Transcript

EP27 More Steppe Stories

From Dan Carlin · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

August 16, 2023 · 1 h 11 min · 11,193 words · 68 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "EP27 More Steppe Stories", an episode of Dan Carlin published August 16, 2023 (1 h 11 min, about 11,193 words). It mentions 17 people, works and ideas, including Mongols, Genghis Khan, Attila, Mongolia, Huns.

What is discussed, and when

0:00 – 10:00: Mongols, DNA testing, Eurasian Step, Kenneth W. Harle
10:00 – 20:00: Eurasian Step, Mongolia, Mongols, Scythians
20:00 – 30:00: Mongols, Genghis Khan, Scythians
30:00 – 40:00: Attila, Genghis Khan
40:00 – 50:00: Mongols, Genghis Khan, Attila, Usbekistan
50:00 – 1:00:00: Mongols, Attila, Genghis Khan, Eurasian Step
1:00:00 – 1:10:00: Mongolia, Usbekistan, Marco Polo, Silk Road

Notable quotes from "EP27 More Steppe Stories"

Interested I am in the many and various peoples and tribes who occupy the area that's known as the Eurasian step now the Eurasian step is a geographical feature and it's not…
about Eurasian Step · at 1:26
And the tribal confederacies it's obvious I mean to use just one how about the Mongols or the Turks or the Huns or the scythians I mean the list just goes on and on the…
about Mongols · at 2:19
Disintegration of the Soviet Union the opening of China in the early 70s the DNA testing that's been happening all these sorts of things has broadened the informational…
about DNA testing · at 3:43
Important finds made in archeology above all you'll have a lot of books concentrating on the Silk Road and the products that were exchanged often these are restricted in time…
about Silk Road · at 6:20
Called the pannonian plain stretches across Southern Russia and Ukraine and crutches all the way to Mongolia and to the foothills of Manchuria now it varies in different parts…
about Mongolia · at 11:36
Maybe fifty thousand it's a an enormous Army and the full Mongol Levy in the time of Genghis Khan at his death in 1227 was probably somewhere around 130 to 150 000 of whom many…
about Genghis Khan · at 20:24
Destroying Roman civilization you know these are overdrawn the Hun armies of Attila comprise many Iranian speakers and dramatic speakers and Attila himself is remembered as a…
about Attila · at 36:41
And you see that in the cities of Iran and transoxiana would be today essentially Uzbekistan and the Mongols were just brutally punish cities that have rebelled especially if…
about Usbekistan · at 49:48

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

Genghis Khan — Person · 9 mentions · first at 20:31
Attila — Person · 8 mentions · first at 36:47
Dan Carlin — Person · 3 mentions
Kenneth W. Harle — Person · 1 mention · first at 4:25
That's recently come out is by a Tulane Professor who's an expert on this subject named Kenneth W harle it's called empires of the steps a history of the nomadic tribes who shaped civilization he is a noted expert on the subject the.
Matthew Parish — Person · 1 mention · first at 50:14
So there no doubt is exaggeration there's all these apocalyptic terms that are used you've got Matthew Parish in England coining the name tarters for the Mongols meaning they…
Marco Polo — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:03:27
So you're you're absolutely correct about this and I also put a great deal of credit to Marco Polo painting that image of Kubla Khan and cafe and his fabulous Palace of Xanadu because the Europeans were just enraptured with this idea and.

Books & papers

Empires of the Steppes — Book · 3 mentions

Concepts & topics

Mongols — Concept · 18 mentions · first at 2:25
Huns — Concept · 4 mentions
Eurasian Step — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 1:33
Scythians — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 2:29
Obvious I mean to use just one how about the Mongols or the Turks or the Huns or the scythians I mean the list just goes on and on the fascinating aspects of language and…
Silk Road — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 6:25
Turks — Concept · 3 mentions
DNA testing — Concept · 1 mention · first at 3:47

Places & events

Mongolia — Place · 5 mentions · first at 11:41
Usbekistan — Place · 3 mentions · first at 49:54
Turkmenistan — Place · 1 mention · first at 1:07:23
Of the current war is difficult to predict turkey has tried to make initiatives in Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Kazakhstan they've sent in Engineers Educators business people to try to forge ties this is going back to appeals to pan.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 would you like to receive an email from us whenever a new show is released well now you can a listener suggested to me a while back that we start a newsletter and we signed up for substack recently to do just that the way sub stack works is you just provide your email it's all free and whenever we have something that we think you would like you'll get an email about it a new show dropping for example is obvious but news updates announcements bonus content what would bonus content be well for example I wrote an article on the sub stack page recently about my thoughts on the Congressional hearings into the UFO phenomenon and by the way you don't have to give us your email address and join the newsletter that's only for the hardcore which is what the listeners long ago labeled themselves but if you just want to treat it like a web page bookmark it check back in periodically you can do that too it's all free

0:55 dancarlin.substack.com we'll get you there we'd love to see you'd love to have a personal relationship where no matter what happens in the world of social media we can still find each other well we can now and my thanks to the listener who suggested that we'd love to see you over on substack dancarlin.substack.com it's hardcore history anyone who has listened to me for any period of time already knows how deeply interested I am in the many and various peoples and tribes who occupy the area that's known as the Eurasian step now the Eurasian step is a geographical feature and it's not the same it changes over the length and breadth of the distances involved because the distances are vast stretching all the way from the edges of Central Europe to the borders of China including places like Manchuria the northern area of India Northern area of Iran I mean it's it's one of these areas that's been a very important part of

2:01 human history and that touches a ton of societies that were in Eurasian history some of the key important places so they've been involved in human history and important events from the get-go basically and if you look at some of the names of the peoples involved the tribes and the tribal confederacies it's obvious I mean to use just one how about the Mongols or the Turks or the Huns or the scythians I mean the list just goes on and on the fascinating aspects of language and ethnicity and all these different things that make up the peoples of the step and of course if you're a military history um interested person or oriented person you can't help but be fascinated with the unique weapon system of the peoples of the step in recorded histories era anyway I mean this mixture of a people that grow up riding horses from the time they're toddling around and using composed powerful composite bows at the

3:06 same time you create a weapon system that won't be solvable for the people uh the enemies of the step people until gunpowder becomes commonplace if you're interested in those sorts of people and their history as I am there are several new books that have come out that are just wonderful additions to your library and I can't help but Marvel at the differences between the modern day works and the stuff that I grew up with because there's so much new information I say new but you know in the last 40 years new information out there that fills in all these dark areas that my earlier histories had and they're big events I mean the disintegration of the Soviet Union the opening of China in the early 70s the DNA testing that's been happening all these sorts of things has broadened the informational storehouses that people who work in any number of different disciplines you know bioarchaeology is my current favorite in

4:02 terms of always mentioning but archaeologists anthropologists linguistic people and of course you know historians putting together works that compile all sorts of information from all sorts of sources that give us a much more nuanced and comprehensive view of all these peoples one of the books that's recently come out is by a Tulane Professor who's an expert on this subject named Kenneth W harle it's called empires of the steps a history of the nomadic tribes who shaped civilization he is a noted expert on the subject the book is one of those that when you read it even if you're interested and have read a lot about this subject you're going to Marvel at his ability to dredge up even things like personal names of some of these early leaders of some of these step confederacies things that were only considered well practically legendary when I was a kid or perhaps even fragmentary type stuff they have

5:00 much more information and of course the DNA evidence and things like isotope evidence that's coming out now fleshes things out even further we discussed this with Professor Harrell recently and the interview about empires of the steps well happens right now

5:23 I have been reading books about the people of the steps since the 1970s I am absolutely overwhelmed by the comprehensiveness of your work I mean the number the number of books that I have that key where everything seems to be in darkness in most of the other you know like you'll have little data points from here and there and yet you've got all this information that that sort of fills in the blanks from all those years talk to me about some of the changes in in the study and writing about the history of the people of the step over the last three four five decades in terms of what what sources you've been able to consult and how you've been weaving this stuff into a more three-dimensional comprehensive kind of Tale well um there's two things going on one is the world of scholarship and then is my own experience in teaching a wide range of courses uh first in terms of the world of scholarship there's been

6:20 important finds made in archeology above all you'll have a lot of books uh concentrating on the Silk Road and the products that were exchanged often these are restricted in time you know from a certain date to another date you also have a lot of important monographic studies especially on the Mongol cons which have been well studied by a Specialists who read the Mongol language and also understand the Chinese texts and all of these advances have been significant and the problem is it's such a vast area and and it covers such a long time that no one can claim to be an expert in any one particular field I'm very much at home on the western end of it or if I'm dealing with Turks because I know Turkish on the other hand there are people who stay on the Eastern steps with China and the Mongols and what I attempted to do was what I do in my classes which is to create a sweeping narrative to understand how events

7:25 unfold it and that required me to bring to bear all sorts of training that I had gained especially as a classical historian trained in Greek and Latin and comparative Indo-European Linguistics and my understanding of history and drawing upon the incredible work that's been done in the last oh I would say four decades really our knowledge of these people Advance immensely you think of the term Basin mummies that were discovered and have been analyzed that proved apparently indo-europeans have occupied this area at a very early time the Taron Basin which is now in western China and putting this information together it was a real challenge I fortunately had the time I was consigned to my house because of the pandemic and I really wrote this book on on a sabbatical leave um where um covid-19 was raging across the United States and I kept myself occupied putting all of my notes and thoughts together which I've been looking at for

8:35 a long time and um so that's that's what's come together all of this very very significant research done by different Scholars uh I think of the work done on the cushions um there was very important inscription discovered in Afghanistan that revealed The Descent of the cushon Kings and clarified uh the genealogy there's been studies on ancient coins that have also clarified who issued these uh coins and how are they connected with step peoples so it's it's a variety of sources and they keep changing and adding and I'm sure in the future there will be new discoveries some may vitiate some of my points but I think the overall understanding is sound and that uh the work at least conveys the sweep of the great events that have occurred on the steps since earliest times when the first people domesticated and heard in animals domesticate the horse and developed this mobile way of life okay so this is a your book covers

9:45 basically from pre-history to almost the Renaissance and we have an audience that will span the entire spectrum of people who know nothing about this subject to people who are pretty well versed about at least some of it so maybe we start at the beginning a sort of a touchstone point that we can all relate to geography and environment here right we have a part of the world in Eurasia that touches China on one side uh the north of India the north of Persia the the east of what we would consider to be the the the central European areas talk to me a little bit about this air because I always think about the geography and the environment as creating the conditions for the rise of this type of lifestyle and I'm sure it's an idiotic thing to say but I mean I can see almost similarities to the American Great Plains sometimes and you see the same sorts of sort of the the the the way that they live in in certain respects

10:40 being similar talk to me a little bit about I mean if you're if you're writing a book called the Empire of the steps and you're talking to people who don't know anything about this explain to us what the steps are well actually you made a good analogy about the Great Plains India how when horses escaped from Spanish sometime in the 1680s I believe and you had these uh Mustangs got out on the um grasslands of the great prairies these horses could live on the grasslands and then Indians learn to domesticate them first as a food source and then to ride them and it completely changed the culture and political landscape of the great Prairie which initially many uh European Americans simply thought was the Great American desert and this happened at an early day on the western end of that Eurasian step you uh just noted which really ends in Hungary on the What's called the pannonian plain stretches

11:38 across Southern Russia and Ukraine and crutches all the way to Mongolia and to the foothills of Manchuria now it varies in different parts I divided it for convenience into three major zones one would be the Western steps that usually the Volga River or the Ural river is taking as the boundary the other of the Great Central steps more or less equivalent to Kazakhstan today which is an immense area it's it's almost as large as Western Europe and then the Eastern steps which are better known to many of your listeners which would be the Mongolian grasslands bounded in the South by the Gobi desert and beyond that the Great Rivers of China on all of this land it was sometime um between let's say four thousand and three thousand BC that people dwelling on the steps learned that they could exploit the grasslands to sustain great herds and animals sheep goat cows the domestication of the horse proved

12:44 decisive because that became the Beast of Burden it could be a source of winter meat if necessary and it also became the prime animal used in war and that developed first on the western steps among Indo-European speakers um these would be people speaking a language it's usually abbreviated p-i-e by linguish meaning proto-indo-european and we really don't know the language it was never written down it's been reconstructed from the daughter languages based on predictable rules of grammar pronunciation and euphony and uh this is the mother tongue of many of the languages from Ireland to India and those the spreading of that these languages as a result of the success of these nomadic peoples on the western steps and harnessing grass as a way of sustaining themselves now there always was scattered agriculture in some of the river valleys we know that from reports by Herodotus talking about the

