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Ancient Autopsy
Ancient Autopsy (2025) S01E03
Ancient Autopsy (2025) Season 1 Episode 3
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00:00Genghis Khan was the 13th century founder of the largest land empire in history how then do we not
00:10know how he died if you delve into the historical sources the deaths of many an ancient figure are
00:19shrouded in wild theories myth and intrigue it's an incredible game of Imperial Cluedo going on
00:26I'm professor Susanna Lipscomb and I spent my career investigating the mysteries of the past but
00:33now I'm traveling thousands of years back in time to investigate how some of the greatest
00:38figures of the ancient world met their end from Tutankhamun to Alexander the Great Genghis Khan to
00:45Cleopatra I'll be searching for clues in the archaeology in artifacts and in ancient texts
00:52this is the first time we see a story of his death where he is castrated helping me to
01:00unpick fact from fiction is world-leading forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepard using a cutting
01:07edge digital autopsy table he will shed light on the impact of disease injury and possible foul play
01:14on our famous figures it causes shock the blood pressure falls the heart rate goes up this was
01:20not the clean death that is so often described in the history books I'll be meeting experts at my
01:27investigation hub and getting truly hands-on out in the field that's great look at that
01:34it's very keen to fire I'll unearth the latest revelations about these Titans of antiquity this is a
01:42perfect surface to smear some poison leading me closer to revealing just how they died
01:49Genghis Khan is a name that inspires fear in some and devotion in others but this name which means
02:09universal ruler and should be pronounced Chinggis Khan was a later acquisition he was born Temujin in 1162
02:17to a poor nomadic family on the vast Mongolian steppe near what is now the Russian border
02:23yet from this obscure start he would become one of the most famous and infamous leaders in history
02:29Genghis Khan is brought up in a very turbulent environment there are multiple different clans all
02:39fighting each other in that area of Mongolia
02:41people were captured they were held hostage they were traded they were massacred his father's killed
02:51at a relatively young age his wife is abducted and he himself is taken prisoner so he has no sense of
02:58security he's under permanent threat Genghis Khan defended himself by going on the attack
03:05he soon proved to be a gifted military leader gathering followers conquering his enemies and capturing land
03:14he's fighting military campaigns and he does that year after year war after war campaign after campaign
03:21with an ever-growing horde of nomadic warriors Genghis Khan raised cities and toppled empires
03:31but this brutal warlord was also a brilliant diplomat if we study the way that he ruled it was through
03:41alliances brokering different kinds of allegiances allowing different religions to flourish within his
03:50court it was a kind of mobile diplomacy that extended across vast swathes of land
03:57the result was a 9 million square ma empire that would eventually stretch from china's pacific coast in the east to the river danube in the west
04:10if you talk to a mongolian of course he's the founder of the mongolian nation
04:21so mongolians worship him but then of course if you talk to his enemies or enemy nation then he is a monster
04:32for all his notoriety chinghis khan's final chapter remains unwritten why is the fate of one of the most legendary figures in history still a mystery
04:45the best place to begin any investigation into the cause of death is with the body
04:53but in chinghis khan's case this crucial piece of evidence is missing
04:59his burial site was hidden and has never been found probably because the people closest to him
05:07never wanted anyone to find out how he died
05:11what is valued in the mongolian tradition is that soul rather than the body or bone bone means nothing
05:20in fact it's kind of blasphemous to talk about his death because he's still considered to be
05:28in eternal heaven protecting the mongol nation today
05:33with no body we need to focus on what we do know about chinghis khan
05:41to see if his life may hold a clue to his death
05:44helping me find out more is historian dr nicholas morton
05:51and he's brought a clue to the investigation hub
05:55nick tell me about this what do we have here
05:59this is a high saddle of the kind used by central asian nomads
06:03and these saddles are very specifically designed
06:07it's about being able to ride for long distances but it's also about providing a great deal of support
06:13in battle when shooting
