Silk Helped the Armies of Genghis Khan Conquer Asia | Hacker News Reader

Silk Helped the Armies of Genghis Khan Conquer Asia

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87 pointsripe66 comments

The story starts with Genghis Khan's plunder of Merv and the mass murder that was ordered by him. It mentions the artisans who were kept alive. Then it swerves to the plunder of Merv by the Oghuz, continues in the next paragraph, and then returns to Genghis Khan by announcing his death.

Again, it returns to the artisans,but mid-paragraph (as is typical in that article), switches to battles again, and returns yet again to silk and artisans. At last, it connects the battles and the silk together.

This is probably why it appears very hard to read. Especially, the mid-paragraph context switches continuing to the subsequent paragraph.

Nevertheless , a fascinating read.

I was reading up on Wootz steel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel

And found that Merv was a big producer of it.

I had not heard of the city of Merv, seemingly at one point it had ranked as the second largest in the world, and became more fascinated.

Although now just ruins, it has inspired a board game:

Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road (2020)

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/306040/merv-the-heart-of...

“Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road is a tense economic game charting the rise and fall of the greatest city in the world.

In Merv, players are vying to amass power and wealth in the prosperous heart of the Silk Road. Through careful court intrigue, timely donations to the grand mosque, and favorable trade deals, players attempt to redirect as much of that prosperity as possible into their own pockets.

Meanwhile, beyond the city walls Mongol hordes approach. If you help construct the city walls, you give up on precious opportunities to build up your own stature, but leave it unprotected and you will burn with the city. Every decision is weighty and the consequences of each misstep are dire. Will you rise to prominence or fade into oblivion?”

Edit: expanded details of board game reference.

Its a sad story, they were at the global pinnacle of science and arts, opened their gates to mongols without any resistance, only to be still slaughtered like cattle. Imagine how much additional positive influence on current world, how differently middle east region would look like, and islam itself.

Lesson to be learned which is still very relevant today - don't trust primitive barbarians to uphold any moral expectations just because it would be logical or nice, rather 'Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum'.

Arab betrayed by their own hospitality yet again.

Are you trolling? Merv was Persian.

No, just wrong.

7-10 days of siege doesn't sound like "without any resistance".

(I'd be willing to believe the mongols broke their word on a surrender parley, but it'd be very helpful to have non-persian sources corroborating that)

> This is probably why it appears very hard to read.

The sentences are often too long and maze-like too. This is an extract from a book. I can't imagine trying to read a whole book written like this.

Nostalgic - Mongols using silk shirts to make removing arrows easier was a favorite anecdote of my World History teacher in High School. Movies and stories always make pre-gunpowder war seem like a face-to-face battle between warriors, but arrows were always the biggest killer, both in battle and through attrition due to infections and laming. Another anecdote I always remembered was that the lead balls fired by early muskets were often more deadly than modern firearms because they were so slow and heavy that when they got into the body they wouldn't pass through but instead roll around along the bones and mess up the insides, similar to the modern street lore about .22 pistols being the worst to get shot with. Cannonballs also rolled and bounced through the battlefield, taking out limbs and crushing people rather than exploding like modern artillery.

> but arrows were always the biggest killer

Do you remember your source for this? It doesn't sound right. I thought most death/injury occurred when the losing army fled, and the victorious army hunted them down. Also, just mechanically, even moderately sized armies were at least a mile long across their front; there's no way that massed volleys could've been used across the whole front, or even, really, more than a small fraction of it.

> lead balls fired by early muskets were often more deadly than modern firearms

If slow lead balls are deadlier than fast jacketed bullets, then modern armies would use slow lead balls. Maybe slow lead balls are more dangerous when they hit, but less dangerous overall?

My uncle was career officer in the Army and told me once that the M16, with its smaller faster bullet would wound the enemy, compared to the AK47 with its large slow bullet would kill, and that a wounded enemy was more expensive than a dead solider because you had to extract and care for the wounded.

Not sure if there was any factual evidence behind his theory, but I found this idea fascinating when I heard it.

Short-term, perhaps, but overall the cost of replacing a dead soldier is higher (like 15 years of schooling and parenting and all the other costs). A wounded soldier might be back on the battlefield half a year later.

WRT arrows, I remember reading some analyses of medieval battlefield records a long time ago, and I've heard it said many times by historians, but I can't point you to a definitive source.

WRT muskets, they are slow to load and fire, inaccurate, low-range, the bullets move slow enough that you can see and dodge them - good for massed warfare during the transition from cold weapons to hot, but not at all for the modern battlefield. IIRC it was in battles during the US Civil War that rifles which were accurate over long distances and allowed a small number of soldiers to defend a position came to the forefront.

