 As you all know, normally on Wednesdays we review the lost or banned books of the Bible that were discussed the day before on David Zublik's platform, The Dark Outpost. However, this week David Zublik is on vacation, so we're going to pause our discussion on the Apocalypse of Abraham and instead focus on another story, a story that I've been paying attention to for a while now, because it's so interesting. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like as always. A very, very, very special thank you to all of our patrons and producers. Without you guys, this channel would absolutely not exist. If you would like to join our Patreon community, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta, my name is Bryce, and today we are going to be talking about the lost tomb of Genghis Khan. Now we don't really know Genghis Khan's actual birthday. There is an argument that spans between four years. Some historians believe that Genghis Khan was born in the year 1158, but others believe he was born in the year 1162. Most of what we know today about Genghis Khan's life comes from a book called The Secret History of the Mongols. This is one of the oldest surviving literary works in the Mongolian language, and it was written by the heirs of Genghis Khan. It was written after his death on the 18th of August 1227. It claims that Genghis Khan was born most likely, and what is now modern day North Mongolia. The Secret History of the Mongols says that Khan was born grasping a blood clot in his fist. According to local culture and folklore, this meant that Khan was destined to be a great leader. Genghis Khan was not born with the name Genghis Khan. He was born with the name Timogen, and at the time of his birth, Mongolia was a very vicious place to live. Mongolia was full of a bunch of tribes, tribes that ward with each other constantly. And one of Khan's greatest achievements would be to unite all the tribes under one nation with him as their ruler. Genghis Khan or Timogen would also go on to expand the empire of Mongolia, taking down some of the strongest nations around him. Timogen was born the son of a tribal war chief. This meant that Timogen was born in the aristocracy of Mongolia. This would be considered Mongolian royal blood. Timogen's father arranged for him to be married to the daughter of a neighboring tribal war chief. Just like over in Europe, where the royal families air marry their kids to form alliances, it seems the same thing was also happening in Mongolia. The woman that Timogen was betrothed to as a very small child's name was Borte. And at the age of nine, Timogen's father brought Timogen to Borte's father in order for Timogen to live with the family to serve Borte's father until he was at the reasonable marriage age of 12. But as the story goes, the marriage at 12 years old would not happen. Now, Timogen would go on to marry Borte later on in his life. But as his father was returning back to his personal tribe, he was allegedly poisoned by another warring tribe, causing him to eventually lose his life. At that point, the nine-year-old Timogen left his soon-to-be father-in-law and headed back to his home tribe in order to take the position of leadership. But soon after Timogen's father passed away, all the people in his tribe abandoned the tribe. I guess they really didn't want to be led by a nine-year-old. This left Timogen and his mother and his mother's sister wives and his brothers and sisters and half brothers and sisters in poverty. And during this time, we see the first true act of brutality coming from Timogen. One of Timogen's half brothers felt like he deserved to be the tribal leader. And in fact, he declared as a child that his father's wives, the wives that weren't actually his mother but the sister wives, were now his wives. And as he would go out and hunt, he would rarely share his food with his family. At a young age, Timogen and his other brothers decided that they had to take their brother out. And so they did. These children took another child out. Fast forward 10 years, and the 19-year-old Timogen is the leader of his tribe. His tribe is very, very small at this point. It's basically just his extended family. And having a tribe that small in the warring Mongolia meant that Timogen's tribe was like sitting ducks. Timogen knew that he had to act fast. In order to secure the safety of his personal tribe, he needed allies. And again, what better way to create allies than through marriage? So he went back to the tribe that he was betrothed to and married Borte. By this time, Borte was known for her beauty. And the honeymoon between Timogen and Borte did not last long. Something that was very common in Mongolia at this time was wife stealing. Yes, you heard me right, wife stealing. Soon after Timogen and Borte got married, a warring tribe invaded his tribe and took his wife hostage. During the madness of the invasion, Timogen escaped. But Timogen had a plan. You see, he had grown up with another boy named Jamukin. Even