06:15okay so that's why it's so deep is to create the greater sense of security
06:20that's right just to hold you in absolutely yeah and a little bit of extra height as well
06:24so what does this have to tell us about the kind of horse culture of the mongols
06:30they're nomadic so they move from seasonal grazing ground seasonal grazing ground
06:35they hunt in the saddle and they hunt all the time
06:38this is absolutely part of the mongol culture and in war they're riding throughout their military campaigns
06:45so there's very few elements of their culture that don't involve riding in many ways
06:50we have reports saying that children are put in the saddle from as early as
06:54two or three years old
06:56and then from then on until the day you die you're in the saddle
07:00and then you're buried with it to serve you in the afterlife
07:03oh wow
07:04this is a nomadic culture it's equestrian culture and life in the saddle is life
07:09it makes sense that chingis khan's death was connected to his nomadic equestrian lifestyle
07:17to find out i'm turning to the earliest known account of his death the secret history of the mongols
07:29the secret history is a chronicle of the life and times of chingis khan and it was written after his
07:39death probably by someone who was intimately involved with his court so maybe a relative
07:45it is actually recorded that chingis khan got wounded by falling from a horse
07:52and then several pages later we learn about his death just out of the blue it's announced that he dies
08:01could something as simple as a fall from his horse have been the cause of the great khan's death
08:11with so little evidence and no body to examine i'm turning to dr richard shepard
08:17he's a world-leading forensic pathologist who has carried out over 23 000 post-mortem examinations
08:25using a digital anatomy table he can dissect virtual human bodies
08:31peeling back layers of tissue muscle and bone to analyze the consequences of a riding accident
08:37a fall from the horse could always be fatal depending on the injuries that are caused
08:46but traveling at pace caught unawares those injuries are much more likely to be fatal
08:53injuries from a fall from the horse can of course occur anywhere on the body depending how the person
09:02lands but the abdomen is particularly interesting because there are so many organs compressed into
09:08such a small space on the right hand side there's the massive liver which is easily lacerated or ripped
09:15apart by an impact with the ground the same applies to the spleen which is on the left hand side of the
09:21body just tucked underneath the ribs and that's often associated with those rib fractures
09:26the bowel itself can be damaged by pressure and twisting causing it to burst but perhaps most
09:35importantly are the injuries that are caused when the spine acts as an anvil and a blow from the front
09:42compresses the organs between the spine at the back and the abdominal wall at the front causing the
09:49injuries which will often rupture the bowel and all of these things can lead to death either quickly
09:55or slowly
09:57it's clear that a fall from a horse for a 60 year old medieval man could have proved fatal
10:07but would a man who spent his whole life in the saddle take a tumble so easily
10:13so given that Genghis Khan is such a horseman such an equestrian what do you make of the idea that he
10:21might have died from a fall from a horse the source itself does talk about Genghis Khan taking a fall
10:29whilst hunting but he spent his entire life possibly as many as six decades riding why did he fall
10:37maybe the saddle itself let him down we don't we don't actually know i imagine well for a start that perhaps
10:43they fell often i mean even if they're expert horsemen just by sheer probability the number of hours a day
10:50they're spending in the saddle yeah i guess it's how quickly you get back up that's the key to your success
10:54but the other key thing you've said is his age so if he has been riding for that long he's that old
11:03then a fall is potentially going to do more serious damage than it would when he was 20
11:08yes you'd have thought so so it is possible as a cause of death even if the source is rather sort of
11:15it glosses over it a bit he takes a fall whilst hunting but it's a year or so before he died
11:21there is a long time between the accident happening and his death there is a bit of a
11:29conundrum there so it's possible but not decisive absolutely i'm wondering what might explain this
11:37conundrum this year-long gap between Genghis Khan's injury and his death a closer reading of the secret
11:44history of the mongols does offer one potential tiny clue
11:49it says that on the night after his injury Genghis Khan's flesh was hot