13:48 scythians uh the Chinese make reference to some farming going on also on the steps but primarily it was the products of their animals it would be skins first dairy products meat which was most valuable and which sustained them and also provided the goods to exchange with sedentary civilizations on the edge of those steps it's a vast region and it's bound to the north by the Taiga the Siberian forest sounds beyond the the tundra the Frozen area to the South you'll encounter various deserts you think of the kazilkum and the karakum um in in the central steps or the Gobi on the Eastern steps and so the people of the steps lived in this narrow band it's a land subject to incredible extremes of temperature and uh papal Envoy mentioned that uh the only rest he could get in the shade as he was traveling to the Mongol Court in the 13th century was um to sleep in the midday underneath his cart his oxtron cart and at first he

14:58 cursed having opted for a cart overriding and then came to appreciate that cart when he realized there's no shade in the high Summer and the temperature can get absolutely brutal and then in the winter you have this same extremes and we have reports of how the nomads were able to survive in Winter both from recent reports of people who've lived among them as well as the report of IBN fadlan very well known uh for his account of the Vikings on the Volga but he was really sent here to parley with a nomadic ruler of the Volga bulgars who had recently converted to Islam and on his way he is hosted in the winter by these Oscars Turks who are huddled together in their mobile home intense and he remarks about the hospitality the uh the months of really just surviving the brutal cold and um and how hospitality and one's word in transactions is all important among these groups in order for them to

16:05 survive so it breeds a population that can endure great extremes no weaklings survive in this environment all adult males who are free are both hunters and Warriors and once they've domesticated the horse starting from about 2000 BC on they innovate first with the light chariot and then later in the early Iron Age let's say about A Thousand Years Later the mounted Warrior and in both instances whether they're using chariots or they're mounted on horses they have this composite bow that makes them absolutely formidable foes so the landscape the great distances the the harsh climate the constant need to look for forage grasslands for their animals water and the need to trade with sedentary civilizations to obtain Goods that they themselves cannot produce um keeps them on the move and it makes them extremely adaptable and one aspect I hope the book conveys is that these people are extremely able

17:14 and clever and learn rapidly uh what is necessary to survive and it's really wrong to Simply think of them as barbarians who don't live in cities and don't write you know uh great books and uh and don't eat bread as the uh as the ancient people in the near East would say uh that that they're just wild then that's a misrepresentation well okay so it's worth pointing out if people want to look at where Cavalry begins and then spreads outward from like a drop in a water you know you drop a pebble in a water and you see the the surrounding ripples I mean you can see the spread of Cavalry as you said starting with Cavalry that's hooked up to chariots and carts and then eventually you get Riders and you can see it spread to places like Assyria I mean you can see China go from having uh uh foot nomadic peoples in the western areas what the wrong and the D and people like that all of a sudden become

18:16 mounted and it's an entirely new ball game for them security wise once that happens so let's talk about this because as a as a fan of military history I'm always intrigued by the fact that once you combine the horse and the composite bow that you just mentioned you have a weapon system uh especially when you when you hook it to people who grow up with it as opposed to taking some Byzantine peasant and training them as a mounted Archer it's very different when you take a hunnic kid who's been on a horse since three years old shooting at rats and mice as a little child um once you combine that weapon system you have something that isn't going to be made obsolete until almost the Napoleonic era that's hard to get your mind around when weapon systems go obsolete as quickly as they do today talk to us a little bit about I mean even Comanche Warriors are adopting the same system what makes that such a

19:13 difficult to deal with such a formidable weapon system the bow and the horse well first the horse gives mobility and most of these as as you should also note most of these Warriors have several amounts and they can cover great distances rapidly the Mongol Army can ride three times faster than any of its opponents with components of infantry and Cavalry and that is they can switch from horse to horse they have fresh mounts always with them uh these horses are also extremely sturdy they can forage on the steps and even forge under the snow and so uh when the Mongols invade Europe in 1242 I mean Batu catches the Europeans by surprise they're still in Winter quarters more or less it isn't quite yet spring and yet the Mongols can move around rapidly so strategically they have great mobility and this strikes Terror in the parts of their foes they never able to get an accurate count of how many there are

20:13 usually these forces are much smaller than uh literary sources report you know the literary sources will talk of hundreds of thousands you're probably dealing with an army of thirty thousand maybe fifty thousand it's a an enormous Army and uh the full Mongol Levy uh in the time of Genghis Khan at his death in 1227 was probably somewhere around 130 to 150 000 of whom many of them were Turks rather than actually Mongols tactically this weapon is ideal for attacking mixed formations of infantry and Cavalry that depend on a tactic of bringing the enemy to they to close combat where you can use Edge weapons to overcome them whether it's the Roman Gladius whether it's a pike whether it's a halberd in the Middle Ages the shock action is what's supposed to decide the battle but the no match don't play fair they will attack these formations reigning arrows into these forces usually injuring the horses of their foe

21:17 maddening their the Infantry to get so angry that they'll break ranks and try to pursue and what they do is refuse to close in close quarters and draw their foes out in a ill-advised counter-attack and as they scatter they'll then turn upon them and Ambush them or um they have the great it's called the Sip in shot in uh um sorry phone call a scythian shot in Greek sources in which uh the lawyer can turn behind with his composite bow and still shoot out of pursuing foe battle after battle is lost as a result of the uh use of these tactics by the armies of sedentary civilizations the most famous one is the Battle of massacre in 1071 where the seljuk Turks managed to break the discipline of the Byzantine Army and it simply panics and it then becomes a Massacre where they attack and destroy the scattered and Paddock Panic forces so to defeat such an army requires immense coordination between Cavalry and

22:29 infantry we have a number of manuals that talk about that the earliest one in the west is aryan's Battle Tactics against the um Alliance which is a sermation tribe that burst into Asia Minor around 135 A.G and he has had Direct experience in positioning in his infantry his Cavalry supports and maintaining discipline the same tactics are advised by a Byzantine Manual of the 6th Century A.D and almost a contemporary manual in China usually your best option and the tongue Emperors the early tongue Emperors of China understood this is to hire nomadic Warriors to do the fighting for you and at least have some kind of control on some of the inner barbarians as the Chinese would call them those would be the tribes dwelling along uh the Great Wall in your immediate vicinity they've become accustomed to Chinese ways to some extent but they still retain the traditions of the steps and you hire them as your warriors because what what

