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00:00Tonight, Genghis Khan, a legendary ancient ruler who amassed unimaginable wealth.
00:09His riches would be worth in the neighborhood of $120 trillion today.
00:13The influence of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire is still felt across Asia and beyond.
00:19But the fate of his treasure remains a mystery.
00:22He absolutely wanted to keep his enemies guessing,
00:25so he probably engaged in substantial amounts of deception regarding his fortune.
00:31Great leaders like Khan were known to be buried with their treasure.
00:34But 800 years later, neither his tomb nor his supposed hoard have been found.
00:40Was he buried with his treasure? Is it scattered across Asia? Or could it be both?
00:45There's also a curse. Anybody who disturbs his tomb will actually cause the end of the world.
00:53Now, we'll explore the top theories around exactly where Genghis Khan's buried treasure might be.
01:00The Kenti Mountains, a rugged and remote region in the most sparsely populated nation on the planet, Mongolia.
01:24But turn the clock back 800 years, and it's the heart of an empire that covers one-fifth of all land on Earth.
01:34And it's ruled by one man, Genghis Khan.
01:38Historians have often struggled to put the sheer size of Genghis's empire into some kind of comprehensible scale.
01:44At its height under his rule, it was well over 9 million square miles.
01:48It stretched from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
01:51He conquered civilization after civilization.
01:54Civilizations that have stood, in many cases, for thousands of years on their own.
01:58And now this group of pastoral nomads are coming out of essentially no man's land in the central steppes of Mongolia
02:03and winning nothing but victory after victory.
02:06Although a lot of times he's referred to as Genghis Khan, we believe it's probably more accurate to refer to him as Genghis Khan.
02:15But for a lot of people, especially in the West, when you hear the name Genghis Khan, you think about brutality,
02:20you think about this kind of cruel, almost barbaric ruler.
02:23But that's really one small part of the story.
02:26He rules, actually, with a ton of tolerance.
02:28In a lot of ways, he's a lot more progressive than his European contemporaries.
02:31He understands that allowing the people that he's ruling to continue their customs, their religious practices,
02:38is probably what's best for his empire.
02:41In a lot of ways, his rule sets the stage for the modern world.
02:46Genghis Khan builds his empire from practically nothing.
02:50The man we think of as Genghis Khan was born Temujin in the late 12th century.
02:56And his father was fairly prominent within their tribe.
02:59However, when Temujin is about 10 years old, his father is murdered by a rival tribe.
03:05And when that happens, all of the standing of his family essentially declines within the tribe.
03:12To be fatherless in one of the Mongol tribes is really a huge liability.
03:16His entire family is cast out.
03:18They're essentially homeless, wandering the steps, hunting for their own food, rodents, or whatever other animal they could find.
03:24At one point, there's a dispute within the family over the distribution of food.
03:29Temujin actually murders his half-brother to end the dispute.
03:33And that tells us something about his ruthlessness, even as a young boy.
03:37So, as Temujin grows into his adulthood, he's able to gain some followers.
03:46He establishes this meritocracy.
03:48So, basically, if you are the strongest soldier, if you're the best fighter, the best provider, then you're going to have a place in Temujin's tribe.
03:55And this really makes people want to join him and follow him.
03:57He starts to develop a reputation for being both ruthless and crafty.
04:05And it seems, in hindsight, that Temujin was probably plotting his revenge against the tribe that murdered his father all along.
04:13And here is where we see the ruthlessness of what Temujin brings to the fight.
04:17Because he does take an awful revenge for the death of his father, he orders the murder of every member of the tribe taller than a cart accident.
04:28In other words, only small children were spared.
04:31Everybody else was killed.
04:35This area of the world was characterized by groups of nomadic tribes.
04:40There is no sense of social cohesion like we would think of today, living in communities together.
04:48So, because they are tribal, there tends to be a lot of conflict.
04:51And it is that sort of situation that almost requires someone who could step in and unify.
05:00And that's what Temujin does.
05:03An assembly of Mongol tribesmen proclaims Temujin their new leader and gives him a new name.
05:09Genghis Khan, which means universal ruler.
