Perhaps no one could have imagined that one day Mongolians would drum upon the world with the beating of horses’ hooves and build one of the largest empires known to history. How the Mongols in the 12th century, mocked by the neighboring nomadic tribes for their weakness and limited manpower, suddenly rose to power and established the greatest empire in the world still remains a mystery. These have been many explanations offered for this sudden phenomenon such as the “passionarity” ethnogenesis explored by the Russian historian, ethnologist, and anthropologist Lev Gumilev.