23:34 better option do you have as you mentioned at the start of the that to ride horses and to use a bow this effectively is the lifetime experience and you just don't recruit peasants and arm them with bows and try to force them to ride horses and and get the kind of results you want that's just a fact Shrine is also hamstrung by the fact that they could never breed effective horses in China proper because of the soil it doesn't have the minerals necessary for strong bows and so even if they try to mount Chinese warriors they're dependent on importing the horses from the nomadic tribes and that's the big point in all of these treaties where silk is paid out to the most prominent nomadic Confederacy uh whether it's called a Khan or or uh chanyu whatever whatever his title and in return the Chinese emperor expects thousands of horses for his army I'm fascinated with both the physics and the human morale side of battle because when

24:41 you talked about this the scythian shot or the parthian shot and the fact and the the feigned flight as as it's called for the audience out there the the idea that you can pretend to be fleeing and some of the enemy May pursue you and that breaks up their formation making them vulnerable I'm always amazed how many people should know better whether it's the Byzantine manuals the Chinese manuals or even when one step tribe is fighting another and they're very aware that of the feigned flight tactic and yet somehow they can be encouraged to pursue anyway I mean I remember reading about the manga die that the Mongols had which were supposed to encourage something and they were I remember somebody a teacher telling me that they were they were even recruiting people that might even be good actors right to really be able to to to say no no this isn't a trick we really are fleeing we really are scared of you

25:35 um so there's a physics or a morale thing involved where even when you know better you're you get suckered into some of these things sometimes I'm also interested and maybe you can explain this to me I remember reading the early accounts of the Huns appearance in Europe and the Mongols describing them as so ungodly ugly alien like and all these kinds of things and I remember in the 1970s as a kid thinking that this is just a Roman encountering a person from a very different ethnicity that they're not used to but now we know and the skulls have been found and you mention it in your book about things like the head binding and all those sorts of things that would have created something that to a Roman may have looked well to somebody today go look at the skulls may have looked extremely unnatural can you talk a little about what these people may have looked like and why well um you're you're drawing on the account

26:29 of Amy anus marcelinus who's the first Roman to report about the Huns and they would have arrived on the Eastern edge of the western steps about 370 A.D and they came crashing into the Goths who were dramatic people living on the Russian steps the South Russian steps and the Romans had had contact with the Goths for over two centuries in fact they had treaties with Gods many of them were recruited into patrolling this area for the benefit of Rome and received subsidies amiens claims that they're not even humans they look like stumps they are comparatively short they have the deformed head and scars they um are right around on their horses they're noted for taking head taking which is a common phenomenon on the steps either taking heads or scalps same as reported the scythians and these people would have been of Eastern Asian origin they would not be um europote as you'd say and they spoke

27:29 what was probably in a gluten of language were not exactly sure how to classify because the words we have in the Hun language are mostly proper names and they very quickly subjected a wide variety of people so there's lots of Iranian and Germanic names and objects that are associated with them but they were seen as unusually foreign and unusually ferocious yeah they may War violently they were able to defeat the Goths and drive many of them into the Roman Empire and it's the Hun migration into Central Europe that ultimately drives many of the Germanic tribes into the Roman Empire and then as a result of their depredations and attacks on the Eastern Empire and their great invasion of Western Europe in 451 and 452. they took the balance uh to the dramatic tribes who have settled within the Roman Empire as the future of Europe and they play a very decisive role that way but in terms of battle you can go back and

28:34 read John Keegan's book on face of battle which really was a groundbreaking work in military history I'm sure many of your uh listeners are familiar with that work and one of the irresistible impulses is to see the enemy turn his back and flee that is generally when the greatest no number of casualties are suffered by the defeated that they are pursued and the nomads um do all these scattered attacks and then show their backs and flee and it's very hard to keep soldiers in line when they see that even well-trained soldiers have the tendency to probably now's our chance to get back at them you know they've been shooting these arrows at us all day it hasn't been a good army day I've been forced to stay in the same place in hot sun now they're fleeing well let's go get those guys and that would especially be true of the supporting Cavalry that would probably go after them and gallop and they're

29:35 usually more heavily armored not as Nimble as the um nomadic Warriors and they start to break up in formation and this is just the ideal time to carry out an ambush you'll have some of your fellow Warriors waiting in a concealed position to take them in flank the ones fleeing will suddenly turn around and start launching their arrows and some of them will close for hand-to-hand combat as scattered battles you know individual combat uh in which these Warriors Excel so maintaining that discipline is very difficult and and it comes through in you know manual after manual in dealing with these folks and as late as say oh gosh uh and you're right um Napoleonic Wars I'm thinking of um the wars between the armies of the Holy Roman Emperor um the hopsberg emperor and the Ottomans the Ottomans deploying many what we would call tartars tatars from South Russia's allies and Prince Eugene of Savoy you know keep strict formations

30:41 don't break up when they they pull this stunt and and that's that's the psychology of the heat of battle you know checking your your impulses from throwing away a victory or at least a strategic draw and generally that's usually the best an army of a sedentary civilization can really achieve all these people would be a strategic draw and the best way to to deal with them at least on the Eastern steps would be the Chinese would wage uh winter campaigns and try to catch the campsites in their in in their winter grounds and um capture horses destroy horses destroy uh uh the um mobile homes the the year and and take many prisoners and it you you drew an analogy to the planes um Indians you know you you think of Heritage Army a winter campaign and uh I would I was a sucker for The Westerns growing up you know I was born in 1951 so I'm a big fan of um uh the Searchers and there's that incident where you know

31:53 John Wayne sees the U.S Cowboys yeah attack the Comanche camp in the winter um you know following the strategy that um Sheridan and uh Sherman had Frank it's it's not too different well now let's talk a little bit about ethnicity because to me that's one of the more surprising things about the entire step and also the the makeup of some of these tribes I remember you mentioned the terror mummies but I remember reading very early accounts of of the Turks and we think of the Turks as as looking like the people in Turkey today although that's a wide variety of people obviously too but the early accounts would have green-eyed Turks with red hair I mean stuff that just doesn't jibe with our our stereotypical views of today uh you you talked about the youth zian tribes on the western area of China looking and speaking much more Indo-European languages um Genghis Khan maybe red hair and gray eyes talk to me a little about the fact