05:13He decides to expand the territories he rules.
05:19Genghis builds an empire within a generation.
05:23When you think about this is 25 years, how can you even draw a parallel with the Roman Empire, which is built over 400 years?
05:33If you resist Genghis Khan, it's probably not going to end very well for you.
05:37A lot of times, there are very few people left in a village to survive.
05:41Often, he'll only allow a few people to survive to go and tell the other villages, the other tribes, about his cruelty, and then hopefully surrender in advance.
05:49The Mongols understand intrinsically that it's inherently better to actually convince the enemy to surrender and collaborate than it is to have to slaughter them or wear them down through an attrition approach to war.
06:04So, on the one hand, he needs to be a fairly generous conqueror.
06:08When he conquers you, he offers to let you join his society under very specific rules.
06:14In addition to the territorial expansion that goes on as a result of his conquest, he's also acquiring treasure.
06:26And treasure not just in the sense that we might think of coins and jewels.
06:31He's also amassing a treasure of people, of livestock, of land.
06:37At the height of his empire, Genghis Khan amassed a fortune estimated to be worth over $120 trillion in today's money.
06:47When it comes to the spoils of war, whether it was forcibly taken from a city or given voluntarily through tribute, the possibilities are quite literally endless.
06:58Any kind of treasure made of anything from jade to porcelain to ivory to gold to silver.
07:04And so it's fair to think that all of these treasures, ranging from the Far East to the edge of Europe, may have made their way back to the heart of their empire.
07:12Genghis Khan establishes his own new currency system, which is based on silver coins.
07:17We also have some evidence that him and his successors were some of the first to use paper money, which is really interesting.
07:23So we have to imagine that there was a lot of gold and silver and just precious metals floating around the empire as well.
07:30But all of Genghis Khan's riches can't save him from a mysterious death.
07:36We're not sure exactly how Genghis Khan died, but we do know when and where he died.
07:41Genghis Khan, which is August 18th of 1227, somewhere in what's today northwestern China.
07:47There are a lot of stories about how he died.
07:48He was almost 70 years old at the time, so that might have been one of the main causes.
07:53But some stories say that he took an arrow and he fell off his horse and suffered an injury.
07:58There are others who say he might have died of some disease like the bubonic plague.
08:01There's even a story that a conquered princess might have injured his genitalia leading to his death.
08:07But a lot of these sound kind of legendary, befitting Genghis Khan, but we'll never exactly know what happened.
08:16The Mongols have some very interesting beliefs about death and burial.
08:21In particular, they believe that you really can take it with you.
08:25You require wealth and riches in the afterlife.
08:28And so it is entirely plausible that Genghis Khan was buried with a substantial amount of treasure.
08:35So most experts believe that if you can find the burial site of Genghis Khan, you are going to find a great cache of treasure.
08:43Genghis Khan made sure that it would be incredibly difficult to find his tomb.
08:54So even to this day, we really don't know exactly where he was buried.
08:57He wanted it to be kept a secret.
09:00There's a lot of legends and stories around how this happened.
09:04One of which suggests that almost no one was trusted with the actual burial location.
09:09The troops that were detailed to create the tomb and place Genghis Khan within it were ordered to kill anyone they met on the route to the tomb
09:19and were then themselves killed in turn by a separate unit.
09:24That separate unit was killed by a third unit, thus continually breaking the chain of information and evidence as to where the tomb might be located.
09:34One of the oldest clues pointing to a potential location of the tomb comes from a young explorer employed by the Mongol Empire about 50 years after Genghis Khan's death, Marco Polo.
09:49Marco Polo served as an emissary at the court of Kubla Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson.
09:54He reports that what he's hearing at the court of Kubla Khan is that the great Genghis Khan is buried in the Kinti Mountain region.
10:03In a specific mountain, which he does not name, the challenge is that we're talking about an area that is thousands of square miles.
10:11After the fall of the Mongol Empire in 1368, the ruling powers of Mongolia change hands several times.
10:21Then in the 1920s, the northern region known as Outer Mongolia joins the newly formed Soviet Union.
