Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Conversation, climate change is driving modern day Mongolians to loot long buried treasures accumulated by Ghengis Khan’s empire.
Climate change and looters threaten the archaeology of Mongolia
The history and archaeology of Mongolia, most famously the sites associated with the largest land empire in the history of the world under Ghengis Khan, are of global importance. But they’re facing unprecedented threats as climate change and looting impact ancient sites and collections.
Climate change and looting may seem to be unrelated issues. But deteriorating climate and environmental conditions result in decreased grazing potential and loss of profits for the region’s many nomadic herders. Paired with a general economic decline, herders and other Mongolians are having to supplement their incomes, turning to alternative ways of making money. For some, it’s searching for ancient treasures to sell on the illegal antiquities market.
…
The looting of archaeological sites in Mongolia has been happening for a very long time. Regional archaeologists have shared anecdotes of finding skeletons with break-in tools made from deer antlers in shafts of 2,000 year old royal tombs in central Mongolia. These unlucky would-be thieves risked the unstable sands collapsing in the shafts above them for a chance at riches, not long after the royal leaders had been buried there.
But many recent pits dug directly into burial sites around Mongolia, some that are more than 3,000 years old, suggest modern day looting is on the rise. For the untrained looter, any rock feature has the potential to contain valuable goods and so grave after grave is torn apart. Many of these will contain no more than human and animal bones.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/climate-change-and-looters-threaten-the-archaeology-of-mongolia-91853
The climate change afflicting Mongolia is extreme cold.
Mongolia has seen some hideously cold winters recently, such as the winter of 2016, and this year’s winter, which led a few weeks ago to the Red Cross releasing disaster relief for stricken nomadic herders.
No doubt yet another case of global warming causing extreme cold.
Racism .
Pure and simple.
Are the authors not implying that Mongolians cannot be archeologists too?
How come a credentialed Nitwit from outside Mongolia may dig at will, but an actual descendent may not?
Sacr semi off.
Yep.
First: the ‘looters’ are all descendants of Genghis Khan, so one could argue it’s their property:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html
Second: don’t believe anything written by someone who misspells Genghis Khan as ‘Ghengis Khan’ (except for Erik Worell).
You mean Tschingis? I’m not sure Mr Khan was able to spell his name at all, so let’s be content with that.
Anyway it is not global warming that causes looting. It is greed with tools, in this case, modern metal detectors.
I agree with Hugs. Mongolians now have metal detectors and, being good descendants of “The King From The East (Chingiz Khan)” they are keeping up with their traditions of looting.
Khan himself was a looter – where do these people think Khan got all the gold and other stuff? Or did his herds poop gold?
More likely, they need the gold to pay their ultra high electric bill brought on by global warming extremism
At least the Bitkhan stash is still safe from the looters.
Mmm, this obviously proves that “climate change” has been happening for millennia given the looting of the pharaoh’s tombs over the centuries.
The primary reason Mongolian herders are having problems is a thing called borders. Once upon a time they migrated with their herds all over central Asia adapting to changing climate.
Then they may be in serious trouble in the near term. The Eurasian continent has progressively cooled while western North America has warmed for this time of year, as seen in pictures of Arctic temps from 3/11 of the last 3 years. Today’s view …https://www.weather-forecast.com/static_maps/Arctic/temperature/6
That region spawns a migration wave every 500 years or so. Every time the rain patterns shift, the farmers starve and the herders expand.
This time, the herders did not benefit much from the collapse of the Russian Empire. Or maybe that guy from Georgia was this time’s Attila or Genghis.
Ah…the range wars between the open grazers and the homesteaders.
Climate change is also affecting my golf game. My 7 iron distance used to be 150 yards and my driver 280 yards back when cumulative emissions were 350 GTC but as cumulative emissions have risen my distances for all clubs have steadily fallen. My only hope is climate action.
For goodness sake get with the program.
– CO2 has aided your overall health, like it does with all living things.
– The healthier you are, the longer you live.
– The longer you live, the more you are impacted by aging.
– A man your age has no business driving a golf ball 280 yards.
Please take up bridge.
Your falling golf game might have more to do with age and decreased stamina than anything added to the atmosphere.
I have noticed my own physical prowess has decreased for the same reasons, whereas the biosphere has gotten demonstrably stronger. I envy trees that now grow 30 to 70% faster due to the increase in CO2.