11:56when considering the death of Genghis Khan the words that are really important to me are that
12:02his flesh became hot which hints to me that he must have developed an infection and a fever
12:10in an age before antibiotics an infection might linger for months
12:17which could explain the gap between his injury and his death
12:22but this theory depends on the accuracy of the source
12:27the secret history of the mongols is not a history book it's not history in a proper sort of western
12:37or even in the Chinese sense it's a collection of legends it's a completion of stories and the whole
12:47purpose is to celebrate his life for his descendants if you understand a Mongolian term for history it means
12:57selection so two you pick up those important things important for whatever story you want to tell
13:07any moral you want to sort of draw you tell them for that purpose that's that's true that is history
13:16it's likely then that the story of the fall from his horse was selected for a purpose but what purpose
13:26i think it's worth being aware of the agendas people may well have brought to bear when explaining
13:32Genghis Khan's death for some it will have been an attempt to show a reverential approach to his death
13:40to reflect his reputation and his career as an enormous empire builder and they're writing from a position
13:49where they want to show him as this enormously influential historical figure
13:55it seems to me that it's almost acceptable to think of Genghis as dying on his horse because that's the most honorable picture
14:06that would want to be portrayed of him by those who revered him afterwards
14:13you know dying as a great leader reinforces his power
14:21it seems to me the secret history's account of Genghis Khan's death is more fantasy than fact
14:27invented to glorify a man its writer revered as ordained by the gods and that begs the question
14:35if the story is fiction what truth is it hiding
14:39so
14:58Chinggis Khan lived and maybe died in the saddle.
15:03The earliest written account of his death suggests he died as a result of a fatal riding
15:07injury and the pathology confirms that a fall from his horse could have been deadly, especially
15:13if followed by sepsis.
15:15But I suspect the account is fundamentally flawed, more propaganda than a fact.
15:21Fortunately, there is another account of Chinggis Khan's final moments, written by the medieval
15:31world's most celebrated traveller.
15:35One of the various people who tells the story of Chinggis Khan's death is Marco Polo, the
15:40famous Venetian traveller who set out for the Mongol Empire and later on entered Mongol service.
15:46He too showed a curiosity about Chinggis Khan and his death.
15:52According to Marco Polo, Chinggis Khan was killed on campaign against a rival dynasty known as
15:58the Western Shia.
16:00We know from Marco Polo's records that Chinggis Khan had died in battle on his horse from an
16:07arrow wound to his knee.
16:10Other accounts confirm Chinggis Khan's last battle took place in 1227 against the Western
16:17Shia in what is now northwest China.
16:20So Marco Polo's version of events seems historically plausible, but was it technically possible?
16:26Would a 60-year-old ruler revered as a god really have been exposed to enemy fire?
16:33Thankfully, I have never ventured near a battlefield, but from everything I've read, medieval battlefields
16:41could be frenzied, chaotic, bloody affairs.
16:45In that maelstrom, if an arrow wound was, as Marco Polo suggests, part of the great Khan's
16:51final days, then it seems to me that the nature of Mongol warfare could be key to understanding
16:57the truth behind his fate.
17:07Mike Lodes has spent decades studying the art of Mongolian archery.
17:15So how much power is there in one of these shots?
17:22Can you draw this back enough so that when it's loosed, it can penetrate a man's body?
17:27Oh goodness, yes.
17:28First of all, you can have a go.
17:30So there's a bow.
17:31That's it.
17:32So far, so good.
17:35Just need an arrow now.
17:37That's the tricky bit.
17:38You put it on this side, and that's called the knock, that little groove, and the power
17:44of a bow is simply the power of the spring, which is the speed at which it returns.
17:51So the more power and drawing back, the faster the arrow will go.
17:56Oh, that's looking good.
17:58That's good.
17:59There you go.
18:00And remember, you're jiggling about on a horse, and you're moving about.
18:03Yeah, this is easy.
18:05Oh goodness me.
18:10Okay.
18:11That's that.
18:12That is the tricky bit.
18:13It is the tricky bit.
18:14I don't...
18:15That is the tricky bit.
18:16I feel like...
18:17Come on, woman.
18:18I'm like, don't worry, I'll be there in a second, just trying to put the arrow on.
18:22Okay.
18:23You're looking good.
