In the last quest, I went through the process of searching and finding an answer. Yet I continued to search because the answer was not what I wanted to find. Sometimes we must be willing to accept what is in front of us. That might be something new that challenges what we know or don’t want to admit is true. We cannot shy away from these experiences. Rejecting a new challenge is turning away from an opportunity. An opportunity or path that may not be where we thought we might go but our path, nevertheless. When we let the opportunity unfold in front of us the adventure can be a pleasant surprise.
In the last year and a half, like many, the pandemic upended my routine and made me take stock of my life. It allowed me to do a massive reboot. I realized how much of my routine was just that, a cycle that kept me in the life I was supposed to want. I had entered autopilot. But continuous days of breaking the previous daily drudge I found myself engaging in new and old interests in ways I had not been able to do in many years. That is when I rediscovered my passion for quests. My unabashed passion for knowledge from sheer natural curiosity. It has been a wonderful journey I never want to take for granted nor abandon. One such quest has been a rather long one and has sent me on tangents and more spinoffs than Law & Order and CSI combined. I never imagined all it would inspire. It has even led me to learn a new language — more on that later. The funny thing is that even the most creative person is limited by their own imagination. We can only imagine within the parameters of what we know. Then life points us in a direction we could never imagine. And it is easy to see if we are open and receptive.
Everything and the Kitchen Sink Quest: The ever-expanding inquiry that only a pandemic lockdown would allow
It all started with a podcast. As the pandemic wore on, I tried to make the most of the time in lockdown. I looked for new things to learn or projects to do because goal number one was not to get bored, and goal number two was to not binge-watch all the streaming platforms and become a permanent fixture on my couch—that was my cat’s job. Instead, I focused on things I wouldn’t normally have the time to tackle such as my ever-expanding reading list. I settle into a routine of listening to audiobooks or educational podcasts in the kitchen while I cooked elaborate meals. One morning I was listening to a podcast about historic women of the Renaissance obscured by history, i.e., not taught in history class. One episode was dedicated to Mandugai Khatun, a Mongolian Empress of the late Middle Ages. Breakfast took longer to cook that morning. I was so enthralled with what I was listening to, that my multi-tasking skills were failing me and I had to slow down my prep work. The last thing I wanted was to accidentally cut off my finger… again…but that is a different story. I digress. I found myself asking so many questions and the top of the list… why is this woman not mentioned in history classes?
She and later her husband whom she raised, no judgment, represented the last vestiges of what was the great Mongol empire founded by Genghis Khan. They were the last hurrah of reviving the Mongol Empire that had disintegrated into clan disputes. There was a brief mention of Genghis Khan and how westerners always say his name wrong. That had me asking— How do you say it then? [Ching•gis with hard g’s] What do I actually know about the Mongol Empire? [Turns out pathetically little]
It started with a simple enough question; the answers opened a whole new world that was fascinating to learn about. The empire that Genghis Khan created with his daughters and grandsons. The revolutionary way he maintained his kingdom made me even more curious about the culture that fomented it. And that brought me to yet another question. Why don’t we know more about this?
The Beginning
After reflection, the answer is so obvious. It’s all about perspective and how you learned history. We are taught that history is the record of those that went before us. It tells us how we got to where we are today. History should be a record of all that happened— facts — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Unfortunately, it has often been used to tell a narrative that is tailored and molded to serve someone’s purpose. The best perversions of history are those that don’t falsify but simply omit. They can hide behind saying “nothing we said was wrong”. However, it is not entirely right either. The saying goes that history is written by the winners, but I would like to add that history is also written by the selfish. Those that are not even interested in telling others’ stories, even when no harm would come from it. I guess it would do harm if the narrative was to elevate a culture above all others. To erase others from memory. But no matter how much we try to erase history there are always clues left behind. All it ensures is obscurity and a lack of understanding for future generations. I often wonder if it is fear or selfishness that drives the attempt to erase history. I don’t know for sure, but it has driven me to search for another viewpoint.
