Khan

Around 1200 AD, this guy called Temujin came out of nowhere, united a bunch of Mongolian Tribes to the north of China, and adopted the name Ghengis Khan, or "Supreme Emperor."

And he was pretty Supreme, man, what with his incredibly fast travelling army of dudes who basically lived on horseback, with metal stirrups that held their feet in place and allowed them to drive spears into people with the combined weight of the horse and the rider behind it, insteada just shooting arrows and throwing spears at people, like all the other mounted folks (like Attila the Hun heh) did before that.

They never lost a fight, y'know, it wasn't until long after Ghengis Khan was dead that some folks in Egypt discovered that the Mongols weren't completely invincible.

And Ghengis Khan, with the help of Sabutai, his trusty general, pretty much ruled over three fourths of the Earth, and they're the reason that the Tigris and Euphrates River Valley is a desert, among a lot of other things.

Actually, the only reason that we aren't all Mongolians right now is that the Mongol army had to ride all the way back home in order to elect a new leader when Ogodai (son of Ghengis) croaked.

That's the only reason they stopped taking over the world at 75%, closing in on Vienna and Venice (and talking about the speed of his army, it took two days for his army to travel a hundred miles and kick somebody's ass in previous battles).

Speaking of Venice, it was founded by a bunch of folks running from Attila the Hun, hiding in the "swamps" heh.

So Ghengis had an extensive spy network, and all sorts of interesting military tricks, like breaking his army into separate groups with runners going between 'em to keep it all coordinated, so that he could bring 'em all together and surround his enemies from weird angles at a certain time and cut off their ability to retreat.

And he'd divert rivers and turn your country into a desert, too.

Anyways, at the time, China was the most technologically advanced country in the world, their elected "officials" and stuff had to take proficiency test to prove they weren't idiots (imagine that going on nowadays! ahaha).

So these guys, who had conquered China first thing, weren't just a bunch of barbarians who killed everybody in their path (although they did do that too, to such a degree, early on, that they got famous for it, and a lot of places basically just surrendered to them, without a fight, later on).

You've heard of Marco Polo, and probably don't know that he was a Venetian Trader guy that spent twenty years (along with his dad and uncle) as a guest in the court of Kublai Khan (a third generation great grandson of Ghengis), and he wrote a book about it, and nobody believed it was real, 'cause it described a civilization that was basically more advanced than everything in Europe, sorta like science fiction or something.

As a matter of fact, the Mongol Rule sorta dissolved into the generic chain of Chinese Emperors and stuff, and Kublai is generally credited with uniting China, y'know, 'cause Chinese Culture over there is a lot like Greek and Roman culture over here, it tended to convert everybody that came into contact with it.

Speaking of which, the first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty (you know, that's where those Ming Vases come from), really was a peasant who got famous for his efforts in driving the Mongol remnants out of China, talk about rags to riches heh.

Oh, and the term Kamikaze, which is a bastardized version of whatever its supposed to be, like most things, translates to "Divine Wind" in Japanese.

And that Divine Wind thing comes from a couple military episodes where the Mongols tried to invade Japan by boat, and they got turned back by Japanese weather (typhoons, which were seen as the Divine Winds that proved to the Japanese that supernatural powers protected Japan).

Anyways, just thought I'd mention some of the cooler stuff about all that ancient junk over there that I don't hear much about, usually the European slant on things is that Ghengis was a barbarian who just sorta harassed civilization, when actually, the dudes he was invading were a lot more primitive than he was, and he didn't harass jack shit, there wasn't anything in the world at the time that could even slow the guy down a little, I mean, when they were riding back home to elect a new Khan, they beat the living shit out of a couple countries on the way.

The Knights in Shining Armor and all that good stuff were still a ways off in time and space, and I think they were pretty lucky that they never had to stand in his way heh.

Man, the error checking on writing shit like this sucks ahaha.

Well, mebbe its all bullshit, but it sounds good, y'know.