Civilization I Essay

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Essay # 1 How did the Mongols’ nomadic way of life contribute to their success as conquerors? Discuss and evaluate the reasons for the unprecedented success of the Mongols. What bound the different sectors of the Mongol Empire together? What caused its breakup in the 1260s? Mongolians are nomadic herders who live in felt tents called gers and herd their animals to their seasonal grazing grounds. The reason why Mongolians move around a lot is because they need to find food for their animals. Livestock herding is the main important thing for the nomadic lifestyle. Gers are very useful to them because they are easy to set up and then dismantle it. Gers also provide warmth in the cold winter time and cool shade in the summer time. It is also strong enough to protect them from the strong winds. Every man was tediously trained on horses to the point of mastering backward riding, a feat that has never been seen before in that time. The main reason for most of the Mongolians success is Genghis Khan. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. After founding the Mongol Empire and being proclaimed "Genghis Khan", he started the Mongol invasions that resulted in the conquest of most of Eurasia. These included raids or invasions of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, Caucasus, Khwarezmid Empire, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. These campaigns were often accompanied by wholesale massacres of the civilian populations. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia and China. Genghis khan had a great strategic mind that work best when he incorporated his small raiding/scouting parties using the decimal system to use him to make their enemies run into ambushes and to encircle them. Ethnic Mongols are bound together by a common language and culture. They speak languages belonging to the Mongolic languages. When the last
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