18:24Pull it all the way back.
18:25Pull it back.
18:26Oh, looking great.
18:27That's great.
18:28Look at that.
18:29And you...
18:30Did you hear the punch that went in?
18:31Yeah.
18:32The...
18:33You had more power because you pulled it back further.
18:35Wow.
18:36So the type of bow that the Mongols were using...
18:39Yes.
18:40...is six to seven times this power.
18:43Wow.
18:44Wow.
18:45Good looking good.
18:47Nice.
18:48That was a really wonderful thwack.
18:52I enjoyed that.
18:53Okay.
18:54So now I understand how the Mongols' enemies could have been shot with an arrow, but Marco
19:03Polo says that Genghis Khan was shot in the knee.
19:07Now, how could that have happened?
19:09Well, I mean, it technically could happen on the battlefield, but I think it's most likely
19:15that it happened in a siege where you're going to be quite close to the archers on the wall.
19:24Mongol warcraft evolves very rapidly over time.
19:28And one particular area is in siege warfare.
19:32Particularly from China, they pick up the use of siege catapults, the use of siege crimes,
19:39crossbows, which they can mount in their wagons.
19:43When they conquered one city, they would round up all the able-bodied people from that city
19:47and march them to the next one, and then force them to run against the walls of the city they're
19:54attacking.
19:55And the defenders will then shoot them down with arrows and crossbows and catapults.
20:01But by the time that all these people have been killed, they've run out of ammunition,
20:06which put the Mongols in and their actual siege troops to take the city as a whole.
20:12But even in the chaos and violence of a Mongol siege, it's hard to imagine their leader
20:17could have been caught in the crossfire.
20:23What if Genghis Khan was wearing armour?
20:26Surely he would have been protected.
20:28He had the option to be protected.
20:30He's unlikely to have bothered to protect his knees.
20:33It would not surprise me that he went to the front lines unarmoured.
20:37It would surprise me that he didn't have chest armour on riding into battle.
20:42But I think inspecting the troops, possibly at dusk, going forward, no, he wouldn't feel
20:47vulnerable.
20:48Very easily got by an enemy sniper.
20:51Now the kind of arrowhead they might have used would be something like this, this sort
20:56of lozenge shape.
20:59You'll see it has, that one's not too sharp.
21:01It's going to hurt though.
21:03It's going to hurt.
21:04It could get through leather, because the idea of it is that it cuts.
21:08So you can see how easy these are to sharpen.
21:14Obviously most of the armour is leather armour, so a cutting edge is ideal for a leather armour.
21:22If you hold that, and let's...
21:25Ooh, yeah, look at that.
21:27You know, that has punched through...
21:28That's more effective, look at that!
21:30...really quite effectively.
21:32And shot from a powerful bow, a really powerful bow, something that's got something like 140,
21:38160 pounds draw weight, that would punch so hard, you've got a flying razor blade that
21:46could go through leather armour.
21:47Well, so you're saying it's a plausible place to be struck by an arrow, but presumably therefore
21:54not hitting any vital internal organs, so how could it possibly lead to his death?
21:59The Mongols, the Tanguts, the Shih, all used poison arrows.
22:05It's widespread in those cultures.
22:07And this is a perfect surface to smear some poison.
22:12Aconite is the most likely type of poison.
22:16It's what we call wolf's bane or monk's hood.
22:19It paralyzes you.
22:20It will kill you in the right dose.
22:22This will introduce it into the bloodstream.
22:25So I think a poison arrow in the knee, that could do it.
22:34A poison arrow is a compelling possibility.
22:37But there's no mention of poison in Marco Polo's account, or in any other source.
22:43And that leaves me wondering whether there's a less exotic, but equally deadly explanation.
22:50Could an arrow to the knee have caused the hot flesh described in the secret history?
22:59Forensic pathologist Dr. Richard Shepherd is using 3D technology to peer inside the body and assess the impact of such an injury.
23:08In sanitary conditions of any battlefield with horse manure and blood and mud around you is the possibility of infection.