though these boys were not biologically related, they did consider themselves to be brothers. They were thick as thieves, BFFs if you will. So Timogen and Jamukin decided that they needed a strong ally on their side in order to then retaliate against the tribe that stole Borte. Timogen remembered that his own father had a friend, a friend like Jamukin that he considered to be a brother. And at this point, this friend of Timogen's father had himself become a Khan. A Khan is basically like an emperor or a king. And this particular Khan was governing over a couple of tribes. So Timogen and Jamukin headed that way. Timogen brought this Khan gifts and begged him to help him and Jamukin get his bride Borte back, reminding this Khan that he himself had been besties with Timogen's own father. This Khan, of course, agrees to help Timogen. After all, Timogen was the son of his best friend. So Timogen, Jamukin and this Khan all right off into the sunset, carrying their soldiers behind them to go and find Borte, Timogen's wife. I kind of had in my mind this idea of like the three musketeers, the three amigos, riding off into sunset to get what's theirs. Well, get what's theirs, they did. They invaded the tribe that sold Borte, basically slaughtering everyone in the area. It also just so happened that this tribe that sold Borte that they slaughtered was one of the strongest tribes in Mongolia. And so at this point, Khan's reputation started. He had defeated one of the most vicious tribes. Nine months later after Borte was back with Timogen, she gave birth to a son. Now nobody knows who the father of this son really was. Was it Timogen or the guy that stole her? But nonetheless, Timogen honored the boy as his own son and raised him as his own son. Now what Timogen and his best friend Jamukin are co-woolers of both their tribes. You see Jamukin was also born the son of a tribal war chief. Therefore, he too was considered to be aristocratic or royal blood. But Jamukin and Timogen had different ideas on how to rule their tribes. Jamukin really wanted to stick with the tradition of only aristocratic or royal boys taking leadership roles, where Timogen was more interested in the value of someone's character and their loyalty to the tribe, regardless of what their birth rank was. This started to cause friction between the two boys. To make matters worse, the local holy man of the tribe pointed to Timogen as being the accurate ruler. Over time, tension developed within the tribe between Jamukin and Timogen. As time went on, tension started to grow between the two tribes that were supposed to be merged together as one. The tension got so bad that it became like two rival tribes trying desperately to live with one another. Eventually Jamukin decides to split from Timogen's tribe and basically there was a divorce between the two friends. The two boys had no contact with each other for about two years. And then out of the blue, Jamukin accused Timogen's tribe of stealing their horses. With this accusation, Jamukin's tribe invaded Timogen's tribe and basically slaughtered a lot of them. They ended up taking a lot of Timogen's generals captive. And just so you get an idea of how brutal these guys were, Jamukin boiled Timogen's generals alive. Well, of course, knowing that his beloved generals had been by his pseudo best friend Jamukin really pissed Timogen off. Vengeance was his and his alone. Timogen cowboyed up. But his vengeance was very, very calculated. He started training his men in what is military combat. He reminded the military men that the Mongols had a legend, that their people descended from the wolf and that the wolf doesn't fight alone. The wolf fights in a pack. He even took the young boys of the tribe and started teaching them young how to work with bows and arrows, how to fight on horses. Again, with Timogen, we're seeing the beginnings of military training. In 1204, Timogen and his wolf pack, his men, headed west to confront Jamukin. There's a famous story that he told his men again that as a tribe, they were stronger than one man. He used the examples of arrows. One arrow by itself breaks very easily. But if you bundle a bunch of arrows together, it's harder to break. And that was how they were going to win this dispute by sticking together. This military combat would end up playing out throughout Timogen's life, uniting Mongolian as one people, one military. When Timogen and his men got to the outer skirts of Jamukin's tribe, Timogen had his men light five fire fires each. During the evening, this would give the appearance that Timogen had a huge army. This, my friends, is psychological warfare. Needless to say, Timogen's men won this battle with Jamukin. And Jamukin, with a couple of his generals, ended up fleeing from the battle. A few months later, the generals that Jamukin fled with decided to turn Jamukin over to Timogen. They realized that being in Timogen's favor was better for them. Unfortunately, though, because they showed lack of loyalty to their