Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

atlasobscura.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 130 posts

Re: Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

#71

Post by tbrownaw »

rowanG077 wrote: post #61
oldsecondhand wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Europeans didn't topple any empire in the Americas. They collapsed by themselves due to the sickness brought over by the Europeans before they made contact. It would have been logistically impossible to topple an empire overseas.

This sounds the same to me as saying: "The gunshot didn't kill him. The infection did."

I think it's either an intent thing or a causality thing.

Imagine a hit man showing up to work one day, only to find his targets already dead along with their entire town... and only much later finds out that it's because he'd been an asymptomatic carrier for weird space germs when he was casing the joint the previous month.

Re: Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

#72

Post by 1123581321 »

Glyptodon wrote: post #55
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #13

IMO we should not look at Genghis Kahn's Empire fondly. After listening to Hardcore History's Wrath of the Khans, I think they have been the most evil group humanity has produced so far. Time seems to heal all wounds but Genghis Khan sure seemed to have made a lot of wounds.

It's hard for me to see them as "more evil" than many other pre-modern groups. It's such an arbitrary framing.

Please substitute the term you typically use for practitioners of genocide.

Re: Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

#73

Post by Aspos »

jltsiren wrote: post #34
samatman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raw death toll and percentage of total world population slaughtered seem like the two most objective measures. The Horde win the dubious blue ribbon for the latter.

Mongol conquests were roughly comparable to the European conquest of the Americas. Both toppled great empires and may have killed ~10% of world population in a few generations. And both were more noteworthy due to their large-scale success than their brutality. While both waves of conquest were brutal even by contemporary standards, they were not extraordinary brutal. Being an absolute monster is a part of the job de…

Right. Europeans in the Americas and Mongols in Eurasia did what was rational: both had significant, incomparable advantage in military technology and both used it for their advantage according to the standards of their time.

Re: Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

#75

Post by krapp »

tbrownaw wrote: post #71
rowanG077 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds the same to me as saying: "The gunshot didn't kill him. The infection did."

I think it's either an intent thing or a causality thing. Imagine a hit man showing up to work one day, only to find his targets already dead along with their entire town... and only much later finds out that it's because he'd been an asymptomatic carrier for weird space germs when he was casing the joint the previous month.

Except in reality his targets weren't entirely dead, there were still millions left so he still went about killing the rest[0..2].

The intent in this case existed alongside unintended causes, but it was still there.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_E...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars

Re: Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

#76

Post by ummonk »

HeroOfAges wrote: post #3
cato_the_elder wrote: post #2

This part sounds very similar to the traditional role of women, and it is quite dishonest to frame it as "Running Genghis Khan’s Empire": > Chinggis Khan’s senior wife, Börte, is responsible for a camp. She’s responsible for their home, the yurt or ger that they live in. She’s responsible for the kids. If merchants come through, she’s going to talk to them about economic activity. She is going to oversee or perform t…

Not sure why you're being downvoted for pointing this out. She was responsible for "their" home. Not the tens of thousands of households across the empire. There was also a sentence where the scholar being interviewed estimates that women made up to 20% of Mongolian armies of that era. That just seems flatout unbelievable.

I think they’re basing that claim on some buried women exhibiting archery and horseback riding strength in their skeletal structures. I doubt they routinely fought in the army, given the lack of contemporary accounts observing any women in the Mongol army.

This contrasts with, say, the ancient Sarmatians, where we see female burials with actual weapons of war, and have contemporary accounts that women did fight extensively in battles. There, a figure of 20% would be roughly accurate.

Re: Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

#77

Post by ttyprintk »

Victerius wrote: post #22
friedman23 wrote: post #5

[flagged]

There's no point in grinding one's teeth and squeezing one's fist at an ancient construct that predates your birth by nearly a millenium. At some point you'll want to let the steam out of your ears, sit down, and hit the books. And the same will be true of the Third Reich in a couple centuries, when anyone even remotely associated to anyone else even remotely associated with the atrocities committed by Germany will b…

Interesting to me that the only authority mentioned in the article has written a book about the same subject, published by Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Mongolians destroyed Baghdad, ending the Islamic Golden Age. Maybe the role of women in the Khanate was noticed by Muslims as they rewrote the place of women in their societies.

Re: Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

#78

Post by [deleted] »

_8j50 wrote: post #69
akomtu wrote: post #56

I see they are trying to push a narrative here, but they picked a weak example. Wu Zetian started in a harem of some Chinese emperor, but climbed to the top, captured the throne and ruled for 15 years officially (and who knows how many years before that unofficially). She wasn't shy of killing her own newborn for a timely political move, and obviously wasn't constrained by morals in her climbing after that. And Gengh…

Ahh, the modern take on war and nations, the desire for moral superiority and the silly game of pretending there are rules in war. As hard as it maybe to wrap one's head around this, historically, war was a way to obtain resources, or rather resolve conflicts over resources. Genghis wanted a resource for his horses, he resolved it. If your city was wiped out by him, it was your fault for being weak. You should not ex…

[deleted]

Re: Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

#79

Post by agnatic-law »

evv555 wrote: post #19
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #13

IMO we should not look at Genghis Kahn's Empire fondly. After listening to Hardcore History's Wrath of the Khans, I think they have been the most evil group humanity has produced so far. Time seems to heal all wounds but Genghis Khan sure seemed to have made a lot of wounds.

Looking forward to the feel-good girl power articles about Nazi Germany.

No post body was provided.

Re: Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

#80

Post by agnatic-law »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #13

IMO we should not look at Genghis Kahn's Empire fondly. After listening to Hardcore History's Wrath of the Khans, I think they have been the most evil group humanity has produced so far. Time seems to heal all wounds but Genghis Khan sure seemed to have made a lot of wounds.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN