From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is known. They called me Ben. We are joined with our super producer, Paul the Condecand but most importantly, you are you. You are here and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Let's start off on a high note today. Sure, let's do ray me fossil Latti, do our way to death to death. Yeah, let's uh, let's do that. So death, as it's often said, is one of the main U nineteen experiences of humanity. Eddie Right. No matter how different you are, how wealthy, poor, respected, or ignored you are, one day you will die. Are you a carbon based life form? Death a weights in need? And one of the biggest differences between us human beings listening to this and almost all other living things, including machine consciousnesses that may be listening to this in the future, is that we remember and venerate our dead, our loved ones, or even our hated ones who have passed. Civilizations of old channel this tremendous amount of energy in preparing for their respective versions of the afterlife, and then created practices that often continue in one form or another in the modern day, like, for instance, I don't want to put anybody on the spot, but it's safe to assume we have all at one point thought about how we want our death to be handled by the people who survive after us. Yeah, generally in this country, it's do you want to be put into the ground, your entire body in its form as it exists, Perhaps it's modified, maybe most of the insides have been taken out. Maybe you get burned, which is an ancient practice of burning about it, the ancient ritual of the sick burn yep, goes back farther than you think it does. And on a side note, I want to give a shout out to a fantastic documentary that Paul actually made and I helped out a little bit on it, which was about burial and death specifically called Burial. Is it available right now? It is not available, so you can't ever watch it ever, No, never, you will never be able to watch it. So it's without spoiling it. It is fantastic and alowing the way we ran into some some very strange things about the legality of burial here in the US. But while the specific funeral rites and rituals of some civilizations may be lost to time, we do have something equally amazing, some people would say even more amazing, and that is physical historical evidence of ancient people and their heroes, many of whom are called villains. Today we are talking about tombs, big tombs, not not just a little grave plot or a place where you put ashes a tomb. Yeah, and I think we figured out that the process or the practice of tombs goes back to maslus was the idea of it or innate you know, giant tomb that's decorative like a mausoleum. That's where that name camelogy. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Yeah, and it sounds morbid sure for us to to open a show with this. Oh, by the way, conspiracy At how stuff works dot com, we'd love to hear your opinions of the best way to handle a dead body. Are you undead or a spirit? How were you buried? How did that go? Uh? And on some level it is morbid. We have to think about it. Some of the most meaningful buildings in human history are actually tombs, the Pyramids of Egypt, the taj Mahal in India, even Westminster Abbey in the UK. And today we're not just talking about the tombs you can visit, and we're not just talking about tourist tips for visiting a famous grave site. No, we are exploring a genuine and successful cover up a mystery spanning almost one thousand years that remains officially unsolved today. Today we are searching for the lost tomb of Jengis Khan, the very opposite of the tune that I was talking about the mausoleum, which is an above ground tomb that was a later development. We're talking about tombs that they don't want you to find, not big old decorative suckers. Yes, and specifically this fellow named Jengis Khan, who I hate to admit, did call Genghis Khan quite a bit of my life. Yeah, I think it's it's very common for us here in the West, because you know, these are two very different languages and we're talking about a vast span of time. So even if you if you spoke Um, an adjacent language of the time, the mispronunciation would be very easy to run into and that's what Bill and Ted called him. So and and you see that ge just that yeah, yeah, give me a gu And also English is such a pirate language. It just crabs things arbitrarily and steals from other dictionaries. So let's let's look at Jengis Khan from from a biographical perspective. Let's start at level one to learn some more about him. His real name was not Jengis Khan. He was born Timujin in Mongolia around one thousand, one d and sixty two uh CE, right correct. And he was named oddly enough after a Tatar chieftain that his father had captured, so it was a point of pride to name him after that. He was a member of a tribe called the Vorgigen. And by the way, we are going to most likely mispronounce everything, but Jengis Khan here, and he Timujin was a descendant of Kabbal Khan, who briefly united the Mongols against the Chin dynasty of northern China in the early eleven hundreds. Ben Khan isn't in the last name, right, it's a title or like refers to being like a king or According to the Secret History of the Mongols, Uh. This fellow, tim o Jin was born holding a blood clot in his hand, and that might sound weird today, but back then it was an auspicious sign in Mongol folklore, indicating that he was destined to become not just a leader, but a great leader. And he did not have an easy life. He was nine years old when his father passed away. His father was poisoned after his father had taken him to live with the family of his future wife, who is named Borte. Uh. This marriage was super arranged, as you can tell, right, and marrying for romantic notions is also a relatively recent thing in the span of human history. Uh. He. So he comes back his dad dies when he's nine. He comes back to his clan and he says, look, my father's dad, I am the leader, and they laugh at him. You're nine. Uh. So he and his half brothers and survivors of that line the family are relegated to essentially a refugee status until they go on a hunt and he gets in a fight with his half brother over how to split the spoils of the hunt, and he kills his half brother, a guy named Bect. This makes him the head of the family. Officially, there's no one to say ha ha ha. Right, yeah, officially, he's presumably just like in a bit of blind rage right there. I don't know, I'm trying to picture this scenario. Well, I mean it was after right, so after a hunt, you just exerted yourself a whole bunch of the whole group of them. You get back and now you're disputing like who gets what how much? And yeah, I can imagine it was. I guess that's sort of a micro cosmic version of what war is and conquering is. So he just sort of took that notion and spread it out, blew it up. And to be clear, the hierarchy here is a little bit different. Unless you have a very brutal family today, or unless your friendships are very brutal things that I would not call friendships, you're probably gonna be a little more fair with people and not as hierarchical. But