Lex Fridman Podcast
Reformatted for readability — timestamps removed, lightly restructured. Not verbatim.
Lex Fridman
Genghis Khan, born in approximately 1162, became the conqueror of the largest contiguous empire in history. But before that, he was a boy named Temüjin, who at nine years old, lost everything.
Jack Weatherford
The story of Genghis Khan, like the story I think of all of us, it doesn't begin at birth, it begins… That's the beginning of life.
Lex Fridman
So the meeting is fundamentally sort of a mixture of heartbreak and dark criminal type of kidnapping?
Jack Weatherford
Yes.
Lex Fridman
And from that is conceived this conqueror of the biggest contiguous empire in history.
Jack Weatherford
What I was really interested in was how did this happen? Who was this person?
Lex Fridman
So Temüjin's early years were marked by loneliness, abandonment and struggle?
Jack Weatherford
Yes. Even after this, he was kidnapped at one point by Taichiud people.
Lex Fridman
So he, just to be clear, the neck is trapped and the hands are trapped?
Jack Weatherford
We think that's how it is. We just have the word.
Lex Fridman
And he is running around deeply alone with this thing?
Jack Weatherford
Yes. And then he has to go out and find wherever his family is.
Lex Fridman
So this in part was the foundation of his breaking with Mongol tradition, that kinship is the most important thing above all else.
Jack Weatherford
Yes, by his father's own brothers. See, the men who kidnapped her, they had an obligation under the Mongol law and custom to marry her when her husband died.
Lex Fridman
You mentioned that Genghis Khan's childhood, Temüjin was marked by extreme tribal violence. Can you describe sort of the state of affairs in the steppe?
Jack Weatherford
The story of Temüjin is not a unique story for that time.
Lex Fridman
And this is one of the things you talk about, this in some ways, the love story with his wife was her kidnapping, was the defining… If you could point to one place where Genghis Khan the conqueror was created, it's that point, his wife being kidnapped.
Jack Weatherford
At age 16, Börte, the girl he had met when he was eight years old as she was nine, she's now 17, and she and her mother come.
Lex Fridman
And that was his first full on military engagement?
Jack Weatherford
Yes, aside from the things… Yes, his first full on military engagement.
Lex Fridman
And that too was a deeply formative experience. So what was that about?
Jack Weatherford
The killing of Behter, that's one of the things that's totally unknown outside of the Secret History of the Mongols.
Lex Fridman
Why to you, is it more complicated than that?
Jack Weatherford
I think it is the symbol of that, and it can be the thing that pushes him over the edge, but it's all these other tensions of what's going on with the family.
Lex Fridman
But it does show… In fact, it's interesting if it's not a big deal for him.
Jack Weatherford
Yes, he is capable of doing anything that needs to be done to resolve what he sees as a problem.
Lex Fridman
So, actually if we return to Börte, is it normal to have such a love story across many years when you're separated?
Jack Weatherford
I think as children, he was too preoccupied with staying alive and trying to find fish and roots to eat.
Lex Fridman
He went to literal war to get her back.
Jack Weatherford
He risked everything, he was willing to die.
Lex Fridman
So, here's this breaking point of the anda. How did that relationship evolve?
Jack Weatherford
The two of them never claimed to break it. They had just separated.
Lex Fridman
And they didn't see that. I mean, there's an obvious tension there.
Jack Weatherford
Yes. It's hard to know what's going through their minds at that point.
Lex Fridman
It seems that both of them under the anda relationship had a deep value for loyalty.
Jack Weatherford
He had become very practical at this point, and he understood that you needed complete total loyalty and trust.
Lex Fridman
Nevertheless, to me, just reading your work and understanding this history, this relationship seems like a really, really important relationship that defines the nature of loyalty for Chinggis.
Jack Weatherford
I would say in both negative and positive ways, it was the most important relationship of his adulthood aside from Börte.
Lex Fridman
Yeah, in that relationship, there's a contrast because Chinggis Khan did not accumulate riches or accumulate power in a way that was for the sake of the riches or for the sake of the power.
Jack Weatherford
Yes, yes. I often wonder, what happened to the gold belt?
Lex Fridman
That is one of the powerful things about the Chinggis Khan stories. He came from nothing.