10:28After World War II, the southern region known as Inner Mongolia becomes part of China, where it remains today.
10:35For the next few centuries, whoever is in charge of this mountain range is going to make it really difficult to go in and explore.
10:43Even once Mongolia becomes a puppet state of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the Soviets also want to keep this area off limits.
10:51There is the added dramatic element here that there's a curse associated with his burial.
11:01Anyone who opens the grave of the great Genghis Khan doesn't just doom their own life.
11:07They bring about the end of the world.
11:12It's not really until the Iron Curtain falls that we get to have some exploration of this region of the Kinti Mountains.
11:18So starting in 1989, people come and start exploring the region, looking for his tomb.
11:23During this time, a wealthy Chicago commodities trader named Maury Kravitz grows obsessed with finding Genghis Khan's tomb.
11:33He identifies multiple locations in the Kinti Mountains that he believes might hold the remains of the great Khan.
11:41In the summer of 2000, he's ready to begin.
11:43Almost from the beginning, the Kravitz expedition is all but doomed.
11:48His horse has become exhausted when they're only halfway to the elevation of the intended site.
11:53They have to be taken the rest of the way by helicopter.
11:56But they do eventually discover some really interesting sites.
12:00About 150 tombs, but none of them are Genghis Khan's.
12:03So on his second excursion in 2001, they meet a local herdsman who tells him about this walled structure on one side of a mountain that's signifying some place of importance.
12:15As they crest the rise on their climb, they discover a wall stretching two miles in distance, reaching heights as high as 12 feet high, surrounding a mysterious complex.
12:27In 2002, the Mongolian government gives Kravitz's team permission to dig.
12:33Then trouble hits basically at every step of the way.
12:39Several of Kravitz's team are bitten by pit vipers, which can be deadly.
12:43They have to be medevaced out.
12:45At one point, one of their cars rolls off the side of a mountain, and surprisingly, no one is hurt.
12:51There's also an outbreak of anthrax among some of the animals.
12:54So at that point, the Mongolian government decides to shut it down.
12:59Kravitz is unable to resume the expedition and dies in 2012.
13:04There has been no return to that site to explore since.
13:09But whenever you're talking about 800-year-old loot involving a great Mongol emperor,
13:14there'll be treasure hunters from all over the world who are going to seek this site.
13:17Genghis Khan's riches may have been buried with him, according to Mongolian beliefs.
13:25But his tomb has eluded discovery for nearly 800 years.
13:29After Genghis Khan's death in 1227, there's a special work commissioned called The Secret History of the Mongols
13:36that chronicles his life and that of his court.
13:41This was never a text that was meant for public consumption.
13:43This is something that was written for the private use of those closest to the emperor.
13:49This document was lost for centuries.
13:53It was originally written in a Mongol dialect.
13:57But eventually, since the Mongols later conquer China, it gets translated into Chinese,
14:04and it is rediscovered in the 1800s in a Chinese version, which we've been able now to read.
14:11So, according to the secret history of the Mongols, Genghis Khan is buried in a sacred mountain in the Kinti Mountain Range,
14:21one of the highest mountain there, some 8,000 feet, called Burkhan Khaldun.
14:26And this is also the place where he was born.
14:29Burkhan Khaldun actually translates to God Mountain.
14:38So, it's a very sacred site to begin with in Mongolian thinking.
14:42It was a site that was very, very special to Genghis Khan himself.
14:45It was a site where early in his life, he had escaped to find refuge during a battle that had gone south on him.
14:51He kind of felt this life debt to the mountain itself.
14:53And it was this place where he had returned too often.
14:57In fact, there's one account found in the secret history of the Mongols,
15:00which says that one day he was out on the plains there at the foot of the Burkhan Khaldun Mountain,
15:05and there was a solitary tree growing there, and that he sat beneath its shade.
15:08And while sitting there, he came to the realization that this was where he wanted to be buried.
15:13If Genghis Khan's wish was honored, then it's very possible that not only is he buried there on Burkhan Khaldun,
15:19but some of the treasure could be as well.
15:21In 2009, Albert Lin, an American explorer, decides he's going to take a more modern approach to searching for Genghis Khan's tomb.
