Free Republic

…. Putin's more than 22 years as a mob boss running a mafia state from Moscow have seen him descend from reformer and uneasy ally to tyrant and global pariah. Once upon a time he was pictured posing outside Downing Street with Tony Blair and riding in a golf cart with US President George W. Bush. But now paranoid and delusional Vlad remains holed up in the bubble-like environment of the Kremlin as he turns 70. Furiously ranting about the West in rambling speeches and wildly swinging his nuclear sabre, Putin's long cultivated image as a cold and calculating strongman...

On this date in 1284, the deposed Mongol ruler Tekuder was put to death. The Mongols had conquered half the world on the back of steppe horses and religious toleration. Mongols variously adopted Nestorian Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, as well as tribal shamanism; it even sponsored debates among the rival confessions. What counted in the end for the men who commanded its armies was wins and losses. Our man Tekuder was the son of Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan who exemplified pluralistic competence. The son of a Christian but an eventual convert to Buddhism, Hulagu Khan’s signal achievement...

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu today gave the order to dramatically increase so-called shock and awe attacks on Ukraine. He claimed Kremlin forces must 'exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime inflicting massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of the Donbas and other regions,' according to reports in Moscow. It followed an on-the-ground inspection by Putin's trusty defence minister - and a National Security Council meeting led by Vladimir Putin. Shoigu 'gave instructions to further increase the actions of [military] groups in all operational areas', local reports stated.

In the late thirteenth century, the Mongol Empire under Kublai Khan made two unsuccessful attempts to invade Japan. Historian Kawai Atsushi gives the background to the invasion, examines different theories about reasons for its failure, and looks at the aftermath for both sides. In November 1274, a fleet carrying some 30,000 Mongol Empire troops approached Hakata Bay off the Japanese island of Kyūshū. Genghis Khan had established the empire in the early thirteenth century by unifying the nomadic peoples of the Mongolian Plateau. Successive leaders expanded the empire through central Asia, and made Goryeo (Korea) a vassal state in 1259....

JURASSIC Park got a little bit closer to reality today with news that scientists are ‘confident' of cloning a 42,000 year old extinct species. =============================================================== The ginger-coloured foal died when it was just one or two weeks old, some time during the late Stone Age, around 42,170 years ago. But its body has been perfectly preserved in near perfect condition in Siberian permafrost, and scientists are optimistic that they will obtain enough genetic material to clone the animal and bring its extinct species back to life. The joint Russian-South Korean research team is led by South Korean cloning expert Professor...

Ancient mummy 'with 1,100 year old Adidas boots' died after she was struck on the head By Olga Gertcyk 12 April 2017 As well as her amazing 'modern' footwear, this Mongolian 'seamstress' went to the afterlife with four changes of clothes, her sewing kit, a horse and a ram's head. 'Adidas mummy', Mongolia. Picture: The Mongolian Observer/The Center of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia New pictures of the mummy's remarkable red striped boots - first highlighted by The Siberian Times in April last year and now cleaned up after being buried in a grave for around 1,100 years - have been released. When they...

Aleteia: You were ordained a priest in Mongolia on August 28, 2016, which makes you the first indigenous priest for almost 1000 years! How do you feel about the historical significance of this?  Joseph Enkhee-Baatar: I am just glad and honored to have been chosen to be ordained here in Mongolia, and to be a small part of the mission. The first missionaries who came to the Mongol Empire were Nestorians. They came as early as the 7th and 8th century. Consequently, several Mongol tribes converted to Christianity. Then, in the thirteenth century under the Yuan dynasty, the first Catholic missionaries arrived. According to some historical...

The wreck of a ship thought to have taken part in a failed Mongol invasion of Japan has been found off the Japanese coast. A team of researchers uncovered a 12-metre (36ft) section of keel buried in deep sand off Nagasaki prefecture. They said it was the first time such a large piece of hull had been recovered from the Mongol invasion fleets. The 13th Century attacks on Japan were a rare setback for the Mongols at the height of their powers. Experts expressed surprise that the wreck was so well preserved after so many centuries on the seabed. The...