leader, by the time they got to Timogen, Timogen had both the generals executed. The story says that Timogen did not want to also execute his friend Jamukin. Timogen was willing to let Jamukin back into his life as his best friend. However, Jamukin would not hear of it, and he requested to have a noble death. This was common in Mongolia. They believed that if you were born in the aristocracy, your death could not show any bloodshed. And so, as they did with noblemen, they broke Jamukin's back. In 1206, Timogen was recognized by all the tribes as the ruler of one Mongolian. At this point, he was given the name that we all know him by, Genghis Khan. Timogen was hungry for more. He decided that he was going to tempt his luck on one of the strongest military forces to the east of them. He was going to invade China. When the Emperor of North China found out that Timogen had planned to invade, he sent Timogen a message. He said, Our empire is as vast as the sea. Yours is but a handful of sand. How can we fear you? Well, Timogen would go on to show him how they could fear him. Timogen and his military learned how to go around the Great Wall of China. They ended up making their way through all of the booby traps set up on China's border. Once they got through all of the mercenaries in the area, ended up surrendering to Timogen. And this is common throughout Timogen's life. When Timogen would invade a village or a nation, if you surrendered to Timogen, he would not hurt you. However, if you didn't surrender to Timogen, all bets were off. They had one city in mind, and that was the city of Beijing. And as they made their way to Beijing, they ransacked through all the villages. They took all their money and they took all their wives. In fact, we believe that Timogen had a very, very ambitious sex life. It is said today that one in every 200 men can trace their lineage back to Genghis Khan. It seems that Genghis Khan took the whole spreading of the seed thing very seriously. At this time, Beijing was considered the jewel of Asia. It was one of the richest and most developed cities in the East. And when they got to Beijing, they noticed that there was a wall surrounding it. Beijing was not stupid. They had fortified their city. But Genghis Khan, Timogen, had a plan. He was going to starve them out. He set up camps outside the city, not allowing tradesmen to get into the city to drop off goods. The city became a virtual prison. And citizens starved to death with the survivors turning to the practice of eating human flesh, otherwise known as cannibalism. They built catapults and battling ramps. In order to try to postpone the siege, the emperor of Beijing had his daughter Mary Timogen. But that didn't actually work. The whole battle in Beijing lasted from 1211 to 1215. Of course, needless to say, Timogen and his military sacked Beijing. Timogen wasn't just after the wealth and military might of China, though. He wanted their knowledge and their riches. He brought all the money from China back to his people in Mongolia to make sure that his people were wealthy and stable. He also brought back prisoners of war, Chinese doctors, that taught Timogen and his men how to mend the sick and the injured. He continued to study the military might of China, learning things from these Chinese men that he could incorporate into his own military to make his people stronger. Now at this point, it is believed that not many of the Mongols knew how to read or write. So Timogen got one of the prisoners of war from China to write out laws. He was now going to establish law and order throughout his empire. One of these laws was the establishment of land granted per tribe. This kind of seems like states to me. That he was creating states with governors and rulers that worked together for the common whole. He also set up penalties for such things as kidnapping. He then decided that he would establish trade routes throughout his empire, roads and highways in order for the Mongolian people to do business with those outside of the empire. He created the role of ambassadors. And it was this role of the ambassador that pushed Timogen into his next battle. He sent one of his ambassadors to the empire of Persia, an empire that we will be again discussing on Friday. Persia of course is the Middle East. And in 1218, the Sultan of Persia sent Mongolia's ambassadors decapitated head back to Timogen. What a grave mistake the Sultan of Persia made because Timogen of course retaliated. He sent 200,000 men down to invade Persia. Any town again who did not surrender to the Mongolians was burnt to the ground, leaving over a million people in Persia dead. This then led to Timogen's first raid on Europe. At this point, his empire was four times the size of Alexander the Great's and two times the size of the Roman Empire. Timogen then got it in his head that his dharma, his duty in life was to conquer the whole world. And in 1222, he called the local priest, a Taoist man, and asked him how to prolong his life. The