but it's a tradition plays a huge role in his early life when we see it come out later in the wash. So let's fast forward. He's about twenty years old and the next terrible thing happens. There is a raid by a group called the Tight Tight chee Oats and they used to be allies of his family and tribe, but they betrayed them and when they captured him, they made him a slave. He eventually escapes and he starts to form a fighting unit with his surviving brothers and some other aligned clans people. And this is when he begins to form his first army. He's twenty years old. We're glossing over some of his biographical details and focusing kind of in his military rise to power, but there's a huge spiritual aspect to this as well. Search jingis Khan biography on your favorite search thing. So he begins the slowestcent of power. He builds this gigantic force of more than twenty thousand people. He's just getting started. So he says, you know, tradition has never been kind to me and made my life very terrible up to this point. So I'm going to destroy some of these traditional divisions among various tribes, and I want all the people identifying as Mongols to be under my rule. So he starts out with these absolutely monstrous techniques and tactics to revenge his father's death. First thing, he orders the killing of every male of the Tatar tribe who is more than three ft tall more than about three ft, so people with growth problems would be the only male adults to survive and children. The three ft rule was a hard and fast thing. Or you think this is just like the record shows, it's a think. It translates to the the spoke or the axis of two willed cart interesting. He also found his former slavers, the Tatius, and had all of their chiefs spoiled alive. By twelve oh six, he had defeated another tribe called the Naymans, and he officially effectively gained control of central and eastern Mongol Alia. And this is when the rest of the Mongols started saying, I thought this guy's kind of wild because he was fighting wars differently than anybody else had done before. I don't want we don't have to spend too much time on this, except for the really cool stuff. He had a ton of spies. He stole every technology or tactic that his enemies used that he thought was good. His army grew to over eighty thousand soldiers, and one of the questions you would ask is, how how the heck do you communicate to eight thousand people? There's no radio, and that's what set him apart, right, I mean he was not only brutal, but crafty type. Yeah, yeah, he They would use drums like other musical instruments, smoke signals as ways to communicate pretty pretty good stuff flags even I think, and um oh yeah, the fire was a big deal, so the smoke signals, but then also a torch itself, where you're like waving a torch in certain ways or lighting certain number of torches. And I think that terrain helped them to you because there was so much flat land and the steps you could see pretty easily clearly what the doth RACKI and Game of Thrones are based on. Yeah, and this horde, the riders and all that stuff. And George R. R. Martin has been I think pretty forthcoming about that. I mean he use can deny it. Yeah, if he tried to act like no, no, no, this is my my thing, they see it's like, I think it's really you guys are now looking at the the Connates through the lens of Game of Thrones and song advice of fire. So yeah, the soldiers did. We're on horseback and the depiction and fiction got that right. Depiction and fiction of drop it beat, right, But they were also uniformed, much more so than the rack of fiction. Each each soldier would be riding a horse often, but they all had a bow, a shield, a dagger, a lasso. And this was cool. They had saddle bags that were waterproof so they could carry supplies. But if they were in a if they were trying to afford a very deeper, dangerous or rough river, they could empty the supplies, leave it with their support system and make air bags to float. You're kidding me, Like what Like they had a little nipple they'd blow into and because their waterproof and they can hold air. Yeah, it's it's like that old trick we learned in boy Scouts about how to survive by turning your genes into a flotation device. Sure, like the way when you're when you grow in the water with your jeans they fill up and puff up in the front. This, I mean obviously incredibly innovative stuff here, the idea of a lasso. Everything they had had a very specific purpose, right, And that's that's pretty interesting. And then you mentioned um off Mike that they had support staff. I guess bringing up the rear and making sure they had the supply chain that was opened up. I mean smart, smart maneuvering. Yeah, the shamans who served as spiritual and medical aids, food supplies. This was in by the way, this is the more peaceful time. And after after watching Timojin ruined these first three tribes, the rest started to fall in line. They sued for peace, and that's when he got the title, which is not his name, the title we know him by today Jengis Khan, which means universal ruler, the Cohn of cons the king of kings, like the Kal of calls like cal Drogo, So it goes beyond what we think of as a general or an admiral or something. Because the leading shaman additionally declared that Jengis Khan was the representative of the supreme god of the Mongols on earth, Monkey Coco Tengri, the eternal blue Sky, and this meant that as far as any practicing Mongol was concerned, it was this guy's destiny to rule the world. They were also very religiously tolerant. They thought religion was a personal matter, super forward facing for the time, but with one exception. To defy the Great Khan was to defy the will of God with all the consequences that came along. When there's a nice little recreation vignette and one of the documentaries are gonna talk about later where um Timagen goes to the top of a very important mountain that we'll get too later and asks the sty the sky god like what he should do. And that's supposedly where he got the inspiration to go forth and conquer, and that mountain plays a huge role to right. So twelve oh seven he attacks a kingdom called and in twelve eleven he takes the Shin dynasty in northern China, or he tries to launches a bloody campaign the last twenty years. In the West, he initially resorts the honest diplomacy. Let's give it a try. Yeah, let's give it a shot. He sends a diplomatic mission to an outfit called the choaris M dynasty, and think of think of this as like modern Persia, Afghanistan and Turkistan. And this is where we see trade becoming the most one of the most significant historical results of the Empire, because they're uniting the East and the West, which normally did not have regular trades. Requires a little more diplomacy rather than brute force. We need to cooperate to make things better for each other rather than kill each other. Right, we have to be able to know that if we send silk somewhere leagues and leagues away, they will return with our emissaries alive and with the money we wanted to trade. But yeah, this diplomatic mission did not turn out so great. Yeah, yeah, because, as it turns out, establishing