Genghis Khan's Mongol invasion in the 13th and 14th centuries was so vast that it may have been the first instance in history of a single culture causing man-made climate change, according to new research out of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, reports Mongabay.com. Unlike modern day climate change, however, the Mongol invasion cooled the planet, effectively scrubbing around 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere. So how did Genghis Khan, one of history's cruelest conquerors, earn such a glowing environmental report card? The reality may be a bit difficult for today's environmentalists to stomach, but Khan...

Mounted Archers Training in a Mongol plateau Some S. Koreans dug up old military training manuals from 18th century and are trying to restore the art of ancient warriors.Here, they are practicing once-lost art of mounted archery. They went to Mongol steppe to do their summer training.It was done this August on Arkhangel Aimac, a plateau which is 1,000 km from its capital Ulan Bator and 1,700 m (5660 feet) above sea-level .The uniform they are wearing is from Chosun(1392~1910) era.A trainee practicing so-called 'Parthian Parting Shot'This is a favorite technique of Northen steppe warriors in the past. Koreans also used to use it....

A US accountant has proof that he is descended from the Mongol warlordTHEY seem the unlikeliest of relatives. One was a fearsome warlord whose name became a byword for savagery. The other is a mild-mannered accountancy academic from Florida. Yet Tom Robinson, 48, has become the first man outside Asia to trace his ancestry directly to Genghis Khan, the 13th-century Mongol leader whose empire stretched from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf. And, since his paternal great-great-grandfather emigrated to the United States from Windermere, Cumbria, many more descendants are probably scattered across the Lake District. Genetic tests have...

It was 1246, and a Franciscan monk named John de Plano Carpini, the papal envoy to the Mongol court in Karakorum, sat listening very intently to some Russian priests at the coronation of Güyük Khan. Carpini's mind absorbed every detail as the Russian priests spoke of the Mongols' past conquests, reciting the names and locations of the Mongol generals. And when they were done speaking, Carpini had accomplished an amazing thing; He had gathered more intelligence than all of Christendom had ever known about these mysterious, terrifying horsemen from the east. From the Russian priests, he learned of one general...

The Ancient Yan and the Ye-maek Chosun   wthong@wontockhong.pe.kr   The Ancient Yan and the Ye-maek Chosun Yan Initiating the Korean Iron Age Wontack Hong Professor, Seoul University The proto-Turko-Mongol populations, who had first settled around Transbaikalia across the Great Altai, dispersed further across the Greater Xing¡¯an Range to become the proto-Xianbei-Tungus in Manchuria, and an offshoot of them tracked a warmer and moister climate down through the Korean peninsula to become the rice-cultivating farmers. The Korean peninsula is an extension of central Manchuria towards the sea, having a long strip of plains in the west flanked by high...

/begin my translation Locations marked with black/grey human symbols are where Daol Tribe live today. Yunnan on the lower left, Daol Autonomous District in Inner Mongolia on the upper right. Mystery of Khitans Solved After their country's demise a millennium ago, they 'vanished' from history Chinese scholars tracked down their descendants via DNA test Allied with Mongols, they were sent all over the world... widely spread out People such as Daol tribe in Yunnan province carry their blood line. 'People fierce as hawks' That was the assessment of Khitans who rose from N.E. China and went on to be a...

The Mongol mysteries: Are 'deer stones' a clue? By Guy Gugliotta The Washington Post Sometime around 1000 B.C., a Mongolian tribesman climbed on the back of a horse and surveyed the windblown steppe that stretched as far as the eye could see. The weather was turning colder, and there wasn't enough grass for his goats. It was time to move. From the moment that decision was made, a tradition was born. Horses — yesterday's beasts of burden — became a means of escape. Soon they would become the tool of conquest, and the people of the steppe — whether Scythian,...