Mongol - Military Soficticates - This is MY Internet -

Is "Soficticate" a word?

Well it is now people! Welcome to MY internet -

I have been doing a little research, in my spare time (did I just hear you laugh out loud too?), in an attempt to better understand the Mongol and their military superiority over, uhmm... EVERYONE they came across. I mean, yah they had horses and eventually catapults (technology they stole). And they were well practiced after hundreds of years of fighting amongst themselves. Oh, and they had the psychological war games down pretty good. We burn rape and pillage every so often and then run TV commercials and drop leaflets showing pictures of dead babies to our enemies. That ought to scare the bajesus out of em... And we will catapult rotting corpses infected by the plague over city walls, as if the burning raping and pillaging was not enough... This stuff is no less gruesome than the inquisition in Spain years later were they torture families, cut off the mother's breasts and shove them in the children's mouths before burning them just short of death. Only to kill them with the sword as a final blow. Makes Guantanamo seem like a picnic really...

But I digress...

What really is interesting is the Mongolian Bow

Here is a little ditty I read about such things... Let me paraphrase.

Very sophisticated, had several types and most riders rode with two compound bows in fact. One for short range and one for longer targets.

They also rode with many different types of arrows, on average carrying a total of 40 (I know this because some guy's blog on the net told me so). They carried both long and short range arrows, standard everyday arrows, arrows with heavy tempered metal tips used for piercing armor, oh and the incendiary arrows...

You know the ones...

Lite em on fire and then shoot them into your tent, house, thatched roof hut, the church, hospital, library, bank, market... you get the picture.

And, no, it is not just the Mongol men that are good at this kind of war... Their woman were equally skilled lighting a building on fire with an arrow from atop a horse at 30 paces.

And this might be the thing I love the most. You can tell a lot about a society by the way its woman are treated. Here there is full and equal right (something unusual for the time, and many would argue our time as well) for both woman and man. I simply love a strong woman, and particularly one that can keep up with the boys on an all nighter pillaging and ransacking other towns. My heart be still...

Now is the moment you have all been waiting for... Yes the bar has been set and an image, video, singing telegram, some sort of multi media is necessary here. It does not need to be authentic, plagiarization (probably not a real word, but it is HERE biaches), republication and the like are highly encouraged in fact reworded or is that rewarded (ah who cares this is a blog after all and grammar and spelling never seem to matter on blogs).




For more unreliable information on the Mongol's Military Soficitcates go here

http://www.coldsiberia.org/monbow.htm

BTW - Feel free to vote below... You know this is just blog-u-topia!

How bout you give me money pal and I won't break your fingers

The tribute system... now I know where great grandpa Cattolo got his ideas... You come over to my place, give me a bunch of fine gifts and I will let you walk away with all of your limbs, and I may not bother your sister, you hear?!

I think it is funny that historians have choosen to call it the "tribute system". I think what they meant to call it is extortion... which I guess in the big scheme of things against a backdrop of barbarians cutting out each others eyeballs or boiling each other alive, doesn't seem so bad, really. I liked the line in the text book that went something like...

I will swing bye, check out the silks and grains you are supposed to give me to make sure they meet my satisfaction. If the stuff is good, and you haven't shorted me, cool... if it's not however, I am going to come to your village and destroy all your food so you, your family, your families family and everyone else you might know will starve... Capiche? Could easily be mistaken for a modern day Colombian Drug lord, no?

Another form of "tribute", again, such a nice word is...

We conquered you.. ha ha suckers... we let you live... now how about you contribute by giving us labor, or goods, or other goods to help the empire along... after all, we have others just like you we need to pillage from and with your small contribution of only 19.95 to help fund our barbaric military, this will be possible. With your donation, you are free to live... under our rules of course....

Have a nice day...

Tag, your it!

I don't know why but I find the concept of relay trade such a cool idea. The Inca used similar systems to that of the Chinese, Indians and Persians leveraging a system of well engineered roads, chasqui or messengers to deliver information through out the empire. The Silk Roads adopted a similar system of merchants who would bring the goods so far and then sell them often times to another merchant who would then sell them in another market each time marking up the products and repeating process. This allowed merchants to turn their products more often and remain in territories that were familiar to them. I would imagine very few merchants singlehandedly took goods from say China to Arabia. The time for the journey would be too long and the risk to high to justify the incremental profits achieved by cutting out the countless middle men.