15:29Using drones and satellites, Lin and his team collect over 85,000 aerial images of the Kente Mountains.
15:37It's a very large area.
15:39He has 85,000 images.
15:41So he can't do all this himself, but in our modern age, he decides that he could bring in more people through the Internet in a form of crowdsourcing.
15:52Now, these people don't necessarily have to be experts.
15:54They just have to look for things that seem unusual, that doesn't look natural there.
16:00And he creates an algorithm for all of the hits that people identify there.
16:05And in narrowing these down, one spot in particular, on the slopes of the Burkhan Khaldun, there seems to be a large, man-made, structural remains there.
16:17The only problem for Lin is that this site is right in the middle of an area known as the Great Taboo or the Forbidden Zone.
16:28Almost as soon as Genghis Khan is gone, this area becomes off-limits to everyone except for the Mongol elites.
16:35In fact, it's even said that it's guarded by a shaman tribe of Mongols known as the Darkhans who protect the area.
16:44This goes hand in hand with this notion of there being a curse for anybody who disturbs the tomb.
16:53This great taboo continues even during the Soviet rule of Mongolia.
16:58The Soviets don't want anyone getting hold of Genghis Khan, his tomb, any of his treasures that could be used to spark Mongol nationalism.
17:06It's not until the 2010s that the Mongolian government finally allows some in-person research there.
17:11In 2012, Dr. Lin and his team are allowed to examine the site of the stone structure in person.
17:20They're able to do preliminary digging, and they do find things like arrowheads and ceramic pottery shards,
17:26which they are then able to actually date to the 1200s when Genghis Khan would have lived.
17:31But unfortunately, the Mongolian government hasn't granted them permission to go back and follow up on that dig.
17:37So that mysterious stone structure remains something of a mystery to us.
17:44But Lin is not the only one who's interested in this site.
17:46In 2015, there's a team of French researchers who use a drone and identify a site on the side of a mountain at Burkhan Khaldun.
17:55It appears to be an ancient mound surrounded by stones.
17:59So this is intriguing because it has all the features of being a potential burial site.
18:07The challenge is that these French researchers didn't receive the proper approvals of the Mongolian government.
18:13So the investigation is shut down.
18:18Although Burkhan Khaldun seems like the most likely spot for Genghis Khan's tomb,
18:25there are still other possibilities.
18:28And in fact, maybe people are working backwards.
18:30We shouldn't think about the tomb first.
18:33Maybe we got to go to Genghis Khan's death and start working from there.
18:432016, Yin Chuan, China.
18:45American explorer Alan Nichols leads an expedition he believes will finally end the mystery of Genghis Khan's tomb and treasure.
18:55Alan Nichols is an attorney and an explorer who has made himself into somewhat of an expert on sacred mountains.
19:00So Nichols' idea is to start with the last information that we know is true about Genghis Khan,
19:05which is when and where he died, and work backwards from there.
19:11Nichols instead essentially looks at a map and he says,
19:14well, we know where Genghis Khan died and we know that was Chinese territory.
19:20We're relatively certain that the Mongols would not have buried him there.
19:24However, we also know that the Mongols believed that burial needed to occur immediately after death.
19:31And as such, they probably would have taken the most direct route out of Chinese territory
19:36and buried the great Khan as soon as it was culturally permissive to do so.
19:42According to Nichols, there's another reason why the Khan would not be buried where historical accounts indicate.
19:49It's quite possible that there's false information, deception in these sources,
19:55like the secret history of the Mongols, because we know that Genghis Khan himself was a master of deception.
20:00He used deception frequently in his military tactics.
20:05Besides the feigned retreats and then turning on enemies,
20:08we also know that he would do things to make the enemy think that his force was much greater in size than it was.
20:15For example, having his cavalry drag branches and wood behind them to kick up dust to make it seem like they had a huge force.
20:25So it was common for him to use deception like this.
20:29And so why not to see people about where he's buried?
20:35There is a belief in shamanism that as soon as you die,
20:40your physical remains can be invaded by evil spirits.
