Jack Weatherford

The story of Genghis Khan, like the story I think of all of us, it doesn't begin at birth.

That's the beginning of life.

The story begins long before birth.

And sometimes it can be many generations before and sometimes only shortly before.

But I think with Genghis Khan, a crucial thing is to understand how his parents met and then how he was conceived.

And that is that one day,

a cart was coming across the Mongol territory, and only women drove carts.

Men rode horses.

Women also rode horses.

But women owned the houses, which were called gers, the tents.

They owned all the household equipment, and so they had to have carts for moving back and forth.

And the fact that a cart was moving meant that some woman was moving from one place to another.

And in fact, her husband was with her.

She was a new bride, and her husband...

who was on a horse close to her.

So what happened was a man named Yasuke,

Yasuke, the future father of Genghis Khan, Yasuke was up on a hill.

He was hunting with his falcon.

The words of the secret history of the Mongols were very clear, and he looked down, and he saw her, and he could barely glimpse her, but he knew she was young, and she was a new bride, and he rode back to camp.

He got his two brothers, and they came racing down, and they came, and first the husband