32:53 that you know you really and the fact that these tribes would accept defeated enemies into their midst and you it's it's an ethnic Estuary isn't it yeah there's um the big test ultimately becomes language you know how do you express yourself language is an interpretation in the world and every language represents a slightly different interpretation and that's why I always urge my students to learn more languages you know your sense of humor changes the way you name objects and my wife is Turkish and believe me a bilingual line of marriage is is one that is constantly changing and constantly learning and so um you you speak of the Turks today in the Republic of Turkey or turkey as they want to be called now which is the Turkish name for the land and you're looking at a minority of nomadic people who had embraced Islam who arrived in the 11th and 12th centuries and assimilated a vast majority perhaps only

33:53 six percent of the DNA of the modern Turkish population actually can trace itself back to the steps the rest is that of the people who originally there as well as Balkan Russian middle eastern you know all sorts of people who had moved into that area under the Ottoman Empire and the shame is true on the steps and that is the nomads would learn languages as necessary the rapid expansion of the Turkish speakers in the Early Middle Ages which really to me marks the beginning of the Middle Ages on the steps the expansion by Boomin and the Turks um starting in 550 uh across the Central and Eastern steps uh when they overthrew their overlords many of the people on the steps there would have been speaking Iranian tarkarian different types of Indo-European languages but they had had long contact with Turkish tribes because there aren't any neat boundary lines that you have in a modern State they move to make use of

34:55 the land and a tribe will be in a certain area another tribe shows up which speaks a different language and either they fight each other or they end up coming to some sort of agreement in which one tribe has grazing rights and and lets it to use the same water source there's celebrations and invariably a marital ties are are cemented so these people are constantly interacting with each other and changing and what happens is many of the people who spoke Iranian languages end up speaking Turkish that's why when you go out to Western China um in um what the locals want to call weakerstown where the uyghurs are today you'll find many uyghurs uh with Fair hair and green eyes and they're probably descended ultimately from takarian ancestors others will show traits that they came from the Middle East others will show traits that they came from East Asia but they all speak uighur Turkish itself a mixture of several

36:00 other languages but that's what identifies them and then as these tribes embrace one of the monotheistic Creeds such as Islam or they Embrace Buddhism that becomes another way of defining who they are their religious use and how they reconcile that religion with their traditional Matic beliefs and spirits and shamans so that that's going on constantly and the notion of on all the Huns looking like what amiana said or some of these depictions of the Huns from the 19th century where they're they're magnified as the yellow pill from the East destroying Roman civilization you know these are overdrawn the Hun armies of Attila comprise many Iranian speakers and dramatic speakers and Attila himself is remembered as a great king in Norse and dramatic Legend he lives on as one of the great Lords who had a court of great warriors and in the German tradition if you ever read the German epic the nibolongoli

37:08 he's he's picked it quite favorably actually so he you are correct there's there's a constant movement and intermixture mixture going on and likewise with the sedentary civilizations you know um any great Lord like modu chanyu who in the second century BC established the Confederacy of the schwang knew will negotiate with the Han emperor in order to get Chinese Brides for himself and for his leading supporters because that elevates him in the status of subjects and that that's just a given they're they're prone to out marrying like that one of the things I found very valuable in the book was you being able to put to rest a bunch of the questions that we've often had studying the step people forever for example you just mentioned both Attila and the zhuang new and the idea of whether or not the Huns and the zhuang Nu were the same people uh in your book you took the firm belief that that new information has shown that they

38:20 were not am I correct in saying that yeah I think at most they're familiar with the term um who know is apparently how the Chinese pronounce the schwang new and um and Chinese uh you know Scholars sign into signologists I guess you would call them historians of China it was a fearful term that was adopted by these people at most they were a vassal tribe uh or a distant subject of the schwang knew but there's no direct connection and the review of the archaeological evidence in the period of Attila that is the Hun hegemony in Europe of uh jewelry Pottery Styles and all really shows no connections to the earlier material you would find in East Asia now there are arguments that have been made that the Huns were heirs to some kind of Step Imperial Administration that's made by one scholar in particular but I just don't see it what I do see is that the Huns in Europe are familiar with exchanges with secondary civilizations

39:28 and they're just quick studies the schwang new learned that writing was very valuable well well so did the Huns as soon as they came into contact with the Roman Empire until I had both Greek and Roman secretaries who could draft letters and treaties and any kind of document he would want and we don't know what languages Attila spoke besides the Hun language he may well have known a fair amount of Latin as some kind of East dramatic dialect to talk to some of his leading vassals one of his secretary's uh arrestees ends up going back into Imperial Service after Attila dies and puts his son on the throne as the last Western Emperor Romulus and custody so when the hunt Empire fragmented arrestees with a whole bunch of probably unemployed um Warriors of Attila offers himself to the Western court and eventually ends up putting his son on the throne and it goes to show how easily people from sedentary civilizations can move into

40:31 the nomadic world and then move back there's a constant movement that way uh Genghis Khan won the support of many people who are known as kittens in North China who had ruled there and hated the then ruling North Chinese dynasty and they went over to the Mongols Kubla Khan literally built a Chinese Army and Navy to conquer the Sun and you find this constant cooperation that the nomads are able to engage different peoples who have skills from the sedentary civilizations Attila has it your interest in military history Attila can take cities with Engineers these are clearly Romans in the service of Attila um Genghis Khan had his Chinese engineering Corps which Kubla Khan expanded by adding Iranians and Arabs compliments of his brother hulago who sent some of the best men to him so there is a constant need for them to innovate and especially in The Art of War they're extremely receptive to Innovations let me uh let me let me

41:39 change gears here so there's a wonderful line that I've always liked that history is just one damn thing after another and if you look at the entire scope of your book and the subject matter from from Early times to to the Renaissance if you if you wanted to you could almost classify that as one eruption of Step people after another and I'm kind of interested in the idea that there always seems to be another more ferocious more dangerous more tough more energetic more resourceful tribe always waiting in the wings you know the magyars get to deal with the petch and eggs I mean there's always somebody on the so so can you explain the the maybe the the the rationale is not the right word but but what's going on there that there's always got to be another tribe looking to supplant the one that's just settled down and and Infuse the old Chinese word for it and just been cooked you know in terms of a civilizational sense

