13. The Middle Ages’ Greatest Conqueror Was Bad for People, But Good for the Environment
In 1206, after a series of bloody wars on the Eastern Steppe, a nomad leader named Temujin united the tribes of Mongolia under his rule. He then got himself declared Chinggis Khan, or Universal Ruler, and set out on what his shamans declared was a divinely-mandated mission of global conquest. He didn’t conquer the globe, but he and his successors created the world’s biggest empire until then. It still remains history’s largest contiguous land empire and is second in landmass only to the British Empire.
In addition to the creation of a massive Middle Ages empire, the Mongol invasions kicked off by Chinggis Khan had another global impact that was only recently examined. Per research by the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, the great Mongol warlord actually cooled the planet. Not that such was his goal, or that he or anybody else back then had any notion about global warming or cooling or carbon emissions. Nonetheless, as seen below, that is just what he did.