20:43Because he represents the identity of the Mongolian people,
20:48there would be a special attention made to an immediate burial for him to prohibit that from happening.
20:54Nichols believes that Genghis Khan's army does not go the distance to take him back home,
21:01but instead goes to the closest place that is just over the boundary of what is Mongol land.
21:08In 2016, Nichols claims to have found Genghis Khan's likely burial location in northwest China,
21:27which he refers to only as Mountain X.
21:30You do know that this so-called Mountain X,
21:34it's in a very modern Chinese city, Yinshuan.
21:37And in addition to ruins of earlier things, there's also modern structures.
21:44Unfortunately, he won't tell us what that mountain is.
21:48He just calls it Mountain X.
21:50He doesn't want anybody else to go in there and excavate it
21:54and beat him to the punch and get all the glory.
21:57Applying for permission to dig in such an area is going to require permissions of the government,
22:06so we have the challenge of requesting permission to explore a site
22:11that we are simultaneously unwilling to reveal.
22:16Finding Genghis Khan's tomb has been an obsession of archaeologists and explorers for hundreds of years.
22:31But for those focused on locating the treasure, his tomb may not be the only answer.
22:37Not all of his treasure might be in his tomb.
22:42After all, the Mongol Empire continued.
22:45In fact, did it continue to expand even after Genghis Khan under his successors?
22:50And they would have had to have some wealth to continue on the empire.
22:53So surely, his successors would have retained some, if not most, of that wealth.
23:02We don't have an exact number for how many children Genghis Khan produced,
23:05but we're fairly certain that it's well over a thousand.
23:08There is a 2003 DNA study conducted that suggests that 16 million men on Earth
23:16may have a direct genetic heritage that can be drawn from Genghis Khan.
23:21However, in his lifetime, he only publicly acknowledged four sons,
23:27and he determines that a third of those sons, Ogaday, will be his chosen successor.
23:32When Genghis Khan dies in 1227, he leaves his vast Mongol Empire to his third son, Ogaday Khan.
23:44The new emperor, much like his father, conquers people and territory with terrifying efficiency.
23:51He expands the empire west all the way to modern-day Poland.
23:55But it's Ogaday's transformation of the Mongolian capital that may hold clues to his father's missing riches.
24:04The capital of the Mongol Empire was Karakorum, which is located on the famous Silk Road.
24:10It is the nexus of the east-west trading route.
24:13So Genghis Khan established this capital really as a base of operations from which his armies would go out.
24:19At his time, it was not much more than a collection of yurts.
24:21But this is going to dramatically transform under the reign of his son.
24:27Ogaday, unlike Genghis, doesn't really see himself as a nomadic warrior of the steppes.
24:33He's been raised in the environment that's populated by Mongol power and all of these riches.
24:41And so Ogaday is going to start to look for more forms of permanence.
24:45And that's going to include the construction of a massive palace at Karakorum.
24:53What's really interesting about Karakorum is that it's not a village that grows gradually from a village into a town, into a city.
24:59It's essentially like a pop-up city all at once that Ogaday creates.
25:02And it's meant to be sort of the jewel of the Mongol Empire, the place where people from all over can come and visit and essentially be impressed by what they've accomplished.
25:11One of the first things that he does is he brings in all of the conquered, captured, and conscripted craftsmen from across the Eurasian continent.
25:19And collectively, they pour their talents into the construction of this quite glorious capital city.
25:25It was kind of a site of cultural blending unparalleled at that time.
25:30Walking down the street, you would see Buddhist temples next to Islamic mosques, next to Christian churches.
25:36It is designed to overaw anyone that visits it.
25:41When you start to think about how you show off wealth and power, that's what you see embodied in this palace.
25:48And it's where the loot flows back to, because it's important to keep in mind that Ogaday is still conquering.
25:55He's still expanding the empire.
25:57So that's probably where a lot of this treasure was.
26:04We have eyewitness accounts showing all of this opulence.
26:08Everything seems to be covered in gold and silver, ivory and precious gems.
26:13One of the most detailed accounts of the palace is written by a visiting missionary known as William of Rubrook.