Taoist man couldn't really give much advice except for sustaining from sexual activity, which of course Timogen did not do. Four years later, Timogen decided to go back to China. During this journey, he got sick. This would result in Timogen's death. His last words were stated as saying, I have conquered for you a large empire, but my life is too short to take the whole world that I leave to you. It was Timogen's wish that his sons and their sons and their sons' sons would continue to conquer the world, making the whole world part of the Mongolian Empire. And his sons did conquer a lot of land. In fact, they ended up doubling his father's empire. But that mighty strength of that Mongolian empire would only crumble a century later. Timogen had one more request on his deathbed. He wanted his burial to be a secret place. It is even stated today that the people who buried him, who were there in attendance, ended up executed afterwards in order to keep the place a secret. We even see reference to this by the explorer Marco Polo. Now nobody really knows why Genghis Khan or Timogen wanted his burial spot to be secret. But it is believed that it became known as the Forbidden Tomb, that a curse was around his burial spots. You see, they believed that if you were to find the tomb, that the whole world would then be destroyed. Now there is a mausoleum of Genghis Khan in Mongolia today. But this is where he is venerated and worshipped, not where he is buried. Many scholars have tried to find where Timogen was buried. One of these scholars is the man Albert Eumann Lin, who is a PhD and runs a website called Hunting Down Khan. Albert Lin, like many other people, believe that Timogen's body is probably buried in the Mongol sacred mountain Burkham Caldoun. Now Burkham Caldoun translates loosely to God's mountain. According to Albert Lin, this was an area where Timogen or Genghis Khan would go a lot to pray before he went into battle. Now what's interesting about this mountain and parts of this mountain rage is that it's considered to be sacred land. No one is allowed there. Now in 2015, a French archaeologist named Pierre-Henry Giscard went to Burkham Caldoun without permission. My mother used to always tell us sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. However, I have to hand it to little Pierre-Henry because I think I would be pretty terrified to try to walk on sacred land in Mongolia that's been blocked off from the public. I think the penalties would be pretty harsh. But most people are very grateful for what he did. He sent a drone up into the mountain where he discovered what appeared to be a man-made mound. On this mound were four signs made of stone. These signs or symbols are called tanga or tribe signs. And after further research, Pierre-Henry realized that these tribe signs were of Genghis Khan and his grandchildren. Basically kind of like their coat of arms. And it is important to note that nobody knows where his kids or grandkids are buried either. Now what I find kind of humorous is after Pierre-Henry made this discovery with his drone, some construction workers just happened to find a grave near the Onan River. I mean how suspect is that you have this French archaeologist who's sending a drone into sacred land that no one's allowed into and finds this very convincing mound with all these symbols on it and then oh it just so happens around the same time. Oh look oh my gosh look these construction workers accidentally found this other tube over here by this river and the University of Beijing and some other archaeologists were sent in and they said oh yes yes yes this this grave this grave is a 13th century royal grave and and look at all these bodies these other bodies scattered on top of this grave oh my gosh these must be the people that he killed that wouldn't tell his secret this has to be the grave of Genghis Khan. Some of the people fell for the government's hoax over this grave and the Onan River but many many people have called them out for fake news a distraction a fake grave a fake story of a fake grave in order to take the attention off the mound that Pierre Henri had found on his drone. Now my question is why the secrecy why don't they want us knowing where Genghis Khan is buried what's in that burial mound and who really was Genghis Khan they say that the truth is often stranger than fiction and I believe it and I personally hope that one day we will know what is in that mound that's being so heavily protected by the governing elite. Alright guys leave me your thoughts and your opinions down in the comment section below starting next week we will return to our regular Wednesday content with part three of the apocalypse of Abraham. Thank you so much to Josh McKay for doing our music if you would like to purchase the opening song there is a link down in the description box below and thank you to Todd Roderick for helping me get this video out to you all today I hope that you all have a wonderful day and I will talk to you soon.