yourself through very well known public acts of bloody revenge makes people hesitant to trust you. So on the way his diplomatic caravan was attacked by forces under the control of the governor of oh Trar. The con was Piste. He demanded that the shaw of the cars him give him the govern or. The shaw not only said no, but he sent something in substitution. He sent Jengis Khan, the head of one of the diplomats he had sent. Now, this is outside of the scope of this is an episode. But I did not realize they were calling them shaws that far back. I didn't know the history of that term went back to this period. That that term has evolved through a lot of different periods, and this this guy's title was that but it was his title so much so that it was his name, you know. And so he gets the head of this diplomat. And this is what historians referred to as you know, we should just say it the technical term. It's when she hits the fan, so the con is never the biggest fan of playing nice launches an overwhelming attack that sweeps through Central Asia all the way into Europe, changing the course of history. In twelve nineteen, he sends two hundred thousands soldiers against this dynasty, the kuaraz M dynasty, and the people in the way, the people who are not immediately slaughtered or sexually assaulted to the point of death, were driven in front of the enemy to serve as human shields until they starved. And you might be thinking to yourself, I haven't heard of this karaz M dynasty. Yeah, there's a reason. I mean, they were wiped from the record more, I mean from history, you know. Yeah, in twelve twenty one, they were erased from the face of the earth. No living thing was spared on the way to that ratio. The livestock was slaughtered along with all the men, women and children. The army piled their victims skulls in these large pyramids shaped amounts, and then in twelve one, yes, the con erased the dynasty from the face of the planet, and after that the empire entered into what passed for peace at the time. There were a lot of progressive laws about crime, religion, trade, there were even environmental considerations. That's pretty amazing, Yeah, but it doesn't change the fact that everything that all of the citizens of that let's call it, I don't know civilization who was all built on blood, like every blood bones rape that it's like blood money conquest. I mean, you can't you know the people that were taken. I mean, I don't know people that weren't killed, that were assimilated into this culture and then had their families taken from them. From them couldn't have been super stoked on the rulers here, right, And this governing structure is set up so that the conquered people are required to offer tribute, and a lot of times that's going to be in terms of agricultural resources, because this empire is hungry, right, And the empire will also expect that vassal states or communities supply tribute in terms of troops. When the Tanga dynasty of U refuses to send troops for the cons big war against that other dynasty. He rides out, sacks their capital, puts down the rebellion, and just to make sure people get the message, he executes the entire extended ruling family and he ends their bloodline as well. So that's two dynasties wiped from the face of the earth. And soon after that, the Con himself dies. Well, damn, that's anti climactic, goblished so much, and then it's just like, I'm out Alexander the Great died at thirty two, thinking he was a failure, thinking about all those twenty seven year old rock gods. When you put it like that, I guess it makes sense. But yeah, he's he's he's done. So how how does how does he die? Man? Well, experts disagree on exactly how the con expired, and that's one of the reasons we're making this whole episode. Uh, the the details surrounding his death where he's laid You're a lot of questions here. There's a whole idea that perhaps he fell off a horse because he was an old, he was an aging man, he was getting older, and he died because of you know, maybe a wound he had received in battle that wasn't fully healed or something. Um, there's an idea that perhaps he couldn't breathe very well as he's getting a little bit older. Um, held, was he supposedly when he died, Well, he died in twelve twenty seven, and uh, since he was born way back in the day in eleven sixty two, that makes him, Uh, that would be about sixty five. Yeah, I mean not too shabby for for this day. Sixty five years old. That's a great age. Um. One after the Beatles song, which is nice, and um, he didn't get to he didn't get to hear that song. Sadly well, you know, assuming that he died. But because you'll hear some people say, hey, what if he just never died, but just on that island with Tupac And there's a there's a whole other thing. The idea. It's a I don't know, God, it's not a joke. It's kind of a joke, but it's not the whole shot in the knee thing. You got took an arrow to the knee, and no, Nger is a used to be an adventurer, but he can't anymore. I thought you would like that one. I had to I had to put that in there. That comes from Marco Polo. Marco Polo had written about the rise and fall of the Khan and he heard that just like the city guarden Skyram, the con was shot in the knee and then he got infected. Do you remember that? He says it like it's like every character says that same you used to be I took an arrow to the knee. Yeah, and uh, it's we don't know if the folks made that game meant for that to be such a reference, but we're going to pretend it is. And please join along with this. Well, it's certainly better than just falling off your horse when you're meant to be this badass like leader Rider guy. You know, that would be pretty embarrassing, especially with the cultural importance based on horsemanship. So, following his tribal customs the parts of the tradition that he did adhere too, he was buried without markers somewhere allegedly near the place of his birth. According to legends, the funeral escort that carried him to this burial site killed anyone they saw along the way and anything they encountered. The slaves who built the site were killed. The soldiers who killed them were killed by a different troop without you know, I don't think those that first wave his soldiers knew effectively creating uh this centuries version of an air gap security system, like that scene in the Batman movie with the Joker, the heath Heath Ledger Joker, that heist they pull off where everybody kills everybody else until there's nobody left. But this movie, i've seen it, I cannot remember that part says, I think it's in the trailer. Uh So, the empire goes on. Khan has bestowed supreme leadership to his son Ogdai, who controls most of Eastern Asia, including China. He's divided the rest of the empire amongst his other children. One gets control over Central Asia northern Iran. The youngest gets a small piece of land near Mongolia. His other son, who had died before him, had already taken control of modern day Russia with a son named Batu. They created the legendary thing called the Golden Horde, and that is more of I think that's probably the closest thing George R. R. Martin's going for. Because those forces