Maybe in the next life I’ll come back as an ent.
I have heard tell that it is every golfer’s ambition to go round the course in under their age.
RockyRoad: but you’ll talk very slowly, and not say much. An your sex life will be non-existent, until you find the entwives.
Maybe all that carbon pollution is making the air thicker, thus increasing air resistance and decreasing ball flight distances.
At last, an explanation that makes sense about why they didn’t play golf in ancient Mongolia – it was climate change all along! Now we know and it’s worse than we thought. Again.
Bingo! I’ve been trying to figure out how the NCAA selection committee could have left Southern Cal out of the big dance. It’s gotta be climate change. That’s the only explanation that fits.
Well, at least it fits as well as it does for the Mongolian looting – and your golf game.
Have your clubs re-lofted.
Another thing is just who owns what. As the herders do not have actual title to what is their land effectively, it is technically looting. Mongolia was at one time communist, so the relics are probably state property, but no one in such a country has many qualms about stealing from the state.
The herders don’t get arrested for “stealing the grass” their herds consume from that same land; what is the difference between that and the gold which was originally a natural, un-procured part of the same land?
Are they saying Genghis Khan bought that gold or did he acquire it through butchery and conquest?
I laugh at the first assertion and read horrified at how he enacted the latter!
Consequently, there is absolutely no reason to celebrate the horrible way Genghis Khan acquired anything.
Let the poor herders put that gold to good use for a change.
An Antiquities Department is probably secretly paying the young Mongolian herders to did up Genghis Khan’s gold and return it to where ever it was looted from. Young Mongolians don’t want to be herders, they want an I-phone, video games and a seat at the government “trough” so that they are free to protest how other people want to live.
Global warming—blame everything on it. That way no thought is required and hopefully people are dumb enough not to notice. (They aren’t—freezing people are funny that way.)
modern day looting is on the rise
======================
no shzt Sherlock.
more people = more looting.
Wow! I didn’t realize we were over 3000 pink dots! It’s worse than we thought!
You need to add carbon output to the graph to show correlation 🙂
Yeah, you definitely need to label your axes and give a source.
The ONLY axis that can ever be unlabeled is the date. Everything else needs a label.
The Conversation
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
===================
Academic rigor!! What a joke. The Conversation discovers water is wet and blames in on Climate Change.
you left out the second part of the word ` . . . mortis`
“Claim: Climate Change Forcing Poor People to Dig Up Buried Gold”
So man-made-anthropogenic-catastrophic-climate-change-disruption makes poor people rich?
I don’t imagine the Mongol’s left much treasure just lying around.
Of course, if it weren’t for climate change, no one would ever think of searching for buried treasure!
The Egyptians had a lot of foresight. Needed their descendants in 3000 years time to better prepare for climate change.
It’s the hockey stick is to blame. Here it is:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Price-Of-Gold.jpg
ordinate is $/oz. abscissa is date
Very good. That got a big smile out of me.
Thanks, Max.
As if people don’t just naturally look for buried gold. We (collectively) have been doing that for millennia. The ancient Egyptians were noted tomb raiders, 3 to 4 thousand years ago.
What’s the algorithm here: find a natural behaviour, blame it on climate change?
“find a natural behaviour, blame it on climate change”
That IS the Al Goreithm
Since climate is always changing, it has been suggested as the cause for everything.
OMG! CLIMATE CHANGE IS CAUSING…..CLIMATE CHANGE!
we are surely doomed.
Why even blame this on climate change, it should be obvious that CO2 is the basic culprit~!
Sigh… will it never end?
It will end with one of our two basic options under climate change doctrine:
1) Leave it in the ground, or
2) Redistribute the wealth.
“the largest land empire in the history of the world under Ghengis Khan”
This was hardly any type of empire as we understand Empire to mean in the west; they were a collection of illiterate inbred plunderous tribes without a written language who murdered their way across the vast countryside on horseback for less than a century. The seeds of rape and pillage they left behind is evidenced today in all the Stan’s that exist throughout central Asia today. A blight on humanity these savages were. More power to the mongolian people now in raiding anything left from that era, and rendering it useless and non existent anymore. It was just plundered originally anyway. Good riddance to that evil history!
Earthling2, …… do you suppose that Genghis Khan learned his “trade” of plundering, looting, etc., etc. by being told about the conquests of Alexander the Great?
