Mongol Warrior
William Cho, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Mongols were a tribe of nomadic horseriders from the Eurasian steppe just north of China. They were united in 1206 under Temujin, who was proclaimed Genghis Khan ("universal ruler.") Under his leadership, the Mongols sent out armies in every direction, conquering what remains to this day the largest land empire in human history.

This new empire seriously uprooted the status quo. Using their composite bows to fire arrows from horseback, the Mongols destroyed the Song Dynasty in China, Khwarazm Empire in Persia, and the Abbasid Caliphate in the Middle East, subjugated the Slavic peoples of eastern Europe (so many that the word "slave" finds its origin here) and the Turks of Anatolia, and conquered all the steppe peoples of central Asia. It is estimated the Mongols killed around 40,000,000 people in the course of their conquests. On the brighter side, the Mongol Empire served as a second Silk Road, opening lines of trade, communication, and cultural exchange between East and West to an unprecedented level. Many of China's technological advances made their way to Europe over the next few centuries.

Traditional Mongolian music includes a style of overtone singing called khoomei (also transliterated four hundred other ways.) For some reason, this style of music did not become particularly popular among any of the Mongols' subjugated peoples.

However, the Mongols proved better conquerors than administrators, and by the end of the thirteenth century, the Mongol Empire fractured into four successor states: the Golden Horde in eastern Europe, the Ilkhanate in the former Persian Empire, the Chagatai Khanate in central Asia, and the Yuan Dynasty in China.

As these successor states themselves declined and Mongol power withdrew from the lands they had conquered, new nations emerged to fill the power vacuum. West of the Ural Mountains, the states of Poland and Lithuania began to grow; they would eventually unite and become the great power of eastern Europe. In the forests north of the steppe, various Russian city-states, especially Novgorod and Moscow, began asserting their own independence. The Turkish peoples living in Anatolia came under the leadership of Sultan Osman I, becoming known as the Ottoman Turks. In China, the Yuan Dynasty was overthrown by the Ming Dynasty, which reestablished the primacy of ethnic Han, moved the Chinese capital to Beijing, and built the Forbidden City.