meet European forces and tactics, and even in Game of Thrones there's the Golden Company, which is another kind of horde that's more for higher Yeah, there are mercenary crew and this empire eventually reaches all the way to the gates of Vienna in Austria until this is how fragile history is. Until the word of the cons death reaches Batu, he's summoned back to Mongolia. He turns east and we can only imagine that most of the people and all points west of Vienna went. So that seems like this doesn't really make a dumb move, Like if you're already like ready to go, you've made it this far. That really shows the ancestor, you know, the respect for ancestors in this culture, like they're just stopping what we're doing. We're done, We've got to go back and take care of Dad. And the empire soldiered on for a while, but you know, fame and power messes with people, and the cons descendence eventually broke off into smaller regions called kanates that did cooperate but later became competitive. The trade system, most importantly began to break down, and the rulers began to be seen by the common folk as increasingly assimilated with the people they were supposed to be ruling. So like they would say, the Mongolians who are ruling part of China are no longer really Mongolian. They're soft. So they kind of died with a whimper and not a bang, No big final blood war, just a little bit, just kind of faded into the background. Kind of there was one factor that was bloody, and it was not human. Humans just helped it along. At the same time these empires begin to fall and assimilate, the Black Plague strikes. It destabilizes the world. Trade networks that were already suffering are falling into mass of disrepair as everybody's trying to figure out why everyone around them is dying. About of China's population falls to the plague, as well as anywhere from five to fifty of the population in Europe. So yeah, it's a it's it's a grizzly rye is a grizzly fall. But regardless of whether you think he is one of the world's best military commanders, a global hero, or an infamous villain, when thing's for sure, Jengis Cohn changed history. So what happened to him? Well, that's the thing nobody really knows except for those people that got, according to legend, assassinated immediately after they buried him. So hardcore. So even today, right now, the search continues officially outside of you know, maybe the secret keepers. Maybe there is a group of small group of secret keepers, and we'll learn about that right after a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. According to oral folklore and legend, the empire went to great links to erase the location and the cons tomb from the world. As you mentioned, the funeral escort killed people they countered on the way to and from the site, which is a little complicated because the people who knew the way there got killed when they were there. And then the other people who killed the slaves and the soldiers who killed the slaves. Uh, they probably never saw the two, at least according to the story. So again, well, well, well before this in b C, we had Greek cultures that were venerating their dead with these ostentatious monuments that were there for everyone to worship and see, totally different style of burial. Here, they're killing their countrymen to keep them from spreading the word of where this leader would have been buried and for what reason. We'll we'll get to that. Yeah. Then for another cultural reference, killing people who construct a tomb of a leader is unfortunately not uncommon. There have been other cases in ancient cultures where slaves were killed not to keep a secret, but as a sacrifice to serve the leader in the afterlife. I was gonna ask, do you think they were like surprised or are they going into this knowing they probably weren't going to come back? That part has lost to history and stuff too. It's you know, it's easy for us to say, well, I wouldn't do that if I knew what was going to happen, you know, with the benefit of looking back from But the fact of the matter is we don't have documentation that tells us anything about the understanding or the motivation of the slaves or the soldiers, because there's very little documentation about Cohn at all. Right, there's the Secret History of the Mongols, which is often considered not a hundred percent accurate, and it leaves a lot of things out. But it's you know, you've this far back in history. There's a constant search for sources, Right, you gotta put it together based on artifacts and just kind of like finding stuff and putting the pieces together and saying this is probably how it went down. Yeah, and based on what the people who, what kind of frame of reference or cultural perspective the earlier investigators were coming from, Like we're still we got to be clear. This stuff we're talking about here is the realm of legend. The tomb was allegedly hidden, and folklore gives us conflicting methods of camouflage, and one story an entire river was diverted over the CON's grave so that no one could find it. Ever, in another version, they had horses trample across the ground and then they planted trees on the site so that you couldn't find any clear traces of somebody digging. And then another story says that perma frost itself erased all traces of the site. Uh, there's another guy. In sixteen sixty two, a work called the Ordini top Chi that argues Genghis Khan's coffin was empty when it arrived to Mongolia. It's very it's a it's a conspiracy theory that has echoes in the mom Earn day. Uh. And then there's another atland that from six o four that says only Genghis Khan's shirt tent and his boots were buried. Shirt shoes tent no service in the afterlife. Yeah, but essentially after he died, people began searching for this too. One legend said that was found as soon as thirty years later. This is the weirdest one I found was that was found thirty years later because a camel was buried with the con a young camel, and that the camel's mother found the grave and started weeping over the death of its child. It sounds like a fairy tale. It sounds very Pixar Andy Disney movie esque. Probably not true, but it is possible that the burial site was somewhere around wild camel routes, and then the tears seeped into the soil and the camel was resurrected by the power of love. As long as that wilder and watching nearby clap their hands. That's probably not true, but uh, we do have some prove that it is not true. Prove that I'm saying the camel thing is so real. Yeah, I hope it is, man, I hope you're right, I hope it is. I would love to hang out deep in Disney movies. Now, that's gotta be real. What are the good Disney movies? Coco? Coco is pretty good, which one my son calls it The Boy with the Bones? Yeah, oh I remember that. Yeah, it's a solid What do you see Incredibles too? Yet, there's a short before it that will gut you, my friend. It's called Bow. It's about a dumpling. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, beautiful, it's beautiful. So the thing about Disney films and Pixar films as well, is that, oh I just realized, pretty soon every film is going to be a Disney film. They're buying, they're buying it all they might buy us they already please buy as Disney. Please, but I will. I will not say no to tickets or a mascot costume, that's for sure. But the the thing about these films, these Disney films, is that they are proven historical resources. We can look at them, we can see what happened in them. It's not just oral folklore. And we have some documentation from this time. Oddly enough, via Marco Polo. He wrote about his travels and he wrote about what he saw as the attitudes of Mongolian people themselves, uh, and the speculation over the side of the grave. According to him, people Mongolia did not know where the tomb was as early as the late thirteenth centuries, so even just a few decades after the death, they were saying, which we don't know where he is. And he was like, Marco, oh, we are po lowering the bar on the puns today. Marco did have a guest, though, and in the Travels of Marco Polo, he writes that it has been an invariable custom that all the grand cons and chiefs of the race of jenis Con should be carried for an internment to a certain lofty mountain named Alte and in whatever place they may happen to die, although it should be at the distance of a hundred days journey, they are nevertheless conveyed thither. Oh, Marco Polo, what a And I do believe the illustrious Cohn may have dad from an arrow to the knee. That's right, I like the jewel at this guy sip you know also met that that accident totally, I mean convinced you're about to go. Yeah, I only do one voice so it's great. But the precision Matt it's doing it drips like butter. It's the true voice of history, Matt Julip Frederick taking a big old journey across Mongolian understand over the mountain old time. Oh man, I want to make a video game and just have you narrate all the characters. I'm down with that, Hey, developers out there, please let me voice your game and battle. Ben'll do it, and Nol do it, and Paul do it. No, it'll just be you, and it'll just be a game full of old men countering around the Mongolian waste, including the love interests. Yes, it it'll be the West World game. And I'll just play the old guy. Okay, okay, Now everybody knows there's an old person in a TV show. Just let me play Delos's grandfather who now, uh yeah, but people are probably programmed where they haven't gotten to the level of consciousness that they can't hear that spoiler. You guys are killing me. So in seven rumors surfaced that the Soviet government had found and stolen a banner from this Buddhist monastery, this remote Buddhist monastery, and the banner had clues leading you to the grave site. Nothing came of that. Who let those guys have that? No one they took it. They probably started the rumor themselves. They're a little braggadocious over there in the Soviet Union. And I'm gonna be honest, it might be seven when we did the Great Game podcast about Shambalah. This is probably associated with that. The searches continued and they had that same pattern that we see in so many of these sorts of investigations, are all these tantalizing clues. Somebody finds a button, they find a gold coin, they find like an ancient bow, but they find no concrete proof leading to the grave. There's a very sad story here. An amateur archaeologist named Maury Kravitz dedicated decades of his life to searching for this tomb, and he was basing a lot of his research and his excavations, which were quite expensive, on the writings of a fifteenth century French jesuit. He was convinced, based on this guy's records, that the site would be near the cons quote favorite place the confluence CEO in f l U E n c E of the Curlin and quote Bruccie rivers with a place named Burkon called Doon over his right shoulder. Kravitz couldn't find a river named Brucie, which most people would think to mean that he's just confused the name or that it doesn't exist. Bruccie man, And isn't the Caldoon the the the Birken Caldoon the mountain in question right from reaching his hands up to the sky God, so everybody believes that Scott to be somehow related to this mountain. But he did find something called a toponym, uh Barroon Brooch or West Brooch. And a toponym is a place name that is derived from a topographical feature. Was so cool that it's really cool. And that's a new one for me. It's t O P O N y M and yeah uh. And this area was about a hundred kilometers east of Birkeland called Dunes. Not that far. Cravitz died without ever finishing or failing his search for the two makes you never quit, but yeah, yeah, exactly, And it makes you think about all those people who have spent their life looking for something like the Holy Grail, like putting all of their life's work into something like that or what what are what are some of these other legendary things, Yeah, things that don't want to be found. But thankfully, Morey's young grandson, Lenny, went on to become an incredible rock star, a rock Yeah, sports leather pants like no one's ever done in the history of had wonderful children, And if you listen to most of his albums, you'll see that the lyrics are are actually about the search for the tomb of genghisk the whole thing that you're gonna go my way, that's about Genghis Khan. Yea, none of this is true. This is true. The one fault is he wrote it about Genghis Khan rather than Jengis Khan. And that's what's kind of failed pronunciations. It's better when we catch ourselves though, Isn't it agreed? This is lean into it. There are other possible locations. Marco Polo has that admittedly vague but amazingly performed by Matt mentioned of Altai. Other theories include something from Luan dynasty, which the one dynasty is mongoled sended. You know, we're talking earlier about ruling populations that were thought to have assimilated to egregiously these This is one example. In the Yuan dynasty believe that all Mongol Kans were buried in the area of Genghis Khan's tomb, a site known as qin Yan Valley. But there's no in all their records talking about this valley. There's no specific mention of where that tomb is. They just talk around it as if they know where it is, so like the valley beyond. Yeah, but they was it exclusive to to Jengis him being the big the big Kahuna that they would hide his tomb or would would they like would they have hit all of their burials like a valley of the cons Yeah, there's well. Again, the tradition is not to mark them. Yea where you were born, to write were like where you originate. There's another bit of folklore that says he's buried at the peak of or on a peak rather in the Kenti mountains, and that's Burkehon call doon Uh. He had hidden from enemies on that mountain as a young man. That's where he made that spiritual pledge right to return there and death. So for centuries it seemed like this was going to be a hopeless fools. Errand it's a huge country. It's not very populated. It's almost as if the Hue humans sprinkled there are just to give us a sense of scale about how vast and empty it is. It's a very unforgiving terrain. It's a very unforgiving terrain. But there was there, there was something that seemed set to change the expedition's game that arrived very recently, and that is the emergence of cutting edge technology, which