I grew up under the U.S. education bias, which is to say a heavily westernized whitewashed narrative. It did not tell of the indigenous peoples already here, nor even the other Europeans that came later, such as eastern and southern Europeans. Not to mention the history of the many willing and unwilling immigrants from Africa and Asia. All the unpleasant things are ignored or if mentioned glazed over so thinly that it’s a wonder why they even mention it. When it came to history the narrative has always been, the ancient Greeks then the Romans, the greatest empire, and none was seen like it until the British Empire. Then on to American domination. The intermediary period is just blah. We never really cover other empires as if they had no lasting contribution to the world. This is not meant to belittle the British empire; indeed, it was impressive, but they were not the only ones. Great empires had already been accomplished by the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and those are just the European empires. I remember in school when we reached the medieval point in ‘global‘ history there are no mentions of African or South American history. China only gets a mention because of Marco Polo and the Silk Road. When it came to Genghis Khan and the Mongols, I remember only having to know that they were a foe that encroached on the borders of the Byzantine Empire. That’s it. Nothing about how vast it was. How they influence their neighboring states, what they contributed to civilization. In fact, their very name Mongol was taught to us as another group of barbaric peoples. And barbaric became synonymous in western language as uncivilized, uncultured savages. So, as it was glazed over, I too paid little attention to it. Until Mandugai Khatun piqued my interest. As I attempted to learn about the Mongol empire, I realized just how ignorant I was of the history of the Eurasian steppes.
Here I am, a westerner, who loves to watch international cinema, listen to music even if I don’t understand the language because I believe that music is transcendent and its message and feeling will always come through. Yet I cannot believe I had not until recently realized how unaware I was of the complexity and richness of the steppes. I frankly found it overwhelming because I didn’t even have a foundational knowledge of the area to cleave onto. Reading on the Mongols without basic knowledge of the area was like starting to read a book from the middle or watching a movie when it’s already half over. You end up with more questions than answers. I started taking a course on steppe history through the wonderful platform of The Great Courses. This course opened my eyes to a whole new narrative of world history, and it cannot but change how one would see the world. It has now been a year since this quest started, and I am still finding new areas to explore. Once I had expanded the boundaries of my imagination, I could venture into never-explored topics. I am dedicating a series to the Eurasian steppes and how learning about them has led me to seemingly unrelated topics but weirdly have all sprung out of one another. My mind was open to receive and indeed it did.
The Steppes
When friends would ask me what I was up to I could not help but bring up the latest project I was into because of the steppe quest. Then many would ask me— what the heck is a steppe? So, starting with basics, a steppe is a geographical zone. Other words you have probably heard to refer to a steppe are prairie, plains, pampas, or just simply grasslands. That is what they are in the simplest terms open flat grasslands. However, steppes being further away from the equator are not tropical and experience cold winters which is what differentiates them from savannahs. They occur around the world but without a doubt, the largest is the Eurasian steppe. Spanning from modern-day Hungary in a continuous band through Eastern Europe and Central Asia to Manchuria. Like all grasslands, steppes are home to large grazing herd animals. Because of the large herd animals found in these areas the historical cultures found here have been herding as well as hunter-gatherers. These are people which migrate with the wild and domesticated herds as they roam for more grass to eat. Nomadic life and the steppe have gone hand in hand since prehistoric times. While traveling, these nomadic peoples would interact with sedentary agricultural societies from a few different access points. In the west at the end of the Hungarian plain nomads could interact with the sedentary agricultural peoples along the Black Sea and on the fertile lands of the lower Danube. Nomads could access the Middle East and especially the fertile crescent civilizations via the Caucasus Mountains. From there they could move into the Asian subcontinent. They could also cross through Central Asia in the land between the Caspian Sea and the Altai Mountains, an area historically called Transoxiana. In the east, the nomadic peoples had interacted with the people of ancient China. We like to think that great civilizations are based on what they physically built and left behind but that is not the only measure of a great civilization. In the next post, I will go into how the constant interchange between nomadic peoples helped shape the civilized world.
Sense of Wonder 
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