But then if we go to the time of Temujin, of Genghis Khan, another component is the horses. Can we talk about their relationship with the horse? Thinking about this open steppe from a young age, they've been, all Mongols are trained to master riding horses, as you write, 'While standing on the horse.' So they learned how to ride while standing on the horse from a young age. 'While standing on the horse, they often jousted with one another to see who could knock the other off. When their legs grew long enough to reach the stirrups, they were also taught to shoot arrows, and to lasso on horseback, making targets out of leather pouches that they would dangle from poles, so that they would blow in the wind. The youngsters practice hitting the targets from horseback at varying distances and speeds, the skills of such play proved invaluable to horsemanship later in life.' Can you speak to the relationship of Genghis Khan and the Mongols to horses?
The Mongol and the horse are inseparable. I wrote one line in the book that the editor removed, 'cause that was insulting. I said, 'The Mongol and the horse, they live together, they know each other with every twitch of the muscle, and they smell the same.' Well, I was saying it, just not to be insulting about anything, but they have that deep intimacy, and the horses do know their owner from the smell. This is very important, it's also important for Genghis Khan, because they made the flags, what they call the suit, out of the horse hair from their own horses. And so in battle, they used it for a very practical purpose, and that is, the horses would return to their source, because they knew the smell of their flag. It was other members of their own herd.
So the language itself, I have never ever mastered all the words, just for the colors of horses, much less for all the other things about it. I can remember, Mongolia being out there in the countryside, and you say, 'Oh, I want to learn English.' I say, 'Okay, yeah, that's nice. You teach me some words in Mongolian, I teach you the words... Okay, say what color is that horse?' I'd say brown. They would say, 'Brown.' I'd say, 'Yes, okay, what color is that horse? Brown.' Then they said, 'But you said this color was brown. What color is this?'
Say, well, I mean... It's just amazing, I mean they have words based on sort of how smooth the coloring is and the variation in the texture, and all the different... Today in English, sometimes you can put 'em together, we say like yellow-brown, or brown-brown, or you know, but the words for horses, by, of course by sex, and then they have three, 'cause they have geldings. And so they're very important too. And by age, and by whether or not they've reproduced in the case of the females, all these things are important parts of the horse.
And the horse, a few years ago, a presidential candidate ran under the slogan, 'Raised in the dust of many fast horses.' It just resonates with the Mongolian spirit, and the dust itself is important. The Mongolians, they will wipe the sweat and the dust off the horse, and wipe it onto their own forehead, which is the most sacred part of the body, where the soul resides. This is how intimate their relationship is with the horses.
And they're hard on them in some ways, they train them very well, they ride them very hard, but the horses are also trained for that. They use a very small crop, it's a little bit like a stick with a slight whip at the end of the day, hit the rump of the horse, never anything else. They're horrified at Western people who use metal spurs and metal to harm the horse in the stomach, and to harm the head of a horse, they say it's a capital crime. I mean, I don't know anyone who's ever executed for it, but you never ever harm a horse's head.
So horses are important in every way. Even religiously important with the making of the fermented horse's milk that the mother goes out every morning, and she throws some to each of the four directions to start the day. And they use it for every kind of thing that... But you know, some things puzzled me that in my watching, I remember, one day being with a very nice family. It happened to be on a gelding day, when they were out there gelding the would-be stallions, who don't get to be stallions, but they, this family, they had a bunch of boys, and only thinking about one or two girls were like four or five boys, and one boy who was maybe 11-years-old, he fell from the horse. You could see it, not so far away. He fell from the horse, and he didn't get up. No one moved. In fact, they all kind of turned attention away, and I thought, 'What am I supposed to say? This boy fell down, somebody go get him.' No.
And then the boy was trying to hobble back. He still had the reigns to his horse, he was, but he couldn't remount, and he was trying to hobble back, so his little brother went out to help him come in, and they came into the ger, and they sat down, the mother just turned her back, and I'm thinking, 'How on earth can you do this? This is a child, this is your child, you know.' But two weeks later by chance, another boy who is practicing for Naadam, the annual races, like this boy had been doing, he was off in an area, right, close to the forested mountain area, and the horse bolted, took off through the woods, he was knocked off by a tree, and then the horse went deeper into the woods, the boy followed him, the boy became lost. The boy was 12-years-old, he was lost for two weeks, and he lived. I would've died in 48 hours. He lived.
He said, well he slept in the daytime when it was warm, he walked at night when it was cold, even though this was the summertime, the nights can be quite cold, especially on a mountain, and he sang loudly all night long to keep the wolves away, and he knew what to eat, and then he walked until he found water moving, and then he would follow that water down to the next... He lived. And I realized, the boy falls from the horse, his mother's not gonna be there. She knows that. And it's probably hard for her too, to see her boys suffer, but she knows.
Just a small tangent. There's a wrestler named Cary Kolat, and he tells the story about mental toughness, that the first time he saw truly mentally tough people was when he visited Mongolia for a wrestling tournament. And he remembered that they were taking showers in ice cold water. And you know, all the other wrestlers, they would take the shower, and when the water hits them, you could see a little grimace. With the Mongols, there was just nothing. It was emotionless, sort of like ice cold water, or any other kind of hardship, you build a hardness to that. And I suppose that falling from the horse is just an example of that, there's a mental hardness and mental toughness.
You have to be able to take care of yourself. And with the weather, for example, often in that time, is still today, some people, if they can have the privacy to do it, their men will strip naked in the first heavy snow, and roll around in the snow in order to prepare for the coming winter. And the valley where I lived, a route of wrestlers come there to train in the summertime for the competition. And the water's very cold coming down from the mountain. And every day, when there's a break, they go down, they take, again, they do not get in the water, never. But they take the water, and they pour the cold water over themselves, and yes, that's refreshing to them. Refreshing.
Well, then getting back to the horses, the value they had for the horses, and the horse riding skill they developed throughout their life created one of the most unstoppable military forces in history. So if we just talk about the mounted archery that they've employed in war, the Mongols were able to do targeted shooting accurately at 200 meters or more, while riding fast, you know, up to speeds of 60 kilometers an hour I read. So there's a lot to say like, you know, you have to time, and just watching some of the videos, it's just incredible how stable you could be on top of a horse, and I guess you're supposed to be shooting at a moment of the gallop when all four of the feet of the horse are off the ground. And so you have to time all of that, you have to position your body to maintain balance, and then there's the skill of the actual holding and shooting the bow accurately, and there's obviously the technology of the bow, the composite bow, the recurved bow, they've also, I read, used cross bows later, they've adapted the technology, and there's a particular kind of thumb draw that you use for shooting with the composite bow that works for a horse, 'cause the thing is bouncing up and down, right? So you have to like not drop the arrow. It's just incredible to be able to shoot while the horse is going 60 kilometers an hour. Anyway, can you speak to this kind of exceptional excellence that the Genghis Khan and the Mongols had for riding horses and engaging in war off of the horse?