will dive into after a word from our sponsors, and we're back and entered Dr Albert Lynn. He is the let's say, he's the most well known example of somebody who's using technology in the hunt for this lost tumb And you you're a huge fan of this guy, right, man, I am. I've only I've only spent let's say it's probably a forty eight minutes with him roughly that I've spent with him on screen hanging out. No, no, no, no. I I love the work that he's doing and it seems very admirable. And going back to his roots, backstory about led him to this ultimate journey using grad school and he went back to Mongolia, bought a horse and ended up like staying with these nomadic people and um kind of hearing about this potential for a hidden sight that we're talking about and it intrigued him a lot, obviously. Well, it's it's really awesome. It's something we've discussed on this show a lot before, using lidar and other new technologies to be able to find hidden tombs, hidden archaeology that exists there in the world. And he's actually doing it, and he convinced in this case National Geographic to go out and you know, fund his research and fund his journeys. Pretty awesome. Yeah. Lightar is stands for light detection and ranging. It's a remote sensing method. You've probably heard when we talked about law civilizations how this technology has been used. And luckily for Lynn and Code, this has progressed by leaps and bounds. Nor weren't you mentioning that drone that used light ar. Yeah, he's got a really like early. When I say early, I think this is in what came. Yeah, he started his search I think started in O eight. Yeah, so you know at that time, drone technology was it's like the military thing we always talk about where it's um, they hold back stuff or they only have like the good stuff for the big boys in the military, and then it eventually trickles down to what I like to call pro sumer technology, where it's going to be quite expensive to get a good one, and they had one. They had. I'm not sure exactly, Matt. You may have mentioned what the model might have been of the strone. Oh, No, I don't know the actual It was definitely a really tight drone equipped with some kind of light ar technology that they could use to do topographical like aerial maps. I'm pretty sure Jonathan, our own Jonathan Strickland went to see yes that your were a version of ce S at the time, and uh talked about those first prosumer drones. Yeah, I think you were correct. They also used satellite imagery. They had some assistance from some satellite companies, and with this and the lighter, which they describe as non invasive ground based imaging, they were able to identify and study dozens and dozens of archaeological sites, including some ancient burial mounds, none of which so far have turned out to be the cons We should point out to that it's a big deal, big important part of this as that the Mongolian government they won't let anybody dig. There's no there's no dig policy. So this was his solution to, like, let's do a virtual dig. Yeah, and they also so very quickly they run into this problem. We're gonna let's talk a little in depth about this because this is the most well known recent search and the one that has the highest probability of success. Honestly, he did it very smartly. Yeah. So he also crowdsourced. Their team said, look, we're getting way too many images. We're getting way too much stuff to go through. If you are interested in this, you do not have to be PhD level archaeologist. We want to use you as what Dr Lynn called a human computation network. So they got thousands of quote citizen archaeologists, that's what they called them, to review more than eighty five thousand images from this that they had gotten through this company called Digital Globe, that's their satellite partner. And these were images of that forbidden zone that's the name of it. Yeah. Uh, that's where you cannot dig. And parts of that area used to be entirely restricted to royal families among colia. So it's a big deal for people to even be able to go out there, and he published a paper about this called Combining go O I one Satellite Remote Sensing u a V Aerial Imaging and Geophysical Surveys and Anomaly Detection applied to Archaeology. Sexy. It's the kicker, right, is these these anomalies because when you look at the aerial footage, there's stuff down there that's clearly man made. He says, if it's like squared off looking, it's these little nipple looking things, little bounds kind of that's quote unquote like odd. But he said the sheer amount of data was just too too, too, too much for a team of of however many he had access to to mess with and just to mind through it all. Hence the crowdsourcing. So he basically got a bunch of people to do a bunch of grunt work for him for free. Well, the images were roughly one pixel to one meter. That's amazing, So like you're literally looking at all of the land space. That's a lot of computer enhance. Yeah, but then what did the aggregate look like when all the results were in all these clicks, all these people taken on these deals, what do they get back that made it interesting? They are a distinct lack of a two of Genghis cons tom. But they but they saw clusters of things kind of pinpoint, so they were able to yeah, map out civilizations places where it may be more likely for the tomb to be located, especially if the folks from Nuan dynasty were correct and that there was some sort of knowledge of the tombs location and that the cons were secretly buried. There was a thing about it being betwixt two rivers or something, and go back to and the proximity to the mountain of course, right, that's right. I think they found what he redescribed as an iron age tomb um. But it has just been picked clean by grave robbers, he said, looking for barrow heads or something. Yeah, but you're right, Bend. They you know, all this cool tech didn't amount to a whole Hillo Hillo con one other Hillican of one of the other really cool things they had where the lidar actually back in backpack style or something. So they're walking around across these areas that have been you know, clustered together with a bunch of different people seeing and they're walking just with a lighter on their back. I want to do that. I want that for you, I feel like you've earned that. That's kind of rolling cart version of it too. And I saw in the video that I was look confused about what it was. But they definitely had a lot of tech and that was a big part of the of the of the show was how much gear they had, you know. And we can't downplay what they found because they found a lot of amazing, astonishing things. They just found those as a result of searching for the thing that they have yet to find, and that's because there are and this this is maybe the strangest part of today's story. There are some massive problems with the search. Nold you and I like we briefly mentioned the terrain his first off spoiler alert. Mongolia is the definition of remote. Most of the country outside of the capital Lambatore does not have roads, rooted cities. There's still many communities living in the neeumatic tradition on the steps. And then just