42:38 well um what happens is those that move off the steps into the settled zones in many instances they become assimilated and they'll embrace the dominant culture although sometimes they will retain their language as the Turks do and as the hungarians did you know hungarian's return you know um retain a language that's not related to the other European languages it's a ugrian language that is remotely related to Turkish and Mongolian and new people feel in behind and you have to realize that it doesn't take much for these these groups to become overcrowded and for the resources to become scarce just you know a couple of bad Summers and you are desperate to move on and many of these migrations take the form of uh individual groups small groups of 20 50 moving on their own looking for water looking for grass and then sending news back to their relatives Oh Come West or go east or go Southeast you'll find

43:44 better pastures and what happens is they'll run into the documents of the area and some kind of fighting is going to ensue and that means they're constantly struggling around themselves to make sure they have sufficient water and grass for their animals they have access to trade with the sedentary civilizations and the competition is fierce and if you don't win a battle the consequences are pretty severe in many instances they'll they'll Massacre the adult males they might keep some of the specialist you know good Craftsmen and some of the women but the defeated really get killed because the resources are so limited and so there's a constant movement because no no sedentary civilization can control this area the the only individual who ever managed to rule large sections of the step was the tongue emperor taizong in the 7th Century he was able to overthrow the Turkish Kane and control the eastern and western Turks in his

44:55 lifetime but his successors immediately lost control and one of the reasons was that he was accepted by many of the Turks as a great warrior in his own right and in many ways preferred the martial life of the steps to his Mandarin Confucian bureaucrats but he's an exception and as you mentioned it's only when you have effective Firearms not just artillery but handheld firearms that the Russians on one end and the Chinese on the other move into essentially divide control the steps and stop this movement and prevent this cycle of tribes moving around in jostling and all of a sudden one group realizes for us to be more effective we have to build up a more successful Confederation and so first you get the schwang new then you get the Ruan cons and then you get the Turks and then you get the uyghurs um each time A Confederacy learning from his predecessors and the necessity to be able to feed its population and have

46:05 access to the goods of the senator civilization so they do they they learn they get better and the best of all are the Mongols and even by the standards of the 13th century the Mongols wage war fiercely on a massive scale of of massacre in order to break the will of their opponents and Chinese Muslim Western Christian Russian sources all report atrocities which which shocks them and these are people who do not wage war among themselves according to the Geneva Convention I mean they they're pretty brutal themselves but the Mongols have taken this Warfare on the steps and refined it to a very high degree of Destruction and some would argue that Genghis Khan and his son and grandsons were Waging War almost on a genocidal level in in some instances well let's talk about that a minute because uh that was always the the prevailing portrayal of of the Mongols right the Russians have never ceased

47:15 explaining how horrible it was but there were some books that came out a little while back that make Genghis Khan sound like you know uh uh well you know the old line about the trade-offs of Empire right on one hand on one hand you have the trade-offs on Empire on the other hand you have the Romans create a wasteland and call it peace um I I so you fall plainly on the side that the the accounts of the Mongols creating towers of skulls and rivers of fats and all those things are real and that this was you know I remember having a conversation with somebody where they were talking about how the Mongols were so religiously tolerant and I said but yeah but they can do anything they want to you right I mean so it's like saying they can take your daughter for a slave but they're religiously tolerant so explain to me a little if you can so I guess what I'm saying is you're buying the the historical portrayal of

48:11 the Mongols and step people's well let's let's talk about ancient warfares the same way but this is brutality on like you said practically a genocidal scale yeah and that is because of several factors uh in the Mongols once once you go to war all bets are off if a city resists and then surrenders or Falls it the Conqueror has complete control of it and can do what he wish and you'll you'll have to negotiate a surrender uh almost immediately before you can resist and one of the reasons for the terror is to drive people on the countryside into the city spreading rumors of the massive Mongol Army approaching and the the dangers you're in in the hope that the city will Just Surrender another aspect is that it's um Warfare is personal uh when close members of Mongols of Genghis Khan's family are killed in battle he takes that personally it's it's it's a code of honor and the entire city or area will be devastated to

49:20 propitiate the spirit of that lost relative that's that's a that's an awful price to pay but you have to remember they are still operating in very much a heroic martial ethos in which one's honor is at stake and and killing your close family members is an insult to your honor and and you and they will pay the price uh Rebellion any kind of rebellion is treated incredibly harshly and you see that in the cities of Iran and transoxiana transoxiana would be today essentially Uzbekistan and the Mongols were just brutally punish cities that have rebelled especially if they've killed members of the Mongol Garrison or envoys whatever the case will mean so there there no doubt is exaggeration um there's all these apocalyptic terms that are used you've got Matthew Parish in England coining the name tarters for the Mongols meaning they come from tartarusley the classical underworld that is hell and uh they're the devil's

50:28 Horsemen but the use of massacres and brutal uh reprisals is part and parcel of the way the Mongols weigh for and you just can't dismiss all these accounts there's there's too many of them from different sources and we know what the conditions are like on the steps and we know what Warfare was even like among the tribes I mean tribes that rebelled uh against he was then known as temujon before he took the time the title Genghis Khan were just as brutally put down you know One Tribe all the men taller than the Great Wheel of a of a mobile home Europe is is just executed in reprisal for the Rebellion which saw the death of one of his relatives so um yeah I I do believe that they wage war very violently the same reports are given of Attila especially in Northern Italy and Gaul that would be in his campaigns of 451 and 452 and this is how war is waged it's um the losers lose and unless you submit immediately the Conqueror has the

51:38 right to met out whatever punishment he wants well and there's a pragmatic side to that too I mean if you want to look at it that way if you have to level one city like Baghdad the next time you ask another city to to surrender the the odds get better uh and and we should also point out that there's um it's not exactly Pleasant to have the Crusaders during the Crusade sack your city uh uh it's never been wonderful step people or settled people and what's the old line if you if you if you make the enemy conduct a Siege then they'll gonna sack your city and that's going to be awful whether you're step tribe or not um so so let's talk a little bit then about um about some of these people like I I'm very interested because we didn't have this information when I was growing up I mean we had Attila we had Genghis Khan we didn't have some of these earlier leaders that you go into great depth upon some of these guys who were the

