Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World - Jack Weatherford [165]
Although he arose out of the ancient tribal past, Genghis Khan shaped the modern world of commerce, communication, and large secular states more than any other individual. He was the thoroughly modern man in his mobilized and professional warfare and in his commitment to global commerce and the rule of international secular law. What began as a war of extinction between the nomad and the farmer ended as a Mongol amalgamation of cultures. His vision matured as he aged and as he experienced different ways of life. He worked to create something new and better for his people. The Mongol armies destroyed the uniqueness of the civilizations around them by shattering the protective walls that isolated one civilization from another and by knotting the cultures together.
The great actors of history cannot be neatly tucked between the covers of a book and filed away like so many pressed botanical specimens. Their actions cannot be explained according to a specific timetable like the coming and going of so many trains. Although scholars may designate the beginning and ending of an era with exact precision, great historical events, particularly those that erupt suddenly and violently, build up slowly, and, once having begun, never end. Their effects linger long after the action faded from view. Like the tingling vibrations of a bell that we can still sense well after it has stopped ringing, Genghis Khan has long passed from the scene, but his influence continues to reverberate through our time.
In April 2000, I followed the trail that Temujin and his family probably took eight centuries earlier when they fled from the attacking Merkid who had come to kidnap Borte. After locating the likely spot of the attack on Temujin’s camp, the direction from which the Merkid came, and the path by which the group fled, we set off to follow the chase from the steppe to the mountains. The local herding boys were themselves about the same age as the ones whose trail we were now retracing. They were just as skilled with horses as their ancient predecessors, and they wore the traditional Mongol deel with a tightly wrapped sash of bright gold silk just below the waist. Except for the occasional baseball cap, sunglasses, or jeans worn under the deel, their clothes were still the same heavy layers of wool, fleece, and felt garments worn by their ancestors.
Our nine horses, like those of Hoelun’s fleeing family, were geldings, and the descriptions of the horses in the Secret History are so precise that we could have matched them up by age, color, shape, and other characteristics. Instead, we simply rode with the horses that an old and slightly drunk herder had designated as most appropriate for our task. We did not need to search for the route so much as merely follow the guidance and intuition of the nomads. They knew precisely how a horse and rider would get from here to there. They knew where the ice was too thin to cross the river, where the snow was too deep in the small depressions, and where a cluster of marmot burrows might trip one of the racing horses.
The wind made the new snow dance around the horse’s hooves as we slowly climbed the rocky slope of Burkhan Khaldun, the most sacred mountain in Mongolia. The horse nervously snorted moist puffs of steam into the crisp air. His head jerked. Under the strain of a long, hard climb in such a thin altitude, his heart pounded so loudly that I heard it above the rushing wind, and I felt it throbbing up through my legs to my heart. When we paused in the bright crystal clear light, we