Jack Weatherford
From absolute nothing.
Lex Fridman
And he didn't, from what I see and understand, become sort of corrupted by the riches or changed.
Jack Weatherford
He changed and matured in various ways over life as we all do, or we hope we do.
Lex Fridman
It's fascinating that a kid, like a boy that doesn't know the world would have the intelligence to understand how corrupting that is.
Jack Weatherford
And it's very hard to explain how he stuck to that, how he got it.
Lex Fridman
Just incredible. But let's go to the document that you referenced several times, the Secret History.
Jack Weatherford
The Secret History is a very unusual document, and I happen to love it very much.
Lex Fridman
Can you clarify? So there's two volumes, the 19th century Chinese manuscript covers the first volume.
Jack Weatherford
Yes, that was translated and then published by Harvard University.
Lex Fridman
I got it.
Jack Weatherford
There are Chinese notes that went with it because the Chinese had trouble understanding a lot of things in it.
Lex Fridman
Just to link on that point, you visited different places that were important to the story of Chinggis Khan.
Jack Weatherford
Yes. I really set out mostly to visit the cities he had conquered across Central Asia and all.
Lex Fridman
What's the open Mongolian steppe like? As we return to the feeling of Temujin and Genghis Khan, what's it like looking at this place that has not changed since this time?
Jack Weatherford
The first thing I think about this steppe is that you can see forever in every direction.
Lex Fridman
But then, if we go to the time of Temujin, of Genghis Khan, another component is the horses. Can we talk about their relationship with the horse?
Jack Weatherford
The Mongol and the horse are inseparable.
Lex Fridman
Just a small tangent. There's a wrestler named Cary Kolat and he tells the story about mental toughness, that the first time he saw truly mentally tough people was when he visited Mongolia for a wrestling tournament.
Jack Weatherford
Yes, yes.
Lex Fridman
And I suppose that falling from the horse is just an example of that.
Jack Weatherford
Yes, yes.
Lex Fridman
There's a mental hardness and a mental toughness.
Jack Weatherford
You have to be able to take care of yourself.
Lex Fridman
Well, then, getting back to the horses, the value they had for the horses and the horse riding skill they developed throughout their life created one of the most unstoppable military forces in history.
Jack Weatherford
The Mongol, the horse and the bow were a perfect combination and it was the most lethal weapon known to the world before the modern era.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. When you have a small army … Just think about that. A small army that conquered the world.
Jack Weatherford
It would fit in a stadium today in America.
Lex Fridman
So, there's extreme efficient coordination of units, mostly cavalry, right?
Jack Weatherford
All cavalry.
Lex Fridman
It was all cavalry?
Jack Weatherford
He had no infantry and he had no baggage train, he had no backup commissary.
Lex Fridman
And so, there's light cavalry and heavy cavalry and breaking down units using the decimal system, 10, 100, 1,000 so there's a hierarchy where you delegate authority but, to the degree there's commands, they must be followed strictly.
Jack Weatherford
Yes.
Lex Fridman
So, for extremely efficient, accurate, precise deployment of these troops in the battlefield and the dynamic movement of the troops, including all the interesting tactics that were utilized, you have to have really good communication and coordination and, for that, orders must be followed.
Jack Weatherford
Yes.
Lex Fridman
Is there something to speak to that? How do you tune this kind of system to where everybody is working together so well?
Jack Weatherford
I think the first point is the extreme loyalty of the people whom Genghis Khan chose.
Lex Fridman
So, complete self-reliance in that regard.
Jack Weatherford
Yes. They also carried dried dairy products, aaruul it's called, dry curd and they can keep it for a couple of years even.
Lex Fridman
So, rapid, extreme, continued innovation. So, you couple that with a, you have to say, a revolutionary idea that promotion should be based on merit.
Jack Weatherford
Yes, yes. And they were able to do that for three generations to create an army that was ever expanding, ever changing its tactics and its technology.
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Just imagine what it's like for the first time in your life seeing a wall.
Jack Weatherford
Yes.
Lex Fridman
When you come from the Mongolian steppe where there's very few even natural wall-like things.
Jack Weatherford
Right. Well, they have wall cliffs in some places, they're familiar with that and they can climb them but they don't have people at the top shooting down the mountain.
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