26:23William of Rubrook describes these buildings, calling them as long as barns.
26:29He describes these barns as holding treasures.
26:33And if you consider what that means to a European observer, you're talking about a vast, long hallway.
26:43William of Rubrook describes this incredibly opulent silver and gold fountain in the shape of a tree,
26:48where literally the tree branches serve as pipes that can dispense and serve wine, milk, mead.
26:55It's incredible.
26:55Just this fountain alone is a really good indicator that the Mongols have a lot of precious metals on hand.
27:04In regards to the wealth accumulated by the Mongols,
27:07while it's doubtful that all of it was contained in a tomb left for the great Khan himself,
27:12much of it would have been brought into the city of Karakoram.
27:15However, the city of Karakoram is kind of a temporary capital in the history of the Mongol Empire.
27:20By the 1270s, the Mongols have abandoned Karakoram as their capital,
27:25basically because it doesn't really have the resources to support such a large population.
27:30And then later on in 1380, it gets ransacked and destroyed by a marauding Chinese army.
27:35For all intents and purposes, it's no longer a center of imperial power of any type.
27:40It's a relatively small settlement.
27:41But what's left there is destroyed.
27:43200 years after that, in 1586, a large Buddhist monastery is built on the same site.
27:50In the 1940s, Soviet archaeologists claim that they have discovered the ruins of this palace of the Great Khan.
27:57But other experts disagree and believe that what they found was a temple
28:00and that it's possible that the ruins of the palace are actually underneath the monastery itself.
28:05The main problem is that the monastery is still in use today.
28:08They have to get a lot of permission from the Mongolian government to actually dig under the site.
28:12But technological advances in the 2000s make it possible to search Karakoram without extensive digging.
28:21This sparks renewed interest in the hunt for Cengiz Khan's riches.
28:25In 2021, German researchers spent 52 days surveying the site using something called super-sensitive magnetometry.
28:34It's designed to detect voids and pockets beneath the surface of the earth that might identify previously existing structures.
28:41So they were able to discern that this was probably the site of a palace beneath the monastery.
28:49Archaeologists have discovered a lot of really interesting artifacts around Karakoram,
28:55including Muslim silver coins, Chinese pottery, an Egyptian mask, and even a gold bracelet in the shape of a phoenix.
29:02The main problem is that we don't know if these treasures are related to Cengiz Khan's leadership
29:07or they're just more evidence of Karakoram as this bustling center of trade.
29:11The Mongols built great palaces in many locations.
29:17This is not the only one.
29:19If you really want to make sure that you have ruled out every possible location for this treasure,
29:25you've got to go to Xanadu.
29:28Some believe the key to finding Cengiz Khan's riches is to investigate his successor's extravagant palaces.
29:35And none are more impressive than those constructed by the mighty Kublai Khan.
29:40Kublai Khan is Cengiz Khan's grandson.
29:44He's actually going to oversee the Mongol Empire kind of at its height, at its absolute apex.
29:50Kublai Khan is the one that actually kind of wins the war with China once and for all.
29:54He's obsessed with bringing about the final conquest of the southern Chinese cities
29:58that up until the time of his reign had been able to withstand the Mongol assaults.
30:03So one of the things that helped Kublai Khan conquer China is a new kind of catapult.
30:11The Mongols called it the Huiui Pao.
30:14And basically, by having a heavy counterweight,
30:17it can sling a large projectile of some 600 pounds, a good 300 yards to smash through enemy walls of fortified cities.
30:31The Mongols don't just fling stone projectiles or explosives into Chinese cities.
30:37They will also try to poison the water supplies by flinging the carcasses of dead livestock over the walls.
30:44They will also fling the heads of their enemies over the walls.
30:48There's nothing quite like a pile of skulls to serve as a wonderful message
30:53to anyone who might be thinking about resisting your conquest.
30:56With his invasion of China complete, Kublai Khan now controls 20% of all land on Earth.
31:05So Kublai Khan inherits the capital in Karakoram,
31:08but because his focus is on controlling and ruling China,
31:11he wants to build palaces further south, closer where he can keep an eye on the Chinese.
