from the See!-The-grass-is-NOT-greener-on-the-other-site! dept.
For hundreds of years, historical scholars have puzzled over the sudden retreat by the Mongols—they had conquered their way out of Asia and into Russia and had won every battle they had fought making their way into Eastern Europe during the early 1200s, when they abruptly turned tail and headed back to Russia, never to return. Some have suggested it was Mongol politics while others have maintained that armies in the Eastern Europe were putting up much more of a fight than the Mongols had expected. In this new effort, the researchers suggest that the reason might be much more mundane: simple bad weather.
The horses used by the Mongols, the researchers note, survived by eating the grasses that were plentiful on the Asian and Russian steppes—grasses that were healthy and strong and easily accessible due to several years of good weather. But, tree ring data, and some evidence in historical writings suggest that the winter of 1242, was particularly bad—not because it was too cold, or too snowy, but because it was just cold enough to cause widespread freezing which led to widespread melting during the spring, which just happened to coincide with the arrival of the Mongols. The melting led to flooding, because, coincidently, that part of Hungary sits at low elevations—melting ice and snow would have puddled, preventing the grass for growing very well that spring, leaving little for the horses to eat. Also, it would have meant lots of mud, making travel very difficult. The end result, the researchers suggest, might have been the Mongols simply deciding against progressing further because it did not seem worth the trouble.
If they had stayed longer, would Europeans and Americans drink fermented mare's milk today instead of beer?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 01 2016, @01:24PM
If you believe in climate change as expressed by progressives today, aka "end times" fire and brimstone preaching for atheists or whatever you want to call it, you'll naturally assume that the climate change was permanent and increasing in perpetuity. So the next year, the grass supply was even lower, the rains even worse etc etc all the way until the industrial revolution where the mongols realized they can't fight on horseback after the charge of the light brigade vs westerner machine guns etc. If only the mongols had wisely elected a strong female leader, or implemented a "pyramid of skulls" carbon tax, or put black carbon ribbon awareness raising bumper stickers on their horses, well, 99.9% of the effect would have been unchanged but they would have felt so progressive and holy and they could have fight against the unholy unbelievers, especially the engineers who pointed out they're merely wasting time and dwindling resources.
If your outlook is uncontaminated and rational, the first thing you'll ask is "OK so next spring when the grass harvest is back to the usual awesomeness they came back, right?"
I looked at the graph and its not a century long effect, it was one, repeat one, winter.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @01:30PM
Yeah, I caught that too. TFA forgot to mention the machine guns as a reason for the Mongols' retreat.
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Wednesday June 01 2016, @01:41PM
Actually, the Mongols are credited with first bringing guns to a European fight:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#Mongol_diffusion_of_Chinese_gunpowder_to_Europe [wikipedia.org]
They came, they saw, they kicked their ass.
(Score: 2) by riT-k0MA on Wednesday June 01 2016, @02:09PM
Actually, the Mongols are credited with first bringing guns to a European fight:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#Mongol_diffusion_of_Chinese_gunpowder_to_Europe [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]
They came, they saw, they kicked their ass.
Horse. Mongols rode horses, not asses.
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Friday June 03 2016, @07:39PM
Mongols rode horses, not asses.
:)
I suspect they rode asses hard as well.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Wednesday June 01 2016, @09:13PM
And this is why nobody takes conservatives seriously.
I don't know any liberals that think that climate change is going to be the end of the world. It's going to cause huge problems spanning most of the world and tons of species will go extinct. And it will take millenia for the climate to go back to something natural.
As for it being one winter. Why would it need to be an entire century? It could well be that when they were in the mood for pillaging the weather wasn't there to do it and the next year they were no longer interested as they had other things to do. That happens to me all the time, I want to do some pillaging, but it's kind of rainy and I don't feel like returning how to get my raincoat.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Bobs on Wednesday June 01 2016, @01:34PM
Interesting article, but I suspect it overstates the case for weather being the “cause”. The main driver was dealing with the succession: all else could have been overcome, and had been overcome during the larger campaign.
More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe#End_of_the_Mongol_advance [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Wednesday June 01 2016, @01:59PM
Since 9 out of 10 times when Phoenix "writes" something it's just the first 2 paragraphs of the article copy-pasted.
Today he got wild and crazy and copied the *second and third* paragraphs!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 01 2016, @02:11PM
Probably not, because:
1. Beer had been around for centuries prior to the Mongol invasions. Indeed, the first recipes known to have been written down, anywhere, were for beer.
2. Introducing a new alcoholic drink rarely displaces the older drinks. For example, just because wine was introduced into Germany doesn't mean they stopped making or drinking beer.
3. The Mongols had no known problem with other people drinking beer. Sure, they might have stuck to their fermented horse milk, but the underlying culture would still have been around drinking their beer or wine.
4. Beer tastes good, so the Mongols might have decided they liked it too and added it to their diets. Cultural exchange goes both ways, y'know.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @03:27PM
Beer tastes good
extremely subjective statement
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday June 01 2016, @06:37PM
Stop drinking IPAs and have a stout, lad. It will put some hair on your chest.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 01 2016, @06:56PM
4. Beer tastes good,
No, it doesn't. Sweet wine tastes good. Beer tastes like piss.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @10:49PM
Fact: Sweet wine tastes like the piss of a diabetic mule.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @04:45PM
One of their issues was with the technology behind a lot of their weaponry.
Sure, swords and lances were largely unaffected, but Europe had had successive waves of mounted archers (the favourite approach of the Mongols) over a millenium or more and none of them penetrated significantly past Central Europe. There were two major drivers for this: topography, and climate.
The rugged terrain as you go further west makes things harder for cavalry used to wide, sweeping, mobility-heavy movements. Instead, it tends to favour the heavy charge and shock tactics. This is visible in how the technologies developed as well as the cavalry countermeasures in cultures on both sides of the divide.
The climate is also damper as you go west, which is not friendly to the protein-based glue that bound the mongol composite bow structures, and their lacquered leather armour may also not have survived as well, and become more cumbersome as it absorbed more atmospheric moisture.
By analogy, look at how long it took them to conquer the southern end of China, which poses similar problems: decades! They had much closer logistical ties to China, they had every reason to dominate the area pitilessly - but they bogged down and spent ages attempting to do so.
Another facet is that as they went west it was progressively densely populated, and competent at surviving sieges and mustering against raiders. Bear in mind that the Viking Age had come, and the hard lessons of that era had been learned over centuries. Tactics such as those of Alfred the Great were spreading, and the consolidation of the late mediaeval era had promoted broader cooperation, communication and collaboration by the lords of the region. There's every reason to believe that it was going to be at least as difficult as the south of China, if not more so.
A mongol strategist (and they definitely had some strategic geniuses) could very well have looked at the situation and said: "Maybe later, once we've consolidated, but it's not worth it now, and the risks are high."
(Score: 1) by gOnZo on Thursday June 02 2016, @10:09AM
I married a Hungarian. I suspect there may be other factors at play that have not yet been discussed...