31-08-2004 11:22									#151
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It's true, the Mongols never existed. I thank Drake for bringing that excellent piece of scholarly detective work to the board's attention.

	31-08-2004 11:24									#152
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I aim to please (and educate).

	31-08-2004 11:45									#153
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The Northern nomadic tribes, of which the Mongols were but one, provided light cavalry, horse archers, to kingdoms throughout Asia and all the way to Europe. Quite a handy unit to have in your order of battle.

	31-08-2004 11:50									#154
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quote: Originally posted by monkspider It's true, the Mongols never existed. I thank Drake for bringing that excellent piece of scholarly detective work to the board's attention.

quote: Mongols you say? Again I ask of you, What Mongols? I'm so tired of hearing of this imaginary Mongol boogeyman. The Mongol Empire did not exist. There were no cities found, no roads, no nothing. There is no evidence that the Mongols ever existed. The Mongol Empire could not exist. The amount of forage and organization required to move the described mass (at least 100,000 men, meaning what, 200,000 horses?) was beyond the logistics of those times. Think Napoleon in 1812: the whole October-December campaign was full of logistical failures of both Russian and French forces, with up to 80% of casualties on both sides accounting to starvation and other non-combat issues. And Mongols are 600 years before that. They attacked Northern Russia in the winter of 1236 - can you imagine the attrition rates? It is an utter fallacy of complete madmen to believe in this pie in the sky "Mongol Empire". Any kind of conflict that happened in the 13th century that is attibuted to these "Phantom Mongols" was probably just some sort of localized uprisings. They happened all the time in those days. So rather than dream about Mongols, Martians, and fluffy pink dinosaurs, let's talk bring the discussion a little closer to reality. There may be an international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids...

The mongols were from an area whose winter climate was even more severe than what is found in European Russia. They certainly can be expected to function better in a russian winter than the other invaders of russia from temperate climates could.

As to the unrealistic numbers I think this is simply an artifact of the illiteracy of the mongols resulting in the history of their actions being written by their defeated enemies who no doubt would be prone to exagerating the number of horsemen who had humiliated them.

When disputing the existance of a historical entity or group of people I think it is necessary to explain away nearly all evidence of it's existance in addition to raising objections to certain details of their historical record.

	31-08-2004 11:52									#155
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You offer no evidence. You offer NOTHING! Yet, you want to claim that the Mongols exist. You criminal...

	31-08-2004 11:53									#156
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Mongols weren't much more than barbarian raiders who were assimilated just like former waves of migrants out of Northern and Central Asia.

	31-08-2004 12:05									#157
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten You offer no evidence. You offer NOTHING! Yet, you want to claim that the Mongols exist. You criminal...

On the contrary there exists an enormous collection of data and coroborating historical records from several contemporary civilizations which document the existance of Mongol empires that in some ways might be regarded as even more exhaustive than evidence for the existance of even the Holy Roman Empire (for example). Essentially the strongest evidence is as follows. Look at the historical documents of contemporary civilizations of the mongol empire and you will find no 'holes' in their knowledge of the existance of the mongols after the dates in which the traditional historical record would have them encountering the mongols.

In addition to this amazing transeurasian agreement on the existance of the mongols we also have plenty of physical evidence and are even discovering new evidence to this day such as the recent identification of a y chromosome originating in the steppes and with a distribution consistent with the expected distribution of offspring of the great khan. We also have the physical evidence from the various successor khanates which while in every case were soon experiencing rapid assimilation with the local population still leave plenty of distinctively mongol linguistic and cultural curiosities to demonstrate their heritage. Everything from names and titles to horse breeds and weaponry.

In summery it is difficult to point to any evidence of the traditional historical record which we would expect to find but do not.

	31-08-2004 12:07									#158
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quote: On the contrary there exists an enormous collection of data and coroborating historical records from several contemporary civilizations which document the existance of Mongol empires that in some ways might be regarded as even more exhaustive than evidence for the existance of even the Holy Roman Empire (for example).

Link?

	31-08-2004 12:29									#159
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten quote: On the contrary there exists an enormous collection of data and coroborating historical records from several contemporary civilizations which document the existance of Mongol empires that in some ways might be regarded as even more exhaustive than evidence for the existance of even the Holy Roman Empire (for example). Link?

sure! Here's a few I googled quickly for you.



marco polos travels

interesting site on role of mongol empire in spreading plague

japanese contact with the mongols

Mongols and Iranian history

Mongols repulsed by egyptian mamluks

Basically every region that was literate and would traditionally have been expected to have contact with the huge mongol empire offers historically doccumentation of the mongol empires.

	31-08-2004 12:34									#160
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Once again bucking the majorities, I go with Julius Caesar.
The Roman's implementation of roads is enough to get my vote.
Never mind they controlled most they had access to.

	31-08-2004 12:36									#161
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quote: sure! Here's a few I googled quickly for you.

Can't you find some reputable sites? All of those are well-known for their bias...