23:21That wouldn't kill you immediately, but the spread of infection into the joint space, into the knee, leading to a septic arthritis, would have resulted in the pre-antibiotic era in a very slow and painful death.
23:36But other than that one brief reference to fever, there's no mention in any account of Chinggis Khan suffering a prolonged illness before his death.
23:48Could there be another way for an injury to the knee to prove fatal?
23:55The anatomy of the knee is really quite complicated.
24:00Around the knee is the ligaments that support it, there's the patella at the front, there's the tibia at the bottom, and the femur at the top.
24:12But crucially, around the back of the knee is this major blood vessel called the popliteal artery.
24:19And the popliteal artery carries a huge amount of blood, and so damage to that by the arrowhead, or the arrow would have caused immediate torrential hemorrhage.
24:31The pathology proves it is possible Chinggis Khan died from an arrow wound, whether from loss of blood at the time, or infection sometime later.
24:43And my short and less than brilliant career as an archer tells me an arrow had the power to penetrate Mongol armour, and mortally injure their leader.
24:53But the textual evidence is less convincing.
24:58It really depends on whether you actually believe in the Marco Polo story or not.
25:05Some say it is fabrication, some say he probably never actually visited.
25:12But the real question is whether we should really take his words, which is not reliable, which is not authenticated, as something solid, as a piece of evidence.
25:24So I don't know what we should make of it.
25:29I do know Marco Polo was a storyteller, not a historian.
25:35His rambling account blends fact with fiction, placing real historical characters alongside giants and dog-headed men.
25:46So it wouldn't surprise me if Marco Polo confused or conflated events.
25:52Chinggis Khan did suffer from an arrow wound in 1212, but that's 15 years before his death.
25:58So it seems likely that he is in some way reflecting that information, although it seems unlikely that was what killed him.
26:07Chinggis Khan spent so much time on the battlefield that at first glance, an arrow wound seems like a likely cause of death.
26:15But the only source that records it is Marco Polo, and he is writing a century later.
26:20It's not in the Mongol sources at all.
26:24Then there's the timing.
26:26The sources all agree Chinggis Khan died in 1227, but the only other record of him being shot by an arrow is more than 10 years earlier.
26:36But there is another theory that might explain his death.
26:41And it's far more sensational and far more intimate.
26:45I think we need to get off the battlefield and into the bedroom.
26:56Chinggis Khan ruled over the largest land empire the world has ever seen.
27:10In the process, he razed cities, wiped out entire civilizations, and killed as many as 60 million people.
27:18So there can be no doubt that the Mongol overlord had more than a few enemies.
27:23And it is those enemies that are behind the most dramatic scenario so far in our investigation into the cause of Chinggis Khan's death.
27:32Murder that happened not on the battlefield, but in the bedroom.
27:39In 1227, Chinggis Khan was fighting against a rival dynasty, the Western Xia, in what is now Northwest China.
27:49He could, as Marco Polo suggests, have been killed in battle.
27:54But there is another account in which he was victorious only for disaster to then strike.
28:02The precious summary is a book written by a direct descendant of Chinggis Khan.
28:10The book records how Chinggis Khan captured and killed the Western Xia king.
28:15And before his death, the king told Chinggis Khan,
28:20If you take my wife as your concubine, that's fine, but you need to be careful.
28:26She was captured.
28:28They went to bed.
28:30And then they said that she harmed Chinggis Khan's body.
28:33And he felt sick.
28:36And then thereafter, he died.
28:39Murder in the bedroom at the hands of a vengeful widow seems like something straight out of a soap opera.
28:46But it's also rather cryptic.
28:49It doesn't tell me how Chinggis Khan was killed.
28:52So with historian Dr Jonathan Dugdale, I'm visiting Cambridge University.
28:58Jonathan, I am very excited about this.
29:03He's offered to show me an original manuscript of the precious summary.
29:08So this is the Erdineen Tautj, the precious summary.
29:14And it's a 17th century Mongol text.
29:17It's like a foundation myth for the Mongolian people.