31:17So after he conquers China, Kublai Khan wants to be closer to it rather than staying in Karakoram.
31:24And so he creates this new capital some 200 miles away from Beijing.
31:31There are many experts who believe that Kublai Khan would have wanted to bring Genghis Khan's treasure
31:36along with him to this new capital that he built to showcase all of the Mongol riches.
31:42Kublai Khan names his new capital Shangdu,
31:44but at the same time Marco Polo is working for the empire as an advisor.
31:49And through his accounts, the name becomes somewhat garbled,
31:52and it's why we now know it as Xanadu.
31:54Xanadu is this splendid, wealthy, magnificent place with a couple of palaces, gardens, hunting grounds, streams running through it.
32:11In fact, this is what inspired the famous poem called Kublai Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
32:17which starts off with the famous line,
32:19in Xanadu did Kublai Khan a pleasure dome decree.
32:24Xanadu is in some ways mythological and in some ways entirely real.
32:29It's like a Shangri-La, only we know for sure that it was actually constructed.
32:33Marco Polo claimed to have seen storehouses filled with treasures belonging to the Great Khan,
32:39as well as golden and bronze statues in every room.
32:44Several surviving accounts document the vast treasure held at Xanadu,
32:49but none of them indicate what happened to that treasure.
32:53When Kublai Khan dies in 1294, there's a lot of infighting among the Mongol successors,
32:58there's a lot of Chinese revolts, and things really go south for the Mongols.
33:02And by 1368, about 75 years after Kublai Khan's death, the empire falls.
33:09So by 1430, the city of Xanadu no longer has any real influence.
33:14And as a matter of fact, the great structures themselves begin to be reused
33:18to build domestic dwellings or for other civil purposes.
33:21So the image that we might have of Xanadu is lost to us
33:26because it is incorporated into the next page of history.
33:32There's really no doubt that a lot of the loot conquered by Genghis Khan's armies
33:36continues to amass in the various palaces.
33:40It starts in Karakoram, it winds up next in Xanadu.
33:44That's how empires work.
33:46And as their capital moves, the riches that underpin it move along with them.
33:51And so it really shouldn't come as a surprise that when you go to construct a new palace,
33:55you're probably going to strip the old one of most of its wealth.
33:58You're going to reuse a lot of the same materials.
34:00But the legend of this glittering city lives on.
34:05The legacy of Xanadu lives on partly because of Marco Polo's writing,
34:09partly because of the Coleridge poem.
34:11But it's important to remember that this is not a fictional paradise.
34:14It was a real place.
34:16We know where Xanadu is.
34:18You can Google map it right now with satellite and you can see where it is.
34:23There's still a possibility with further archaeological investigation
34:26that something more can be found there.
34:28It's just a matter of what.
34:32In the 1930s, we know that there are Japanese soldiers that are using metal detection
34:37as a way of exploring Xanadu.
34:40And they came up empty.
34:42But in many ways, that only contributes to the mystique.
34:45We know that we found clay figures, things that would be considered great treasures,
34:51but not the kind of treasure that we're talking about when we say we're looking for the treasure of Genghis Khan.
34:59So with no luck so far in Xanadu, some treasure hunters believe that we should look a little bit further south,
35:05a few hundred miles down the Silk Road, at another place where Kublai Khan held court.
35:09Kublai Khan decides that he needs to move his palace even closer to the centers of power in China.
35:16And so he's going to wind up building an even bigger palace, thus outdoing what his predecessors had done.
35:24Beijing has been a major city in China for over 3,000 years.
35:29But in the late 1200s, it's not the Chinese who control it.
35:33At the time, the city is known as Dadu and is the capital of Kublai Khan's empire.
35:41Kublai Khan really sees himself as both Mongolian and Chinese in a lot of ways.
35:47He's adopted many of the mores of Chinese culture.
35:50And so he's going to move to what we now call Beijing
35:54and build a massive palace there as the center point to administer his far-flung empire.
36:00Everywhere you look, all of the treasure and loot and inordinate wealth of the Mongols
36:06is within this great palace of Kublai Khan.
