The other day, Martin Liedtke’s video at Flat Earth British (Kansas is Bye Bye) showed the above picture of Genghis Khan’s “family tree.”

Sorry to have cut your head off, Martin!!

So I decided to look into this. Well. What a journey. Little did I know it would lead me down a road that I’ve been travelling for the past 3 years, researching Kievan Rus’, Varangian, Yaroslav the Wise etc.

I am at present writing an article about Genghis Khan but this will take a few days.

In the meantime – I have come across a couple of  interesting quotes about communications in Grand Tartary.

 

“There were lines of postal communication that connected Saray, the centre of the Golden Horde, with every province; they reached for thousands of verst, and were served by up to 400 thousand horses and a whole army of attendants. Travellers moved along these highways with the speed of up to 250 verst per day. Missives delivered by mounted couriers were also doubled by foot couriers, who could run up to 25 verst [1 verst = 3500 ft] in a day”

 

 

 

“The territory of the Golden Horde (I will explain about the Golden Horde in the upcoming article. G.B.) occupied the intersection of old trading routes that went from the Black Sea coasts to the North and the West via the steppes adjacent to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea … Most of the territory adjacent to the actual River Volga had been in the hands of the Tartars and the Mongols, and this river had been a very important trading route indeed, which became especially vital in the XIV century, when the relations with Russia stabilized in some way … another important trading route of the XIV-XV century had been the Don, also controlled by the Tartars, who had ruled over the city of Azak (Azov) in the Don estuary. This city had been a prominent trade terminal and a connexion between the sea and river traders, and also the caravans that went northward and eastward”

 

SIDE NOTE: 

With all the knowledge that is coming out now…

the researches done by many brilliant people into

the science, technology, buildings and much, much more of this “forgotten” Empire,

I suspect that the quotes above are a little naive.

Not wrong as such,

but just a very small part of a decidedly bigger picture.