for comparison, I found this fascinating. This really set it in stone in my mind. Mongolia is more than seven times the size of Great Britain and it has about two percent the amount of roads that Great Britain has. It's so funny that recently took a flight over the Great Salt Flats in Salt Lake City, and that was the closest kind of terrain that I could kind of compare to this. It's not desert. It it's very like you look down, it's like there's nobody down there. Yeah, there are no roads, and it's like I felt like I was flying over the moon and it was just beautiful. But it's also like very alien. I have to have a feeling there's a similar quality over over there in Mongolia. There was one yeah, when I drove through the salt flats on me completely non sketchy thing, and it was one of the few times in my life I thought, Man, if the car breaks down, that's it. It's over for me. They make a good point to in the documentary how they take older trucks and stuff because they're easier to fix out in the field, and there would be like, now you're not going to find a Volkswagen shop, you know. And even with those trucks that have like four by four capability and stuff, they have to send some people on horseback different sites, right stuff. So I always see what you're saying, because they couldn't get right up onto it with the vehicle. They had to like send out parties. Yeah, it's totally true. What we need to do is have teams that go in behind the search, teams that can set up supply lines. Oh yeah, there we go, right. I think that's how we conquered this whole thing. So that was the smartest little detail of CON's brigade that that's Gone'm like, wow, that is They really had to figure it out. There's also some speculation that climate change played a role in the expansion of the empire because they did they were running out of resources agriculturally to feed people. Sure, and I always I hadn't considered that, and maybe that played a role in the later environmental laws that he instituted. There was another video that Auto played after the documentary were talking about. It was an Australian fellow who tried to follow the path that the Mongols would have taken, and he kept bringing another problem where there wasn't enough grass for the horses to graze on, so that the horse was would get skinny over time. And you could picture that happening for real, like back in the day. If it's like the resources aren't there, you can't feed your horses. You can't feed your horses, you can't feel only going on with this nomadic lifestyle. The only way is forward to find the what they call him in song, advice, some fire, exceason, game of Thrones, the sheep people, the lambsmen people. And here here's the strangest, most disturbing part. One of the reasons, possibly one of the reasons that the tomb is yet to be found despite all this blood, sweat, tears and amazing technology applied to the question, is that some people, many people, do not want it to be found, especially native Mongolians. They don't want the tune to be disturbed. This is often described, at least here in the West, in terms of a curse. They'll say that Moriy Kravitz died because he got too close was cursed. And this idea is that disturbing or even discovering the grave of the con will set in motion this catastrophic series of events, triggering something like World War three. However, what's interesting here as well is that many Mongolians who reject the spiritual concerns and say, ah, the idea of a curse is just a bunch of Gobbledegook. They still don't want the tomb discovered. In their opinion for people who would consider themselves skeptical, but I want this to remain unknown. Their opinion is that if it was the CON's wish, it was jengis CON's wish that his body not be found, then his wishes should be respected. This mixture of fear and respect is codified the modern day. The mountains that often come up as candidates in the search for the tomb are still considered sacred. Uh. There were recent reports of a Mongolian researcher and a journalist who I believe was British who were not still not allowed the modern day to climb Burkhan klled Doon because they were women. Yeah, and it's still now it used to be. The area that used to be known as the I correg or Great Taboo is not now called the Contental strictly protected area. It's a World Heritage Site and because of this designation, it's been off limits to most researchers, which strictly protected area. Yeah, how Lynn get up in there? Though National Geographics got some pool. He tells an interesting story about how near the end of their project or at some point after they've been there for a while, he was approached by their representatives of the local shaman, and there's this great story. It's clearly the central you know, kicker of his ted talk moment where he shaking and why are you here? Why are you here? And who are you and asked them all these very existential questions. But ultimately, isn't like angry, isn't like get out, isn't like don't do anything, because at the same at the end of the day, they're not going to dig it up. They're just like trying to get some answers. And you know, but my big question to you guys is who cares? Why? What? What's what? What's what's there to find? Why don't need to see a body? Why don't need to see these remnants? Because it could create a watershed moment in archaeology. First off, it would it would clarify the questions about the death right. It would it would also from the perspective of any Mongolian parties who want the tomb to be discovered, it would be a massive cultural boon. You know, we would also probably find a lot of stuff that's buried with him that would answer questions about engineering, questions about human technology at the time that that we wouldn't know ordinarily. But I think we don't have that from other sources, right, I think the yeah to continue. I think that the primary appeal for many people who are not Mongolian is the the proving or disproving of various myths. This is a enough for a lot of it to be essentially legend and then also a bit of romanticization. I don't think we can escape that. I think there's there's clearly a bit of a rosy picture people paint. But I have a question for you guys, which is what about this this curse thing? It doesn't come out a whole cloth. I mean, we've seen other historical leaders be have their tombs described as cursed. Yeah, it's true. This guy named George Edwards Stan Hope Molino Herbert a k a. The Earl of Carnavon, was quite a fancy man who fancied himself an amateur egyptologist who was Carnavon is real? Is that real? Yeah? That's he was the Earl of car carr carnar Carnarvon, Carnarvon, let's call it. I don't like it. Yeah, come at me, Brits. Um. But yeah, he he um. He apparently actually grew up in a High Claire Castle, which is the estate where they filmed Downton Abbey. So very fancy boy, he sure does. But he also really was into Egyptology and single handedly, um using wielding his influence and his obscene wealth, um, paid for an expedition to open the tomb of the boy King King Tuton comment looks like brain, okay, yes, so what what happened? Well, he hired this young, upstart