Apples and oranges Sam. The Macedonian/Greeks actually built things like cities, and left behind a rich culture in writing and literature that was more enduring to our interpretation of civilization, which is our roots and foundations. Yes, Alexander the Great was brutal in his conquests, but if you surrendered, you could join in his army and conquests. He didn’t wantonly slaughter the entirety of Egyptian or Persian civilization once they surrendered or were even conquered. Unless you really held out to the bitter end like some did, and you were then were annihilated. Big difference between the two, and it should be fairly obvious to any student of history.
I’ve seen this in a movie. It’s the plot of “Paint Your Wagon” only in Mongolia instead of California.
https://youtu.be/l3dhHBhWnBY?t=185
And I always thought that Ghengis Khan was a Mongolian looter who was driven out of his homeland by Climate Change on the steppes. The more things change – the more they stay the same.
Hey, leftists, as part of their HATE HATE campaign, are taking down USA Civil War monuments.
Is that because it’s warming? (Or cooling?) ((Or non-cis-normatively staying the same?))
What, all of them? Or just looser’s?
The leftists and their HATE HATE campaign to erase and/or destroy USA Civil War monuments and/or places and things named in honor of USA Civil War heroes, Generals, etc., ….. will have a “field day of several years of destruction” when they get around to launching their “attack” on/in the State of West Virginia.
And that is because of the fact that General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson has more things named in his honor than you can shake a stick at.
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/stonewall-jackson
Temujin’s memorabilia disappeared while the Soviets were exploiting Mongolia. They did their best to obliterate the memory of any non-Russian hero.
It was one of the most delayed revenges of all time, 700 years after Chinggis was raiding Kiev.
They (Wikipedia, so it’s a sourced fact) tell me Chinggis was religionally tolerant. I’m having hard time. He killed to last man and woman cities if not complete nations. It is like telling H was not hating a religion i.e. he was tolerant when he arranged the genocide of J</em)ews. H was a vegetarian and all! Fact is, there is no murder worse than that of Chinggis' rule. Stalin, H, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong of course make a good competition on different aspects of misanthropy (or should I say degrowth, it has so good a klang among the klimatariati).
Looting of historic site equipped with gold and other valuables has always been very popular down the Ages. The recent very cold winters in Mongolia have no doubt focused the minds of Mongolians on survival, but I am sure that the average Mongolian is equally well equipped as a looter as any ancient Egyptian or Han Chinese was. As usual, more people means more looting.
Perhaps the empty heads at the Conversation can explain why ancient tombs have been raided since the tombs were first sealed, thousands of years ago?
So much for common sense at the Conversation.
It reminds me of working at U.S.Steel.
After several months working in the steel plant, my language skills degenerated to match the language use common amongst the workers; i.e., curses, blasphemies and pejoratives interspersed with normal words.
When, my gutter mouth couldn’t/wouldn’t stop embarrassing a lovely lady of my acquaintance, I realized that I had to force myself to speak reasonably and rationally. Several months later, I managed to purge the abuses and return to normal language without embarrassing words.
Not that the lady I appalled, ever spoke to me again.
Anyway, it seems that many of the eco and climate loons interject “climate change” and related words into all of their discussions.
e.g.:
• “Climate change” ruined my vacation.
• That “climate change” caused my lunch to give me gas.
• My child suffered “climate change”, and we were hurt by a “climate changed” pin when we changed our child’s “climate change” diaper.
• Cleaning up my neighbors’ dog’s “climate change” is disgusting!
• When I listened to that awful MM, his “climate change” presentation made the dog’s “climate change” pleasant.
• At confession today, the Pope insisted my “climate change” was unforgivable!
This is man made looting though. In previous times it was natural looting. Catastrophic man made looting with a mongolian forcing of 8 carats per steppe change. If action isnt taken by the world community this is expected to increase to 1 cauliflower per steppe change.
Climate-change those climate-changing climate changers!
Huh?!
This is the only Genghis Khan I care about.
https://alchetron.com/Jingisukan
Those poor looters, they need funding for advanced digging tools.
Oh so it was climate change that caused those ancient tomb raids in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings? and in many other cultures
If the Climate were to change back, would the Mongolians leave the treasure in the ground?
The UN still has other people’s money. Get a grant.
This happened in ancient Egypt, guess it must have been those gas guzzling chariots.