongolians. They don't want the tune to be disturbed.
This is often described, at least here in the West,
in terms of a curse. They'll say that Mariy Kravitz
died because he got too close was cursed, and this
idea is that disturbing or even discovering the grave of
the Khan will set in motion this catastrophic series of events,
triggering something like World War three. However, what's interesting here

(54:37):
as well is that many Mongolians who reject these spiritual
concerns and say, ah, the idea of a curse is
just a bunch of gobbledegook, they still don't want the
tune discovered. In their opinion. For people who would consider
themselves skeptical but want this to remain unknown, their opinion
is that if it was the Khan's wish, it was

(54:59):
Djengis Khan's wish that his body not be found, then
his wishes should be respected. This mixture of fear and
respect is codified the modern day. The mountains that often
come up as candidates in the search for the tomb
are still considered sacred. There were recent reports of a
Mongolian researcher and a journalist who I believe was British

(55:21):
who were not still not allowed in the modern day
to climb Burkhan Khaldoun because they were women. Yeah, and
it's still now it used to be. The area that
used to be known as the Ikkorg or Great Taboo
is now called the Khan Kental strictly protected area. It's
a World Heritage site and because of this designation it's

(55:45):
been off limits to most researchers.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Which a strictly protected area, Yeah, which lend get up
in there.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Though national geographics got some pull.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
He tells an interesting story about how near the end
of their project, at some point after they've been there
for a while, he was approached by our representatives of
the local shaman.

Speaker 5 (56:06):
Yes, and there's this great story leader.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
It's clearly the central you know kicker of his ted
talk moment where he I'm shaking and.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Why are you here?

Speaker 5 (56:16):
Why are you here? And who are you?

Speaker 2 (56:18):
And asked them all these very existential questions. But ultimately,
isn't like angry, isn't like get out, isn't like don't
do anything, because at the same thing, at the end
of the day, they're not going to dig it up.
They're just like trying to get some answers. And you know,
but my big question to you guys is who cares?
Why what?

Speaker 5 (56:35):
What's what?

Speaker 2 (56:35):
What's what's there to find? Why do we need to
see a body? Why do we need to see these remnants?

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Because it could create a watershed moment in archaeology. First off,
it would it would clarify the questions about the death right.
It would it would also from the perspective of any
Mongolian parties who want the tomb to be discovered, it
would be a massive cultural boon.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
We would also probably find a lot of stuff that's
buried with him that would answer questions about engineering, questions
about human technology at the time that we wouldn't know ordinarily.

Speaker 5 (57:17):
But I think we don't have that from other sources, right.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
I think the yeah to continue. I think that the
primary appeal for many people who are not Mongolian is
the proving or disproving of various myths. This is old
enough for a lot of it to be essentially legend, okay,
and then also a bit of romanticization. I don't think

(57:42):
we can escape that. I think there's clearly a bit
of a rosy picture people paint. But I have a
question for you guys, which is, what about this this
curse thing? It doesn't come out a whole cloth. I mean,
we've seen other historical leaders have their tombs described as cursed.

Speaker 5 (58:03):
Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
This guy named George Edward Stanhope Marlneau Herbert a k a.
The Earl of Carnavon was quite a fancy man who
fancied himself an amateur egyptologist.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Is that real?

Speaker 5 (58:18):
Yeah, that's he was the Earl of.

Speaker 6 (58:19):
Carnarv Carnarvon, Carnarvon, let's call it. Don't like it, come
at me, britz, But yeah, he he apparently actually grew
up in a High Claire castle, which is the estate
where they filmed Downton Abbey.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
So very fancy by he.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
Does.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
But he also really was into Egyptology and single handedly,
using wielding his influence and his obscene wealth, paid for
an expedition to open the tomb of the boy King
King Tutan comment.

Speaker 5 (58:58):
Looks like rain to them.

Speaker 7 (59:00):
Okay, yes, so what happened, Well, he hired this young,
upstart archaeologist, kind of a Brendan Fraser type his prime
not modern day Brendan kind of sad.

Speaker 5 (59:12):
Howard Carter was this man's name.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
They had met through a guy named Gaston Mospero, who
is the Director general of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.
And yeah, they opened up this tomb and they found
all kinds of crazy stuff. And very shortly after visiting
Thebes to visit the site of the spoils of his investment.
We're gonna call him Carnarvon as as is befitting his station.

(59:38):
He died in short order after getting get this bit
by a mosquito.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
Whoa. So we got like the malaria or somers.

Speaker 5 (59:47):
Some real bad And I'm not going as far.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
I'm not saying that I didn't know was a common
but man, what a kick in the pants or a
bite in the leg.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Yeah, and that's its own you know, that's almost its
own episod, the Curse of King tut Right, Yeah, we
could do we already do that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
I know we've done a video for sure. It all blurs.
But search if search for it, see if you can
find it, and let us know before yes. Please.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
There's one other example of a curse that, oddly enough,
is related to mongol stuff as well, and that is
Temor Or, often called tamer Lane in the West. This
fear of grave consequences. Oh get it? Do you get it?
In that?

