Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's Historyhead. It was later said that his mother was

impregnated by a ray of light. Those are the kind of stories you often get when people look

back and start mythologizing the birth, the background of astonishing leaders, people who

seem to be the children of destiny. A slightly more believable story about his birth said that he was

born clutching a blood clot in his hand. The whole tribe immediately knew that indicated the child would grow up to be a warrior.

And he certainly did.

In the 1150s, we think, a Mongol chieftain had a baby boy called Tamudjin.

He grew up on the great grasslands, the Mongol steppe, riding almost before he could walk.

His father were just one of many chieftains of the Mongol tribes. They were pasturists who followed

their herds as the animals feasted on the grasslands of the steppe. And those tribes, they bickered,

and they fought, and they traded and cooperated and intermarried

and then fell out again in a seemingly endless cycle.

Tammujan would not get to enjoy his status as the chieftain son for long.

When he was eight, his father died and his family was thrown out of the tribe.

They were reduced to abject poverty and they lived hunting

rodents out in the step. Tamujan at that point actually kills his older half-brother to establish

his dominance of their little family unit. We don't know exactly what came next, but he seemed to have

the skill, the charisma, the wisdom to start attracting followers.

And eventually he grew powerful enough to lead a tribe of his own, like his father before him.

That process of gathering more followers to himself continued.

Over the decades, he absorbed other tribes. he conquered them, he persuaded them to join,

until by the early 13th century he declared himself Genghis Khan,

...