Deadliness also doesn't seem to be the selection criteria for modern weaponry. If it were, militaries would all be using chemical weapons, firebombing, nuclear bombs, hollow-tips, poisoning water supplies, etc., but they aren't. Killing soldiers can be a part of strategy, but from what I see usually more of the strategy is about controlling key locations and resources, and winning through logistics and politics, while destruction is largely strategic or symbolic.

I agree with the skepticism, I always thought the biggest killer in ancient wars were:

* Infections

* Getting stabbed as you routed

But I don’t understand your logic about the arrows. The width of the line shouldn’t cause some sort of scaling issues. I mean, the army of archers would be limited in the sense that training a ton of archers and making a ton of arrows is expensive, but assuming it is possible to produce and supply that many archers, there’s no reason to think they couldn’t all carry their arrows to the front, right?

Eventually your guys run out of arrows of course, but getting them resupplied after the battle is the same logistics problem that you solved before the battle.

Massed volley requires putting all of your archers in one (or a few) places. The effective maximum range of an archer is something like 500'. If you put your archers at the "wings", they can cover at most 1000' of line; but, even a modest sized army (I'm thinking of a standard Roman Republic field army) will have a mile wide front.

Secondarily, you need to use your (very expensive!) arrows effectively, and it's hard to see over the people in front of you to shoot someone in the distance. That means, practically, archers are just shooting the soldiers in front of them — soldiers in the nearest 100' or so. That'd only cover 3–500' of line. (This practical consideration was noted by my Military History teacher from his direct observation of battles in Africa.)

Civil war era muskets fired 14.7mm caliber bullets, and revolutionary war era: 19-20mm, which, bullet-for-bullet probably accounts for the increased danger. Something I read said they have similar energies as modern ammunition--a few thousand joules--but smaller, faster ammo means reduced recoil.

> similar to the modern street lore about .22 pistols being the worst to get shot with

Where on Earth did you hear this?

Gangsters. I've heard several anecdotes about how they get into, but don't easily come out of the body and tend to bounce around inside, leaving the victim to die slowly in agonizing pain.

Silk vests were the secret armor of the mongols against arrows.

Video of Traditional Mongolian Cavalry performing Horseback Archery by Namnaa Academy archers.

https://youtu.be/qzTaYvMmNYU?si=e-BiruFuNRm6Bzqr

Good story, but the writing is annoyingly tough to follow.

This was really hard to read.

Some component of silk provided some sort of health benefit.

1) Silk is woven finely enough that it's surprisingly resistant to arrows.

2) A chemical compound in silk called sericin is naturally antibiotic and acts as a wound coagulant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sericin

There are plenty of debunking videos on YouTube but none that are particularly scientific but honestly I'm very skeptical of this silk shirt story.

If you think this is interesting, you'll love the book: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

I thought it was all because of a genetic mutation that allowed them to digest milk... https://annemontgomerywriter.com/2022/02/11/the-power-of-mil....

The article you linked to is highly unscientific and inaccurate.

Lactose tolerance emerged 5,000 years ago in Europe. It wasn't brought to Europe via Mongols.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/07/dairy-la...

Sorry if it was implied that I thought it was scientific or accurate. My comment was intended to be sarcastic. Every now and then people drag out these weird, "this is why Genghis Khan was so successful" stories.

Guess what, there wasn't a single reason and it was a multitude of reasons and whoever tells you they found the main contributing factor is more likely to just want more attention than they'd get with a more mild version like "this contributed to it".

Well that doesn’t sound like snackable infotainment. I prefer my factoids to be context-free and ready for me to misremember in two years.

Yup.

“…the deep structure of silk appear to be embedded proteins that are antiviral, and yet others that can damage the fortressing walls of bacterial cells.”

“Both the fibroin that forms the silk and the sericin that binds it can hasten the healing of wounds.”

“…silk without sericin, and even the sericin routinely discarded in the manufacture of silk, would be manipulated by doctors and engineers. They would create sponges and gels; films and mats of silk as scaffolds seeking to support wounds that struggle to heal; matrices for the regrowth of blood vessels and broken skin; formulations to attract cells as they migrate and regenerate.”

Ooh i thought it was because the mongols were experts of maneuver warfare.

Being good at tactics can win battles. Being good at strategy can win a war. Being good at economy allows you to win war after war.

The typical phrase is “infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars.” It gets at the same idea as you.

https://www.czdefence.com/article/infantry-wins-battles-logi....

That's the phrase I had in mind when I wrote it. I decided to extend it based on the experience of Pyrrhus :)

It was religion that stopped the Mongols. One of their leaders converted to Islam and broke up their empire.

Completely incorrect. The Mongol social structure did that without religion. Like most nomadic peoples, inheritance rules split the ownership amongst a leader’s sons, fairly equally. This is because they had people and herds, not land (hence, nomads), so it was the most sensible way of doing it.

This, mixed with the fact that Russia and the Middle East are thousands of miles away from the Mongolian and Chinese capitals made it inevitable that a leader on one side of the empire would ignore their overlord on the other side. Thus, the empire would fracture quickly (and pretty much did as soon as the family ties to Genghis Khan were loose enough).