29:20And it tells the story of them through the lens of Buddhist cosmology and the life of Chinggis Khan.
29:27And what does it have to say about Chinggis Khan's death?
29:33Well, it has a very interesting story about Chinggis Khan's death.
29:36It's a very euphemistic story.
29:39During the campaign, Chinggis Khan is sieging the city of Lingzhang.
29:45And what eventually happens is he kills the final emperor and takes his wife as a prize of war.
29:53His wife is called Go Belch.
29:55And in the words of the text,
29:57When they went to bed, she harmed his golden body, which caused his sickness.
30:03A lot of people have read it as she castrated him.
30:08Castration would have been horribly painful and traumatic, but would it have been deadly?
30:21By using 3D anatomy technology, Dr Richard Shepard can assess the potential impact of castration.
30:31This is certainly not an injury for the faint-hearted.
30:35And as any man would admit, it's not high up on the list of the ways they would choose to die.
30:41It's one of the rarer injuries I've ever seen.
30:44And it's seldom fatal on its own.
30:48The removal of the genitalia with a sharp knife on someone staying still is not difficult.
30:54But if the person is fighting or struggling, other injuries can be performed.
30:59And they may be far more serious than the removal of the genitalia themselves.
31:04Mainly because next to the genitalia are major blood vessels.
31:10The femoral artery and the femoral vein.
31:13And damage to either of those blood vessels causes torrential hemorrhage
31:18that is likely to lead to death very quickly indeed.
31:24Genghis Khan could have been killed by castration and its side effects.
31:28But was he?
31:31So tell me about this as a source.
31:34How reliable was this?
31:36What are the circumstances in which it was produced?
31:38So the precious summary was written by a Mongolian scholar called Sagan Seten in the 17th century.
31:47So it's produced 400 years after Genghis Khan's death?
31:52Yes.
31:53How trustworthy is it then?
31:55Well, the source is based on an earlier text called the Golden Summary.
32:01But what's interesting is in the Golden Summary, the section about Genghis Khan's death is almost verbatim the same as the precious summary.
32:12Except for the fact it doesn't mention that it was Genghis Khan who harmed Genghis Khan.
32:21It just says he died.
32:24So the crucial line is missing?
32:26The crucial line is missing from the original source, yeah.
32:32Well that seems very important.
32:33So what, is there any reason why a line like that would have been added?
32:39Does it discredit Genghis Khan in some way?
32:41I mean it feels a bit degrading.
32:44Certainly from our perspective, it seems like the idea of castration and being bested by a woman would be emasculating for...
32:54I mean literally in this case.
32:56Quite literally.
32:57But if we think about it in the context of the time, neither of those things would have been viewed in the same way.
33:04So if we start by talking about castration, great start to a conversation.
33:09If we start by talking about castration, in Chinese history the court was often largely run by eunuchs.
33:16So it wasn't kind of counter to masculinity as it were.
33:21So power, military skill, political acumen, turns out testosterone not necessary.
33:26Exactly, yeah.
33:28It wasn't seen as a necessary part.
33:30And I mean, in terms of his virility, that was already well proven.
33:35Chinggis Khan had many sons already by this stage.
33:38He doesn't lose anything in terms of his masculinity in the act of castration.
33:44And what about this idea about being bested by a woman?
33:47You said that's not problematic either.
33:49Not necessarily.
33:50There's a huge number of examples of Mongolian women who were politicians, warriors.
33:57So if we have the sense then that it's not at all humiliating that Chinggis Khan had this end, does it actually contribute something?
34:06I think this may be one of those things where it's a good story.
34:10And in the vacuum of solid evidence of how he died, it's often the good stories that come to the fore.
34:19So I don't think I'm reading between the lines too much to conclude that you don't think it's actually what happened.
34:26When you think of someone who has the history that Chinggis Khan has, him dying of sickness, a heart attack, falling off his horse, whatever the story is, it doesn't have perhaps the glamour of the life that he led.
34:41And so you need to add an ending that matched the life that has been lived?
34:46Yeah, I think so, yeah.