It reminds me of the crack trade really...

The chain of people, producers, importers, runners, and hustlers each one cutting the product or adding their markup and margin. The producer could sell direct, to all the users, but, like the merchants along the silk road, the time too move great quantities of product is too long and the risk too high. Who really looses in this economic paradigm is the user as the product tend to be very expensive. It is also no wonder why the Sea Roads were established.

Hmm - Sea Roads... Not a very clever name now is it? Silly historians... Sea Roads...

Question, which came first... the Silk Road or the Sea Road?

Oh but wait... of course there is still room for yet another plagiarized graphic off the web...

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull." Contd

If you have to know, breakfast was fantastic… Toasted Bagel and Cream Cheese with a pan fried egg.

So, where were we… Oh yah, giving the Greeks credit for inventing democracy and discussing their techniques for expansion. Much of the democratic process developed in Athens under Solon in 594 B.C.E after a revolt which almost led to civil war. Solon allowed greater participation in politics by a wider audience past that of the aristocrats as well as abolished the practice of debt slavery. By 450 B.C.E “ all holders of public office were chosen by lot and were paid, so that even the poorest could serve. My interpretation here is that the democratic process was born out of internal civil unrest and active participation in the political process by a wide audience was developed to help quell this unrest. Makes sense, really for those who buy into the democratic process. Not sure it made a whole lot of sense to Cyrus or Darius I of Persia.

Of course war with Persia and a Civil war with Sparta who eventually defeated Athens weakened the Greek state enough to open an invitation of the Macedonians to invade and easily defeat the Greeks.

One sec and I will search for another plagiarized graphic off the web...

Athenian "Empire" 431 B.C.E

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull."

W.C. Fields

The Greeks could baffle and dazzle the world with brilliance and bull Sh@$.

There is no sharper contrast to that of the Persian than the Greeks. The Greeks allowed and encouraged popular participation in public politics unlike the monolithic monarch of Persia. Well, unless you were a woman or a slave or, you asked too many questions, eghm… Aristotle. But I digress…The Greek civilization was shaped by history… Profound, huh… as well as geography. The Greek political system was made up of many city state micro political institutions, which rolled up to a centralized government in Athens. This was a function organically devised out of necessity, adding my own interpretation, more than decisive thought or grand architecture. The geography in Greece, unlike Persia was not expansive but a harsh rocky and mountainous terrain, which made it hard to communicate and organize, if only they had the internet, huh… They could simply blog about politics… But again I digress. In order to organize and function, responsibility was delegated to the city states which gave individual cities shared power. This combined with the allowed participation of the public in state politics formed the first known notion of democracy…

Greek expansion took place in the form of settlements as opposed to conquests and spread quickly all around the rim of the Black Sea. Much of this expansion was driven by Greek farmers in search of fertile land and Greek Iron traders in search of Iron.

Ok – Gotto run… It’s breakfast time and I am hungry… More to follow…

Who knew I knew less than a 6th grader

My son broke it down in amazing detail. Dad, here is how it happened…

This sh@% is better than the cliff notes

The Persian civilization and Greek civilization approached organization, structure and life very differently. The Persian Empire at its height in 500 B.C.E was the largest in the world. Fun huh, especially if you are 12 and like playing the game Civilization. The Persian rule reached from Egypt to India and encompassed roughly 35 million people. Persian rule was well organized with a single King who had local governors and lower level officials. The Persians had a general policy of respect for non-Persian rituals and culture and this one the respect of many who were conquered by them. The Persian infrastructure was immense with a system of money and taxes, canals and roads, which allowed them to trade and do business amongst the territory. Nothing to be sarcastic about here, the Persians had something amazing going on… Monuments, harems, palaces, what more could you want? They were the envy of the world. And if you are 12 and playing Civilization, you are the dominant player and set up for a big win… so long as you can keep it together.

I might let him write the next blog... that counts for credit, right?!

Oh and since no blog would be complete without a picture, gotta keep up with the Jone's (you know who you are) here is my token picture... watch out world, may step this up to a video soon...