Being good at religion allows you to be happy for an eternity.

Being good at religion allows you to start war after war

Neither statement is true. You can’t fanatic your way out of a weak economic base for long and plenty of non-religious people live happy fulfilling lives.

this article ostentatiously hails from the Dan Brown school of unnecessary adverbs

Wars were exponentially more brutal the further back you went

More personal, smaller scale, but many more individual conflicts per capita

IDK, WW1 sounds like a pretty bad time.

Fighting the modern US would be also be some sort of bizarre existential dread, knowing that every move you make is probably tracked and you have a decent chance of being killed with absolutely no warning.

Most likely way to die or become an amputee in modern war is being hit by artillery out of nowhere. There’s no glory in that so recruiters don’t talk about it much.

If one thing the Russo-Ukrainian war footage has though me is that scouting drones plus artillery has given both sides big impact sniper rifles.

ive been thinking that down the line both of these would be moved to space

For Russia, China and US yeah i think you are right, for the rest scout drones will do. Another interesting innovation i saw the Russia making was controlling drones by fiber optic wire to defeat anti drone EW. Im sure Ukraine is doing the same.

Legends of the Galactic Heroes did a great job exploring that theme.

After watching a few clips of drone warfare in Ukraine, I think humanity really needs to start taking a pass on wars.

Sounds excellent to me, but as long as we have drones and they're fighting our conflicts, we should probably think about giving them the vote? (before they start thinking about SkyNet?)

People putting poop or muck on musket balls to cause sepsis.

I wonder what's the payout for individual soldier to do this to have somebody die after the battle has already ended with win or loss.

It takes the opponent out of the next battle which in a long campaign might improve your chances of getting home alive

It also consumes noncombatants. And it’s psi ops.

Wars end when the enemy loses heart, not sons.

It mobilises a number of resources to patch up a wounded/sick soldier.

There is a myth that the 5.56 round was designed to wound and not to kill (contrary to the 7.62 round the soviet side used) as it would make war costly in a very visible manner.

I guess the idea that inducing "Sepsis by poop" follows the same line of thinking.

I think it originated with pooping on swords/polearms: you're a peasant, just before the battle, and you have a massive adrenaline dump, part of which involves clearing out the intestines, so if you manage to channel your inner cat, as you barely get your breeches off you stick your weapon underneath. Then you tell all your buddies you totally just did that on purpose, to cause sepsis among the enemy...

If you're an grizzled noncom equivalent, when the newbies suddenly wind up with a fresh pile of squishy goop, you tell them the same story, and have them run their weapons through it, making them feel better about having squatted down in front of their buddies?

Lagniappe: how about this as a way to take physiological signs of adrenaline and turn them into an "I meant to do that" moment? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_rotEpFtZU&t=64s

Did they really understand the link between poo and sickness? Sounds more like some sort of insult to me.

Exponentially? Not really.

In pre-state societies, we generally seem to see around a 15% chance of dying due to warfare in your lifetime. Early states seem to see that fall to around mid-high single digits. And this decreases to tiny fractions in modern times, but mostly because warfare has declined rather than wars becoming less deadly. Brutal episodes of war--say the Eastern Front on WW2 or some of the theaters in modern wars--can see overall death rates of up to 20 or 30% of people involved. Given that the amount of people involved in military action has generally decreased (pre-state societies generally mobilize their entire military age male population as warriors, modern industrial states... don't), this suggests that ancient warfare is approximately as brutal as even lopsided modern warfare.

There's a difference between "young men killed on the battlefield" and "everyone else also being killed" - while (sadly) the latter did happen, e.g. Hiroshima, or as Russian troops swept through Germany, or Dresden, it wasn't par for the course or expected as what happens after the losing side lost.

The Soviets* pretty clearly did not kill all of the civilians in Germany, nor did they attempt to. Unlike the Germans themselves, who exterminated whole towns and had a plan that involved total genocide of their conquered peoples. Pretty wild to miss such an obvious example.

*really neither the sins nor the wins in WWII belong exclusively to the Russians. Another subtlety misleading aspect of this post.

> really neither the sins nor the wins in WWII belong exclusively to the Russians. Another subtlety misleading aspect of this post

I didn't mention any wins. As for the sins: did you get that despite my listing something the British did and something the Americans did?

Note the context: I corrected your use of “Russians” in favor of “Soviets.”

You did that, but that didn't seem to be the context at all. You were implying I was misleading people into thinking all the sins and wins were Russian, which I obviously wasn't doing.

The Germans attempted to exterminate entire races of people, the Soviets attempted to exterminate entire classes of people. The Soviets killed far more people if only because Stalin ruled for longer than Hitler.

As one of the first leaders of the Cheka said, "We are not waging war against individual persons. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class".

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