34:50The murder story simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
34:53It's based on just one account written 400 years after Chinggis Khan's death.
34:59And this makes no mention of castration just harm.
35:04It seems to me the castration theory is fantasy rather than historical fact.
35:11So I'm ruling out an assassin and turning my attention to a very different suspect.
35:17In my investigation into Chinggis Khan's death, so far, I've learned that a fatal injury on a hundred years ago,
35:46a fatal injury on a hunt, in battle or at the hands of an assassin was scientifically possible, but historically hard to substantiate.
35:55So what if there's something that's not in the historical accounts?
35:59Something that only modern science could possibly reveal?
36:02For writers describing the death of Chinggis Khan, it must have been very tempting to present it as an epic showdown surrounded by the bodies of the fallen,
36:15or perhaps a spiritual event.
36:17But actually, for many rulers in this era, disease is by far the most likely cause of death.
36:23The Mongol Empire spread enormous distances across the steppe and beyond, and it came across hugely different kinds of people that it incorporated into its empire.
36:38And along with that kind of incorporation came the spread of diseases and illnesses.
36:43We have various sources that describe him as dying from illness or disease.
36:50Rashid al-Din in his world history describes illnesses being Chinggis Khan's cause of death.
36:55Some other Middle Eastern sources also suggest that that was the reason for his death as well.
36:59In my research, I've discovered there is one disease that's repeatedly linked to the Mongols, the plague, or as it was known in the Middle Ages, the Black Death.
37:13One of the key phenomena associated with the Mongol Empire and its enormous geographical scope across so much of Eurasia is the Mongols' role in spreading the Black Death.
37:23Inadvertently, it has to be said, but several historians have made a case for saying,
37:29well, perhaps the movement of Mongol merchants and messengers and armies across the continent,
37:35maybe that played a role in the spread of the Black Death.
37:42To find out more about this possible link between the Mongols and the plague,
37:46and its implications for the death of Chinggis Khan,
37:49I've invited medical historian Kevin Goodman to the Investigation Hub.
37:57When we talk about the plague, what are the symptoms?
38:01What does it feel like to experience it?
38:04You begin to get feverish, and then you begin to feel the pain.
38:09You begin to feel a really, really painful swelling, mobbing your neck, mobbing your groin.
38:15And these are agonies.
38:18You're on the bed or in the floor in agony.
38:21And these are getting bigger and bigger. You cannot touch them.
38:24You're becoming delirious.
38:26There is no way you can get any respite.
38:29And it gets worse and worse.
38:31This is a really undignified, horrible death.
38:35And what's the lethality rate of the plague?
38:38What proportion of people who get it will die?
38:41Well, we do know that in the 14th century, one third of the population of Europe were killed.
38:48That's huge. One third of the population.
38:51That's massive.
38:53But what exactly was the plague?
38:56And how might it have infected Chinggis Khan?
38:58Bubonic plague is caused by a specific bacterium called Yersinia pestis.
39:06And Yersinia pestis really likes travelling through the lymphatic system of the body.
39:12We have arteries and veins carrying the blood to and from the heart.
39:16But we have this third system, the lymphatic system, which drains the lymph, the fluid that helps fight infection.
39:22And that goes everywhere in the body.
39:25And as it spreads throughout the body, it forms these little nodules or sort of stations where the body can fight infections.
39:34These nodules are everywhere called lymph nodes.
39:37In bubonic plague, though, these get bigger and bigger and bigger to form great big lumps in the neck and in the groin all over the body called buboes.
39:47Hence the name of the disease bubonic plague.
39:52Bubonic plague is a disease that's carried on rats and fleas and it can be transmitted to humans or animals.
40:00Nowadays, there are still outbreaks of plague around the world.
40:04And these are usually treated successfully with antibiotics.
40:08But in Khan's day, of course, there were no antibiotics.
40:12The mortality of the bubonic plague was high.
40:16And if he caught it, there was a very, very high chance that he would have died.
40:23It seems that even the mighty Khan may not have been able to escape a disease as devastating as plague.