52:41 first of the Empire Builders the the Shang new leaders and whatnot can you talk a little bit about one of those great leaders well mono chanyu is largely known from accounts of the Chinese historians and he's the first step conqueror We Know by name at the end of the third beginning of the second century BC and he essentially overthrew his father by creating a bodyguard of excellent archers and then turning him on his father that was was supposed to be a practice shoot and seizing power and he builds a confederation in which he drives some of the tribes West nodally takarian speakers become the future cushions of Central Asia and Northern India and he subjects the other tribes and his Confederation lasts an extremely long time it's able to cut treaties with the early Han Emperors but it's really the emperor woo D who decides to wage war against the schwangu and this will consume the resources of

53:43 the Han Empire for the next two centuries eventually they break up the Confederation um they break into a northern and southern Confederation at the end of the first century BC uh some of the tribes are are hired into Chinese service but ultimately it's almost self-defeating because these tribes take over the Monopoly of defending the northern Frontiers the tribes close to the Chinese border and eventually they go into business for themselves and the parallel between that and my more detailed study of the Roman Empire are are very real you know the Romans hired the Germans to patrol their Frontiers and the problem is they get a monopoly on Armed Force and then they go into the Empire and decide to take areas for their own chased by the Hunts but nonetheless they're in business for themselves so uh the other are the brothers who turn the seljuk Turks um into a great power particularly to

54:44 real Bay who in 1055 enters Baghdad and restores the power of the Sunni Kaylee fate and um but it took him 25 years of fighting out and on the Eastern steps and in transoxiana and Eastern Iran to build up that position and then his nephew Alf arsalon is the one who will win the Battle of manzakirk and move the Turks into Asia Minor the Turks those those those two rulers uh really changed the political landscape and eventually the ethnic and linguistic landscape of the near East um and it's you could still see their results today Asia Minor is the heartland of the Turkish Republic at the time they arrived it was the heartland of a Christian greek-speaking Byzantine Empire this is a major change and they also triggered the Crusades by disrupting the pilgrimage roots Bowman who overthrew his overlords uh and is the first Turkish ruler We Know by name he and his brother spread the Turkish power across Eurasia very rapidly in the

55:52 early 6th Century mid-6 Century A.D and uh and while he only ruled for a couple of years he's dead by 552 the ethnic transformation of the steps endures to this day you know um except for Kyrgyzstan um all of those Central Asian republics speak the Turkish language uh in eastern Turkish language most of them which for a modern Turk in the Turkish Republic they can understand basically but the languages have diverged so um it was wonderful to do this book and in each chapter I tried to zero in on figures that we knew something about who would be remarkable figures to engage the reader because ultimately history is about people and we learn from history because we're dealing with other humans and how they deal with uh crises and and different types of situations what their beliefs are and I always try to put myself in the position of those people and try to see the world through their eyes that's

57:04 my job as a historian and then interpret what does it mean what's the importance of this for the present generation and hopefully the future generation because it's the only record we have the past the president is just a point in time in the future well we don't know what the future is but by looking to the past we might be able to gain some lessons in order to deal with the future and in that sense I'm very much a classical historian history has a didactic purpose I know a lot of my colleagues would jump on me for saying that but um there is there is a reason to study it and just like you at an early age I read about the Mongols and I read about a tool on the hunt and I was fascinated with the fact that you have all of these um different tribes on the Eurasian steps who keep reappearing you know for Europeans of the Middle Ages it's like okay uh it's now the 11th century who's the new nomadic conqueror du jour it's

58:02 now the 12th century who's replaced the oh it's now the kumas um I'm being a bit facetious but that was my initial reaction as a boy growing up reading about all this yes springing from the concept of there being a womb of Nations somewhere that just spit these people out one after another you know I remember reading a line that I've never forgotten that was talking about the Mongol conquest and giving a sense of its breadth and they said the Mongols were fighting the Teutonic knights in the west and the Japanese in the East both of whom were unaware of the other's existence and that also invaded Java by the way that's that's right that's right and and so so it makes me think though because we we grow up or you and I are you're a little overnight but we're both neither one of us pretty very young and when we were growing up this idea was that the places that mattered were the settled societies with cities and

58:56 writing and all that kind of stuff and yet it's so clear from your book that the nomads of the Eurasian step provide the connective tissue that connect parts of the world that didn't even I mean I mean the byzantines may know that there's a China somewhere and vice versa but they don't have any direct connection it's the it's these cultures of the step through the Silk Road through trade through the spread of ideas that are the ones that create these both intellectual cultural and actual physical connections between these cultures that don't have direct connections can you talk a little about that yeah and um there's been some very good books by popular historians especially on um what just named Jack weatherfield on on the Mongols and how the pox mongolica too coin a term from uh Parks from Mana in the 13th century made possible all sorts of trade and exchange of ideas and technology and

59:57 knowledge that made the modern world possible and uh without the spread of gunpowder you wouldn't have had the military revolutions you see in Europe in the Middle East in the 15th and 16th centuries which transformed the world scientific knowledge different types of plants uh geography astronomy and astrology all of this was exchanged among the four Great Ulus that is the Realms of the Mongol Empire a lot of exchange between uh the court of the ilcon Centerton Persia and Central Asia and the Mongol Court uh centered in China and Mongolia the Homeland it also promoted the spread of religions whether you know Christianity at one point especially Islam and Buddhism or a great deal and it's inconceivable to you know talk the modern world who we are today without taking these people into account to be sure writing is an enormous achievement and um and and the high marks go to the Sumerians for inventing

1:01:02 the first you know written system it allows us to break the barrier time and write down our thoughts and transmit it to the next Generation but it's not the whole story and the trade across Eurasia wiped the silk Pro which is so important for this exchange owed very much to the the act of participation and protection by the nomads it could be individual tribes who would hire out their men as guards to Caravans or would breed camels in the Middle Ages uh these hybrid camels that could be used as Beast of Burden any Merchant trading along the Silk Road always bought what were called tag Goods that is there additional Goods that they could barter and exchange or just give as gifts to the nomadic fives along the way that made the roots possible and and safe and then any ruler uh with a great Confederation would very much want to control these trade routes and impose peace security and of course be able to