archaeologist, kind of a Brendan Fraser type prime not modern day Brendan kind of sad. Howard Carter was this man's name. They had met through a guy named Gaston Maspero who was the director general of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. And yeah, they opened up this tomb and they found all kinds of crazy stuff. And very shortly after visiting Thebes to visit the site of the spoils of his investment, We're gonna call him Carnarvon, as as is befitting his station. He he died in short order after getting get this bit by a mosquito whoa so you get like the malaria or some advirus, some real bad And I'm not I'm not going to as far. I'm not saying that didn't know was a common But man, what a kick in the pants, yeah, or a bite in the leg. Yeah, And that's its own you know, that's almost its own episode. The curse of King tut right, we do we already do that. I know we've done a video for sure. It all blurs. But search or search for it, see if you can find and let us know before there's one other example of a curse that, oddly enough is related to Mongols stuff as well, and that is Team or or often called tamer Lane in the West. Uh, this fear of grave consequences, get it, Get in that grave. Yep, great consequences. Let's sit in it. Everybody's sitting in it. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This this this fear echoes concerns that regard the discovery of the legendary grave of Tamerlane or Timore. In n one, Soviet archaeologists discovered the grave of this guy's, a fourteenth century Turkic Mongolian king in some arcan that a location called emir cert of fact. Okay, it's just we cut it in the original edit, but at first I mispronounced as gury Mur. I honestly don't know if you did mispronounce it. It's unclear. But it's the opportunity to just make a Swedish chef joke. Yeah it was. That's fine, That's it's done. You guys gotta go for it. You already did it. Go ahead and try it. If you're listening to everybody, everybody you're you're jogging past right now, we'll just think you're a lot of fun. Yes, they'll say it together, ready, three, two one, Yeah, it's it's the location in Samarcan where they found the tomb, and it bore a warning allegedly of a terrible fate that would befall any and all who disturbed the dead king's slumber. One worse than me will rise. Immediately afterward, according to the story, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, launching World War two's Eastern Front, so two days after the tomb was opened, on the night of June twenty, Nazi Germany declared war invaded the USSR. A lot of people linked it with the opening of that tomb, and the expedition was immediately wound up. The remains of the guy were sent for study in Moscow. Coincidence, right, especially when consider World War two was already in full swing. People who believe in that curse think there's an additional fact. They say the turning point of the war occurred at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Soviets one exactly a month after Stalin ordered the government to return Timore's remains to Samarkand and bury him with full honors. WHOA I'm gonna say, I think it's a coincidence. I think you don't need a supernatural uh curse to be decent enough to not desecrate a grave. Also are egyptologist, amateur egyptologist Fancy Boy was known to have a bit poor health. And you know, if you're if you're if you're not healthy, something like a bloodborne illness from a mosquito, who might take you out a little quicker. You're talking about Carner Hern Lord Carnivore. But actually Arthur Conan Doyle is one of the ones who spread the idea of this curse with as pertained to so to Doyle a kind of fool of those people. He but he was a bit of a fabulous right, a fictionist. Yeah, it is a great tale, though, is I mean, look, if I ever am fortunate enough to die, then I am obviously going to have some sort of curse inscribed, Like that's what you want, right, Like Shakespeare does he have? Yeah, good friend for jesus sake, forbear to dig the dust and close it here. Blessed be he man that spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves my bones? And did you notice it rhymes? Yeah? I used to get at that. He kind of invented rhyming. Didn't name Shakespeare. Francis Bacon is so just awesome. So yeah, so curses are common, Um, I I don't know. This is as we end today's episode. First, we want to thank you for hanging out with us, and we want to ask you do you think this tomb should be disturbed or found, especially if the people who are descended from this empire don't want it to be found. I am of the mind definitely not leavall enough alone. Yeah, you know, don't disturb the ground if you're not invited, you know what I mean. And that's sort of the point of a curse, right, It's like, don't mess with my stuff, are you gonna get cursed? But also a lot of this depiction of it as a curse. I feel like it comes from the West, Like I couldn't find anythinging in Mongolian culture that said this tomb is specifically cursed. I just found it being the wishes of the man interred. They're sort of like the the old Kennedy curse. We sort of imposed this notion of a cur of a curse on a series of unfortunate events that sounds like a Netflix show children children's popular series of children's books. So I don't know about that. We're suppressiot. Uh. This episode, by the way, let's just say we recorded that is brought to you by Casper Mattresses. Okay, alright, and Netflix and uh and of course by Jenghis Khan, who has his motto has always been don't disturb my grave r. And like the legacy of Genghis Khan, we didn't even talk about the weird genetic stuff, right, which stuff you should do? Has a great episode on like his legacy. This show will continue at a later date. In the meantime, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, where we are conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff shows some variation thereof You can find us on Here's Where it Gets Crazy our fantastic community page. Fantastic Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it's great, great conversations there, hella, good memes, lots of fun stuff. Um, I bet you will end up doing another Here's Where it Gets Crazy episode before long, because that went really well and it was just a great fun grab bag way and the people on there super smart and interesting and and no trolls need apply. And please also this is a personal favorite right to our super producer Paul Decket, and thank him for letting us go so long with this episode. Yeah, but we had a great time. It's a great episode. Thank you guys. And uh hey write to us call us one eight three three s T d W y t K like I missed out on that one, Yeah you did? You really find it's fine just just put it in your number, your number, put it in your phone and and call the number. Um, because really you don't have to dial in anything anymore. It's just a touch screen. It's you know, you know how to do it. It goes straight to Matt's voicemail. Um. But if you won't do any of that. You don't like phones, you don't like internet's, you know, like facebooks. Whatever you can write. 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