	31-08-2004 13:10									#163
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quote: Originally posted by SlowwHand Once again bucking the majorities, I go with Julius Caesar. The Roman's implementation of roads is enough to get my vote. Never mind they controlled most they had access to.

Huh? that wasn't Julius Caesar's idea.

	31-08-2004 14:21									#164
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Ah, Geronimo. You play the straight-man role wonderfully.

	31-08-2004 14:39									#165
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Alexander as a single individual is definatly superior in his Conquests. Alxanders life was brief in contrast to Gengis, literaly the candle that burns hotest here.

Gengis Khan is remembered today because of the DYNASTY he founded, Gengis himself spent most of his life uniting the Mongol into the fighting force that made them so great. It was under Kuble Khan that China was concoured and under subsequent grandsons and greatgrandsons that most of Asia was concoured under. By that point though the "mongol empire" was breaking up and assimilating into what ever it had concoured (you might actualy consider this a great vurture as the Mongols were so open minded to other cultures). No single individual can take direct credit for the whole of the Mongol empire.

	31-08-2004 15:02									#166
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Impaler, but GK didn't found something that lasted. Caesar turned Gaul into a Roman province that gave us today's France. He also turned the Republic into an Empire, which formed the basic structure of many modern states, such as the United States.

	31-08-2004 15:33									#167
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You know....now that we have proof that the Mongols never existed, I'm beginning to wonder about this whole issue with the Romans, too.

Monk....have you any research on that topic?

Did the Romans really exist, or was it part of some conspiracy from Germania?

-=Vel=-

	31-08-2004 17:09									#168
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quote: Originally posted by Ned Impaler, but GK didn't found something that lasted. Caesar turned Gaul into a Roman province that gave us today's France. He also turned the Republic into an Empire, which formed the basic structure of many modern states, such as the United States.

mystifying opinion of the week

	31-08-2004 18:07									#169
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It's the Nedaverse, whaddya want?

On the subject of troop strengths, didn't Alex have "auxiliaries" as well?

-Arrian

	31-08-2004 18:56									#170
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Temujin (Ghengis Khan to the ignorant) gets my vote, mainly because he started from virtually nothing with a relatively unimportant tribe and built the military superpower of its day. He personally commanded many of the early battles, against competent and often numerically superior enemies.

Alexander inherited a formidable army from his father and a plan to conquer all of Greece. Napoleon benefited from being in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the numbers of troops released by mass conscription under the French revolutionary system, something his enemies had to adopt to wear France down and defeat him eventually. They definitely complete the top 3 in my book though.

If success is measured by how bad the things everyone else says about you are then Temujin and the Mongols win hands down in this company.

	31-08-2004 18:59									#171
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That is a good point, re: Alex inheriting the army Philip created & trained. That was rather useful.

-Arrian

	31-08-2004 19:07									#172
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quote: Alexander inherited a formidable army from his father and a plan to conquer all of Greece.

Philip had already conquered Greece before Alexander took the throne. For the ignorant...

	31-08-2004 22:49									#173
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quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse mystifying opinion of the week

True, Caesar did not "intend" to create a position we now know as "president". That was left to his nephew. But he did transform the Republic in some ways that were beneficial, and those reforms have stood test of time.

(The central problem, of course, was that the Emperor was nominally elected by the Senate and really elected by the Army. Had Caesar or Augustus instead set up periodic elections by the people, the post of Emperor would have been identical to the modern presidency.)

	31-08-2004 23:12									#174
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quote: Originally posted by Ned Impaler, but GK didn't found something that lasted. Caesar turned Gaul into a Roman province that gave us today's France. He also turned the Republic into an Empire, which formed the basic structure of many modern states, such as the United States.

I used to think this was the case but if you look at our legal system it appears to be entirely based on english common law rather than roman law. There are plenty of states we could point to as inheritors of roman legal framework but the uk and the us are probably poor examples.

	31-08-2004 23:19									#175
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I think the founding fathers took a look at the Roman Empire and simply tried to fix it. There was much discussion of WHY the Brit form of government was wrong. The worst part, was that the government came from the majority in Parliament. Separation of powers, as was seen in the Empire, was important.

Moreover, the president has virtually the same powers as an Emperor. Both were commander in chief, both had the power of veto, both had to sign legislation to make it effective, both had the power to appoint certain officials and to enter into treaties, both with the advice and consent of the Senate.

	31-08-2004 23:32									#176
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The Empire had seperation of powers?

	31-08-2004 23:41									#177
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quote: Originally posted by Kuciwalker The Empire had seperation of powers?

Yes, in the beginning.

	31-08-2004 23:43									#178
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The problem of course is that Emperors increasingly ruled through Edicts. Our modern analogy are Executive Orders.

Unfortunately, the Empire had no Supreme Court to contain power of the Emperor.

	31-08-2004 23:47									#179
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Funny, when I read the Federalist they didn't make too much of a mention of Rome - much more of historical examples of confederations.

	01-09-2004 00:06									#180
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K, true. But what the FF's wanted was a fix for what went awry in the Empire. They were specifically critical, as I said, of the British form of government.