MONGOLIAN WOMEN HAD IT GOOD COMPARED TO MOST MEDIEVAL WOMEN

Pages 169-174  From GENGHIS KHAN  His Conquests  His Empire  His Legacy by Frank McLynn.

The Mongols were polygamous (taking many wives) and polygynous (taking many concubines) but the children of the chief wife were the ones who could be considered for the succession when their father died.

Genghis Khan's troops killed half the population of Hungary in the 1241 era, and one of the Mongol warriors favorite activities was raping the women, often in front of their father or husband.  So what was life like for a MONGOLIAN WOMAN?  Well, it turns out that compared to most medieval women, they had better status.  This didn't mean they weren't treated as chattel, but consider; Genghis OUTLAWED RAPE.  In the past only women were executed for adultery but now both men and women suffered the same punishment, "unless they were rich enough to buy themselves out of the predicament."  Women could also decided if they wanted to be married and divorce became possible for them as it was by mutual consent.  They did not expect a woman to be a virgin when she married and there was no stigma about having children before marriage or divorcing with children or having been married before.  What this means is that if a couple could deal with their differences mutually and peaceably, the consequences were not great.

For the chief and high status men, marriage was not a personal decision so much as a community decision.  Marriage was also considered to be eternal.  Genghis was concerned about inbreeding but his precautions were not always followed. (It's possible that shorter lifespans were a result.)

In their nomadic and hunter-gatherer society, unlike the more European Agricultural societies, women and men performed many of the same or similar jobs, so there wasn't the divide of roles or "men's work," seen elsewhere.  She was kept busy with household and other tasks.  She was expected to know how to drive a large wagon, some with as many as 20 horses.   "One woman would often be expected to drive as many as thirty interconnected wagons,; seven women would often be needed to transport a single oligarch's possessions, for one of these elaborate dwellings, when transported could fill over two hundred wagons; moreover, a single noble with multiple wives might have several such portable palaces." (171)  Sometimes the woman had to figure out how to load the horses - and camels - so that everything was weight distributed.

Wise old women were prized for their wisdom and thought that some women had magical powers.  Women did not have their feet bound as women did in China, nor did they wear clothing that prevented than from moving or seeing freely, such as Person chadors or Arabic burqas.  They could even be regents or the realm or advisors.  So in the 13th century there were many notable Mongol women.  All this upset visitors from the Christian and Muslim faiths, and Buddhism and Confucianism when adopted from China, also reduced the role of women.

Overall, Genghis was considered a very pragmatic man and a genius about human nature.  All the changes he made so that women would have a greater role and more respect than they had before were probably made to make life easier for the entire tribe.

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GENGHIS KHAN : "ASIAN" DNA : THE KIDNAPPING OF BRIDES TODAY IN CENTRAL EUROPE IS PLAY!

I've been reading around DNA of the Hungarian people, and the people of the Carpathians, Romania, and Central and Eastern Europe.  The science is getting more and more sophisticated but I think what I read so far is an argument that there was once a lot of mixing - maybe before ethnic identities were tribal. 

I decided to watch GENGHIS KHAN -TERROR and CONQUEST which is an older Biography video, because of that question of "Asiatic" blood in some Hungarians.  This video didn't bring up the fact that he had hundreds of wives or concubines and  maybe 500 children so that Genghis's DNA is in a huge number of people today like I hoped but I still learned a lot.

13th century Asia - what is Mongolia today - was desert forest and grassland and the Chinese considered the place and the people that lived there "The Barbarians." (Seems to me the notion that the other tribe is the barbaric one prevails today!) The tribes there included the Mongols, the Merkits, the Tartars, and the Naimans, and they were all nomadic.  China had already built the famous Wall by then to keep these Barbarians out.

Though there are many accounts of Genghis Khan and his conquests written by Persian, Russian, and Chinese scribes,  there is only one, written soon after his lifetime, that is considered dependable.  The book is called "The Secret History of the Mongols." It begins by saying this bloodthirsty man was born with a clot of blood in his hand. 

No doubt Genghis' power came from his fearlessness to slaughter not just individuals but whole groups of people in the days when this was hand to hand combat and swords, before military battles were fought with guns or the weaponry we have now that distances soldiers from the place they bomb.

The story is also about the abduction of women and the rape of women and the revenge for doing so.

I learned long ago that many Hungarian marriage ceremonies into the 19th century (and perhaps beyond) play acted the abduction of a woman to be a bride, said to be the way it was done when the Hungarians were also nomadic.  The bride who had been sewing, weaving, spinning, and doing needlework, and saving for her life as a married woman since childhood, and who was probably marrying someone from her village that she had known since childhood, would kick, scream, cry out, and make a performance of it.

SOME LINKS : BIOGRAPHY.COM MINI BIO OF GENGHIS  includes video.  (His enemies sometimes surrendered out of fear.)  by 1206 he was his people's Great Ruler.


TIMES OF INDIA - GENGHI GENETIC IMPACT ACROSS ASIA

EXCERPT: "Over 10 years ago, comparisons of Y chromosome lineages across Europe and Asia showed that a large number of Asian men shared a common Y chromosome. The breadth of the distribution of this haplogroup, and the extrapolation that roughly 0.5% of the world's population carried the same Y chromosome together with age estimates led to the idea that Khan himself might have left a lasting genetic impact across Asia.

More recently a study using genome-wide data with different methods and genetic markers but on a similar (but smaller) set of populations found evidence of admixture in the Uighurs dating to the time of Genghis Khan.

"As well as the Uighurs, we found evidence of this Mongolian expansion in a further six populations. These populations approximately span the maximum spread of the Mongol empire. Taken together we believe that there is now strong evidence that this event had a major impact on many Eurasian populations," scientists said."


  THESE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE HAVING FUN WITH HUNGARIAN WEDDING TRADITIONS... 

BUT HERE'S WHAT THEY'RE DOING IN BUCHAREST ROMANIA...   ALL THESE BRIDES WERE KIDNAPPED FROM THEIR OWN WEDDING PARTIES!

IN MANY PARTS OF THE WORLD TODAY KIDNAPPING WOMEN AND FORCING THEM TO BE MARRIED TO THEIR KIDNAPPER ISN'T JUST PLAYING!  And I can't help but wonder what my own DNA says about the women of my heritage and who kidnapped them!


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