Genghis Khan was born around 1162 in the grasslands of Mongolia. He started life as a poor boy named Temüjin whose family was abandoned by their tribe. By the time he died in 1227, he had united the Mongol tribes and built the largest connected land empire in human history - over 9 million square miles.
His secret weapon was speed. Mongol soldiers were skilled horse archers who could ride for days, eating on the move and even drinking horse milk. They used clever fake retreats to trick enemies into chases, then turned and destroyed them. Cities that surrendered were usually spared. Cities that resisted were not.
The empire kept growing after Genghis Khan’s death and eventually stretched from Korea to Hungary. It collapsed by the 1300s, but its impact lingered. A famous 2003 genetic study estimated that around 16 million men alive today share a Y-chromosome lineage linked to the Mongol royal family - about 1 in every 200 men on Earth, though more recent research has questioned how directly that traces back to Genghis Khan himself.