40:30But when and where might he have been infected?
40:34You've got to imagine the context, really, that someone like Genghis Khan, his empire, in its main centres, comprise of huge wagon cities.
40:46We're talking about thousands of wagons.
40:47In the centre of these huge wagon cities, you've got these massive great tents.
40:56These tents will be able to accommodate thousands of people.
40:59And then beyond that, millions of horses, sheep and other animals, which form part of the Mongols' house.
41:09So, Kevin, is there any sense that this great moving city of the Mongols would have been a place in which plague and other diseases would have festered?
41:19Where there are large numbers of humans, you're going to find rodents, rats, mice.
41:28They're drawn to humans.
41:30And if we think of this massive, moving city, carrying their own supplies, no rodent in its right mind is going to turn that down.
41:42It's going to be a magnet.
41:43So, the situation in which Genghis Khan was living was one that made him particularly susceptible to this kind of contagious disease?
41:53Yeah.
41:54He's in his mid-sixties.
41:55He may have been injured before.
41:57We don't know.
41:58Immune system may have been impaired.
42:00We don't know.
42:01If he's living in circumstances where there may be rodents that have been carrying Yersinia pestis,
42:08they've had fleas feed on them, and then those fleas go into people,
42:13and then you've got body lice also feed on those people, and you've got the spread of body lice and fleas.
42:19Yeah, he's at risk.
42:22But how real was that risk?
42:25According to my research, the first official reports of the Black Death appear in Sicily in 1347.
42:33That's over 4,000 miles from Genghis Khan's last campaign, and more importantly, it's over 100 years after his death.
42:44The bubonic plague really becomes obvious from about 1340 onwards.
42:48That's 110, 15 years after Genghis Khan's death.
42:52But historians are increasingly using bioarchaeological methods to establish whether the Black Death was around a lot earlier than has been claimed previously.
43:03The analysis of the DNA that has been found in skeletons from the 14th century that revealed the plague,
43:12I found that it's very similar to the plague DNA in marmots, which are indigenous rodent species in Mongolia.
43:22OK, so this is exciting new research.
43:25It is.
43:26Because suddenly now we've got new technology that's starting to reveal the pattern of disease in the past.
43:32Yeah.
43:34This research traces the bubonic plague from Europe back to Genghis Khan's territory.
43:40Which strongly suggests that this is where the Black Death originated.
43:52But how can we reach the conclusion that this is what caused him to die?
43:57Recent research has suggested there may have been an outbreak of a serious disease, illness, that caused a lot of deaths in China in 1220s, 1230s, around the same time Genghis dies.
44:16Also, in the Islamic countries that border the Mongolian area, there were reports of people having headaches, fevers, pains in their armpits, which is synonymous with plague.
44:33In other words, we can perhaps infer that this is something that is around because we've got evidence of it all around Mongolian Empire.
44:44So, in the end, do you think we can say with any probability that Genghis Khan died of this disease?
44:52As we become more familiar with the analysing of DNA, we may find skeletons that date from that period.
44:59And then we can really gather more information.
45:04So, it makes it probable that it's not a smoking gun?
45:08We may find we may be wrong.
45:10That's always a possibility.
45:12But I think what it's revealed is so exciting.
45:19Future DNA discoveries may push back the origin of plague to before Genghis Khan's death in 1227.
45:26But right now, the dates don't quite add up.
45:29But right now, the dates don't quite add up.
45:31So, what really killed Genghis Khan? Was it his battle wounds? Was it illness? Was it a fall from his horse? Or was it very painful or something?
45:37SINCE
45:52So, what really killed Genghis Khan? Was it his battle wounds? Was it illness? Was it a fall from his horse? Or was it a very painful assassination?
46:01assassination. I think I've found enough evidence to rule out murder and not enough to include
46:09plague, which leaves an injury, possibly followed by infection, caused either by a fall from a horse
46:16or an enemy arrow. If I had to choose, I'd say a fall from a horse is the least problematic
46:23conclusion, a simple end that's somehow fitting for a man who lived his life in the saddle.
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