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Grave, yep, great consequences.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Let's sit in it. Everybody's sit in it. No kidding,
I'm sorry. This this, this fear echoes concerns that regard
the discovery of the legendary grave of Tamerlane or Timor.
In nineteen forty one, Soviet archaeologists discovered the grave of
this guy's, a fourteenth century Turkic Mongolian king in Samarkand
it's a location called gert Emir So in fact. Okay, oh,

(01:00:56):
it's just we cut it in the original edit. But
at first I mis pronounces Germer.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
I honestly don't know if you did mispronounce it.

Speaker 5 (01:01:04):
It's unclear.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
But it's the opportunity to just make a sweetish chef joke.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Yeah, it was fun.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
That's fine, it's done.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
You guys gotta go for it. You already did it? What,
Go ahead and try it if you're listening. Yeah, everybody,
everybody where you're jogging past right now will just think
you're a lot of fun.

Speaker 5 (01:01:20):
Yeah, sty'll say it together, ready, three.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Two one, Yeah. It's the location in Samarkan where they
found the tomb, and it bore a warning allegedly of
a terrible fate that would befall any and all who
disturbed the dead king's slumber. One worse than me will rise.
Immediately afterward, according to the story, the Nazis invaded the

(01:01:46):
Soviet Union, launching World War two's Eastern Front. So two
days after the tomb was opened, on the night of
June twenty second, Nazi Germany declared war invaded the USSR.
A lot of people linked it with the open of
that tomb, and the expedition was immediately wound up. The
remains of the guy were sent for study in Moscow. Coincidence, right,

(01:02:08):
especially when we consider World War two was already in
full swing. People who believe in that curse think there's
an additional fact. They say the turning point of the
war occurred at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Soviets
one exactly a month after, Stalin ordered the government to
return Timour's remains to Somarkhand and bury him with full honors. WHOA,

(01:02:29):
I'm going to say, I think it's a coincidence. I
think you don't need a supernatural curse to be decent
enough to not desecrate a grave.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Also, our egyptologist, amateur egyptologist, Fancy Boy was known to
have a bit poor health. And you know, if you
if you're if you're not healthy, something like a blood
borne illness from a mosquito, who might take you out
a little quicker.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
You talking about Carner Helen.

Speaker 5 (01:02:57):
Lord Carnivore.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Ok, But actually Arthur cronen Oil is one of the
ones who spread the idea of this curse with as
pertained to the touch. So ah, kind of fool those people,
But he was a bit of a fabuloust right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
And a fictionist. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
It is a great tale though, right it is.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
I mean, look, if I ever am fortunate enough to die,
then I am obviously going to have some sort of
curse inscribed. Yeah that's what you want, right.

Speaker 5 (01:03:27):
Like Shakespeare does he have one?

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Yeah, good friend, for Jesus sake, for bear to dig
the dust and close it here blessed be man that
spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Oh did you notice the rhymes?

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Yeah, he kind of invented rhyming, didn't he.

Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
Shakespeare.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Francis Bacon is so so just awesome guy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
So yeah, so curses are common.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
This is as we end today's episode. First, we want
to thank you for hanging out with this, and we
want to ask you do you think this tomb should
be disturbed or found, especially if the people who are
descended from this empire don't want it.

Speaker 5 (01:04:12):
To be found.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
I am of the mind definitely not leave well enough alone.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Yeah, you know, don't disturb the ground if you're not invited.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
And that's sort of the point of a curse, right,
It's like, don't mess with my stuff?

Speaker 5 (01:04:25):
Are you gonna get cursed?

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
But also a lot of this depiction of it as
a curse, I feel like it comes from the West,
Like I couldn't find anything in Mongolian culture that said
this tomb is specifically cursed. I just found it being
the wishes of the man interred.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
There, sort of like the old Kennedy curse. We sort
of imposed this notion of a curse of a curse
on a series of unfortunate events.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
Oh, that sounds like a Netflix show Eight Children, a
children's popular series of children's books. Oh, I don't know
about that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
We're so pressI it. This episode, by the way, let's
just say we recorded.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):
That is brought to you by Casper Mattresses.

Speaker 8 (01:05:11):
Okay, all right, and Netflix, and and of course by
Jengis Khan, who, as his motto has always been, don't disturb.

Speaker 5 (01:05:21):
My grave, Rip rip old Jangi.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
And like the legacy of Genghis Khan, we didn't even
talk about the weird genetic stuff, right, which stuff you
should know has a great episode on Like his legacy,
This show will continue at a later date. In the meantime,
you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, where
we are Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show some variation
thereof you can find us on Here's Where it Gets

(01:05:45):
Crazy our fantastic community page.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Fantastic Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it's great, great conversations there, hella,
good memes, lots of fun stuff. I bet you will
end up doing another Here's Where It's Crazy episode before
long because that went really well and it was just
a great fun grab bag way and the people on
there are super smart and interesting and no trolls need apply.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
And please also this is a personal favorite. Right to
our super producer Paul Deckett and thank him for letting
us go so long with this episode.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
Oh yeah, but we had a great time. It's a
great episode. Thank you guys. And that's the end of
this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions
about this episode, you can get into contact with us
in a number of different ways. One of the best
is to give us a call. Our number is one
eight three three stdwy TK. If you don't want to

(01:06:39):
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
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