36:09And this is, of course, Kublai Khan's proudest achievement, the conquest of China.
36:14So if that's going to be his new capital city, he's going to bring his treasury with him.
36:19And that, again, is the inheritance that goes back to Genghis Khan.
36:24In 1271, Kublai Khan builds his most over-the-top palace yet.
36:35In fact, Marco Polo describes this palace as the greatest palace that ever was.
36:40Its walls were covered with gold and silver.
36:44It has a dining hall that could seat some 6,000 people.
36:49And then it had private chambers, according to Marco Polo,
36:53which housed treasures, including gold, silver, gems, and the private property of the great Khan.
37:01But these were off-limits to outsiders, so who knows how much was in these private rooms.
37:07The cult of worship that springs up around Genghis Khan intensifies under the reign of his grandson Kublai Khan.
37:14At one point, Kublai Khan is going to go so far as to construct a giant eight-chambered temple
37:19at the palace there in devotion to Genghis Khan himself.
37:24And this was going to become a site of great ceremonial importance.
37:27In this temple, he's going to stock it with several relics that were associated with Genghis Khan,
37:32along with perhaps jade ornaments and porcelain goods.
37:37This is where Kublai Khan settles down for the remainder of his rule until his death in 1294.
37:42After Kublai Khan, we don't have a clear line of succession.
37:47The Mongol Empire effectively tears itself apart.
37:50Administering this size of an empire over this wide of an area is all but impossible,
37:56unless you have a very charismatic leader, a shared common culture,
38:01and a willingness for the different disparate parts of the empire to remain together.
38:05And that's just really not the case with the Mongols.
38:08Given that this is the primary location of Kublai Khan for over 20 years,
38:14this is a really good potential site for Genghis Khan's treasure.
38:17After the Mongol Empire falls in the late 1300s,
38:25the Chinese retake Dadu and, according to some accounts, burn Mongol palaces to the ground.
38:31They later rename the city Beijing, capital of a new Chinese regime, the Ming Dynasty.
38:38They destroy Kublai Khan's Mongol palace, and they set up a new palace center for themselves called the Forbidden City.
38:50This would be the administrative center for the royal family of the Chinese emperor and his administration,
38:57and it was off-limits to everyone else.
39:00The Mongol period is forgotten.
39:02Those buildings were destroyed.
39:04Who knows what happened to them?
39:06Then, in 2016, archaeologists working in Beijing propose a startling new theory.
39:13Archaeologists examining the Forbidden City find that beneath the palace today are earlier levels.
39:22They find from the more recent Qing period that underneath this, you have the Ming period,
39:28and below that, there is the Mongol period.
39:32So it turns out that the palace of Kublai Khan is probably there.
39:39It's not near there.
39:41It's actually under the Forbidden City today.
39:45It's very possible that if we explore these ruins, that that might be the site of Genghis Khan's lost treasure.
39:50But, like with a lot of these other sites, the Chinese government has been really hesitant to allow digs underneath the Forbidden City.
39:57For one, it's an incredibly important historic site, and it's a very large tourist attraction.
40:01If it's the case that Genghis Khan's treasure is retained by his successors and is brought to Beijing to be in Kublai Khan's palace there,
40:10it's still possible that it's down there today, but unless a way can be found to do less invasive archaeological investigation using modern technologies,
40:25we're in the dark.
40:26We're just going to have to wait until that day comes to figure out what's under there.
40:31The influence of the Mongolian Empire, and specifically Genghis Khan, is still felt around the globe today.
40:40Genghis Khan might very well have been the wealthiest human ever on Earth,
40:44and yet we've found very little evidence of what happened to his wealth.
40:48After 800 years, the lure of Genghis Khan's lost riches is still driving explorers to corners of his vast empire in search of clues.
41:02Archaeologists have uncovered more ancient burial sites in Mongolia,
41:06and a palace in Turkey belonging to one of Genghis Khan's grandsons.
41:11Nothing of great value has been found yet, but treasure hunters can take heart.
41:16There's no shortage of places to search.
41:19I'm Lawrence Fishburne.
41:21Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.
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