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they still managed to kill a million people in hungary alone, crazy! that's like ww2-level loss of life...
by twelve40 4y ago
they still managed to kill a million people in hungary alone, crazy! that's like ww2-level loss of life...
- kneebonian 4y agoActually the Mongol conquests were estimated to have reduced the human population by 10% being the single largest man made population decrease in history.
- defrost 4y agoOne hundred and thirty years later the decade of the Black Death saw plague kill twice as many in absolute numbers as the Mongols. All up it was a fair sized dent in human numbers across that entire region from west to east.
- twelve40 4y agothe Black Death is understandable (although hard to imagine such scale) but it's a pandemic, it happens. But how do you kill 1,000,000 people in a couple of years visiting Hungary when you don't even have any real guns? How do you round up that many people from all over the countryside with primitive weapons and they don't try to escape or anything? Such a crazy thing to do...
- dan-robertson 4y agoIs the number from direct killings or just like, you turn up with a big army and raid food stores or interrupt agriculture in some way and then people starve because most are just scraping by as-is?
- twelve40 4y agotfa says "slaughtered", no idea if it's accurate, but scary if it is > Ogodei's armies slaughtered an estimated 1 million Hungarians: Troops, clerics, nobles, knights, and peasants.
- ETH_start 4y agoVery few towns were fortified in the first invasion. Yes, the murderousness of the Mongol horde was something else. They placed no value on human life.
- hef19898 4y agoPlacing a high value on human life is a quite recent thing, back than nobody did that. The Western view of the Mongols is so distorted by ancient and modern "propaganda" that it is hard to get a objective view on them. The funny thing is, while the Vikings are somehow romantized in media, despite being murserous pullagers and slavers (as opposed to normal Scandinavian folks), the Mongols still serve as this dark, evil barbarious outside menace. And that gies for China as well, just go watch Mulan...
- twelve40 4y agowell, they did show up deep in Europe and murder a lot of people, more than "usual", right? Sure the Europeans next showed up all over the world and did more things, but at least that would explain the shock?
- saiya-jin 4y agoWell scale matters just like literally anywhere else in human society. Small plane falls down in Brazil rainforest killing pilot? You won't even see it in your news. 350 people die via same way at once? News cycle won't let it go for few days, and its simply because people care much more. I mean we talk about largest genocide in mankind's history, no amount of whataboutism is changing this simple fact and its all on contemporary mongols. If Hitler's escapades killed 10 people overall he would be just a side note in history books as another questionable weirdo with grandiose plans.
- qwytw 4y ago> Placing a high value on human life is a quite recent thing It's not something that suddenly appeared in the 18th century though. Rather it evolved over the centuries. Christianity and Islam did introduce some respect for human life through the concept of universal salvation. In the ancient times lives of most members of out groups were viewed as totally dispensable. During the middle ages that changed to some degree, generally mass murder and or enslavement of entire populations was frowned upon (even if still practiced on many occasions). And heathens were at least were offered the chance to convert before they became fair game.
- mickdeek86 4y agoThen there's this ever-popular classic [0]: Genghis killed so many people that forests regrew, sequestering CO2 and cooling the Earth. [0]:https://www.livescience.com/11739-wars-plagues-carbon-climate.html https://www.livescience.com/11739-wars-plagues-carbon-climat...