1:02:01 tax it and furthermore we do know that a number of these peoples do eventually adopt writing there's this very old Turkish it looks like Norse rooms and it's it's actually appropriate that it was a Danish philologist who first deciphered them but they're in the archon valley and where is now Mongolia and these are the earliest Turkish inscriptions um the one particularly I quote a great deal because if it's its value about the Church of the 8th Century by Bill gay Khan that inscription shows that they have invented their own phonetic writing system uh on their own in order to create memorialized great great deeds and probably kept various records so they do learn literacy at different points and we do know examples of this um Turkish ruins have popped up as far as Bulgaria and Hungary that it was probably widely spread and it was the conversion to Islam that led to the abandonment of this alphabet and the

1:03:01 adaptation of the Arabic alphabet which was not particularly well suited for the Turkish language it was difficult to do the transition but by as Muslims they were going to make sure that their Turkish language was in the writing similar to the sacred language that would be the appropriate you know connection they would make so you're you're absolutely correct about this and I also put a great deal of credit to Marco Polo painting that image of Kubla Khan and cafe and his fabulous Palace of Xanadu because the Europeans were just enraptured with this idea and um that eventually leads to the age of European Discovery once you have ocean-going vessels well we'll sail west and we've got to bump into Cafe and then we'll get all the goods that Marco told us about you know 150 years earlier they just didn't Bank on running into two new continents but um so in writing the book it was so much fun

1:04:05 uh to make these connections and writing a book like this is a continuation of my teaching I've been a teacher 43 years I enjoyed teaching immensely and lecturing and writing a book that's aimed for the more general public is a way of continuing that and um you know we're we're just Unstoppable this way we we love our audiences well we'll make this the last question uh I remember reading a wonderful book called China marches West which was talking about the the because you alluded to it earlier the Chinese conquest of the step to their West while the Russian conquest of their step to their East is going on it's a little analogous to the conquest of the American West and once those two Powers conquered their their step areas the importance of the locally grown step tribes in that region seem to be subsumed under the sort of nation-state Paradigm that's existed ever since and they seem no offense

1:05:13 intended like backwaters compared to the importance that they used to have uh I I can Envision ways that those places could become extremely important again whether it's through lithium or other discoveries of important minerals where do you see the future of those areas whether we're talking about Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan where do you see the future of those areas in The Next Century well that's that's asking me to be well we have the uyghur problem right now so that's that's as we go on yes yeah the uyghurs the government in Beijing has inherited the policy going back to the emperor D and that is to subject these people and signify them one way or the other and the Chinese are not going to willingly give up control of that region uh you'd have to have the collapse of the central Authority in China for that region to become autonomous again and I suspect many Chinese colonists might leave and

1:06:12 the same would be true for Tibet and even for inner Mongolia these are areas that have been attached to China as a result of the Chinese Central Authority we will not be invaded by barbarians you can we will never have a Mongol rule over us only the Han people are entitled to have the Mandate of Heaven okay we'll make them a slight adjustment for the man should change but but that's that's that's the ideology that's it's the Han and tongue ideology I do think with the belt um Road initiative that Beijing is pushing now it's an effort to reassert control in that region I doubt that it will be all that successful for a number of reasons and I think depending on what happens to Russia in this war um against the Ukraine Russian influence in these regions might actually loosen and these states might go on their own go their own way from the Russian Confederation we may be seeing a breakup of the

1:07:14 Russian Confederation I just don't know it's the outcome of of the current war is difficult to predict turkey has tried to make initiatives in Turkmenistan Uzbekistan Kazakhstan they've sent in Engineers Educators business people to try to forge ties um this is going back to appeals to pan turkism but really given turkey's Geographic position and its economy it's not in a position to significantly change these states I do think the future might be for greater Independence in those areas now what kind of government will emerge is hard to say right now you have authoritarian governments there the discovery of mineral resources or petroleum of course helps if they go into exploit but you think of what the Russians did to the Aral Sea they completely mismanaged it and destroyed it in the ill-considered effort to irrigate for cotton and other products so I don't think Mongolia at this point um it has precarious position between

1:08:25 China and Russia I don't know what the future of Mongolia will be there they are subject to the fact that there are these two great powers since the 16th century that have dictated a lot of the politics on the steps foreign my thanks to Professor Kenneth W Harrow for coming on the program today and talking about one of my all-time favorite subjects his new book should be available by the time this show comes out it's called empires of the steps a history of the nomadic tribes who shaped civilization and as usual in order to facilitate the process of buying it should you want to we will link to it in the show notes update on the next big Hardcore History we work on it every day and we release it as soon as it's done it is part two in our Viking story Twilight of the izer if you would like an email from us when it's out or an email from us when another Hardcore History addendum drops or when we have

1:09:29 some important news updates announcements or bonus content to share for example the article I wrote on the Congressional hearings recently on the UFO phenomenon why not consider joining our newsletter we call it look behind you and you can find that at dancarlin.substack.com it's completely free either give us your email and we'll send you a note when there's something worth telling you about or just bookmark it and treat it like a regular web page and check back into it from time to time and that way no matter what happens in the weird Wild Wonderful Wacky World of social media we'll be able to maintain a personal relationship and Communications Channel between us and you and just a reminder because it keeps the lights on around here if you don't already own the back catalog of our old shows one through whatever isn't currently free we'll consider picking that up you can check our website at dancarlin.com for

1:10:22 more details about that a lot of people like seeing the evolution of the show from its humble beginnings in 2007 to now if you're one of those people and you don't already own the old shows well consider helping us out and picking those up in any case stay safe everyone looking forward to talking with you again soon and as usual I hope all is well in your world take care

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "EP27 More Steppe Stories"?

In order: 0:00 Mongols, DNA testing, Eurasian Step, Kenneth W. Harle; 10:00 Eurasian Step, Mongolia, Mongols, Scythians; 20:00 Mongols, Genghis Khan, Scythians; 30:00 Attila, Genghis Khan; 40:00 Mongols, Genghis Khan, Attila, Usbekistan; 50:00 Mongols, Attila, Genghis Khan, Eurasian Step; 1:00:00 Mongolia, Usbekistan, Marco Polo, Silk Road.

What is mentioned in this Dan Carlin episode?

17 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Mongols, Genghis Khan, Attila, Mongolia, Huns, Eurasian Step. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "EP27 More Steppe Stories"?

The episode runs 1 h 11 min; the transcript is about 11,193 words in 68 timestamped sections.

More from Dan Carlin

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.