19. The Mongols - Terror of the Steppe

Paul Cooper: From their homeland far away in the steppe grasslands of East Asia, the Mongols had fused their anarchic pastoral culture into a war machine that has had few equals in history, and forged an empire that would stretch across much of the landmass of Asia, the largest continuous land empire in history. In almost every land they touched, they would bring destruction and death, fear and anguish, but in places they also laid the foundation for our modern world.

Paul Cooper: When dividing up the loot from a successful raid, steppe peoples had for thousands of years adhered to an ancient system by which the elites and nobles took all the best plunder for themselves... But Temujin appears to have been different. He had grown up on the freezing bank of the Onon River with his siblings, and learned to share everything in common... he pioneered a new and somewhat radical system in the world of the steppe. In his party, loot would be shared according to merit, and those who did well in battle were given a greater share, even if they were just common people.

Paul Cooper: The Mongols were now on the borders of both the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, Europe's two major powers. It looked as though all of Europe would now fall just like Northern China and the Khwarazmian Empire before it. If it had, it's likely that the entire history of the world would have gone down another path. If the Mongols had devastated Florence, Venice, and Milan the way they had devastated Beijing and Samarqand, the Renaissance would likely never have taken place... But history again had other plans. One event would transpire that would save Europe from this fate; that was the death of the Great Khan Ogedei.