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Their response was about how it wasn’t the secret to mongol success specifically. The mongols had the double recurved bow and the advantage of a fully nomadic pastoral society in which all adult males were trained to be warriors. That and Genghis Khan’s decimal system is what transformed them into a fearsome conquering machine.

True, but stirrups very introduced into Europe by the Avars hundreds of years before the Mongols.

> You don't realize how huge an impact stirrups had to horseriding and by extension, civilization.

Yeah, but in all likelihood they weren't a mongol invention. The alans and avars probably had them five hundred years earlier, of perhaps the huns beofre them.