Here’s what I think are the three biggest questions on this theory: 1| LOTR is supposed to be an invented mythology of England. The Mongols never invaded England. 2| This theory works for Uruk-hai and the orcish armies at Pelennor Fields, but not for other orcs (like Moria goblins). 3| “BUT NO HORSES…!” (ie detail X of history or detail Y lore are absent/don’t match at all) There are some “handwavey” answers to these questions. Question 1 could be handwaved with a “something something general western consciousness” type answer, and question 3 with a “bahh details”. But I think the second question really points to the better direction for answers here. While it was exciting to present this theory as a clean 1-to-1 parallel of orcs to Mongols, I think the more realistic version of what’s going on here is that Sauron/orcs are an amalgamation of a ton of different “villains”, both historical and societal, throughout western history. A loud sign of this is the oliphants, which is an explicit parallel to non-Mongolian villain-of-the-west Hannibal bringing his big buddies over the alps to attack Rome. Orcs also parallel a lot of other “barbarian” groups the west fought against, and you see signs of this in other media’s depiction of orcs wearing clothes and armor more reminiscent of Germanic people, vikings, etc. Moria goblins and other instances of orcs we see in Middle Earth really just seem to bring to mind medieval and ancient criminals, highwaymen, mountain bandits, who were also extremely violent, extremely filthy, ate raw meat, etc.. Historically, England had a variety of different historical ties with the mainland, as part of the Roman Empire, as a place frequented and settled by Nordic peoples and Germanic peoples, etc. So I think it’s realistic that England would end up with a lot of stories passed down and part of its mythological archetype set that weren’t necessarily anchored to English soil. So what we end up with was a mish-mash fantasy race built from aspects of all sorts of western boogeymen: bandits, criminals, Mongols, Huns, Carthaginians, northern barbarians, vikings, etc.. Orcs don’t fit any of them exactly and are flexible enough for the storyteller to use them for desired story purposes, while also being flexible enough for the audience to associate to and attach whatever their strongest specific historical or societal resonances happen to be for that individual in their own life and their own nightmares. I think that’s closer to the reality. Genghis Khan plays a large role in anchoring this story’s villain because he played a large antagonistic role in European history, but he’s not the only one. So we have other villains playing large roles as well. - The ALLEGORY QUESTION - First of all, most broadly, saying a story isn’t allegory doesn’t mean “you cannot compare this to anything else” and it doesn't mean “this story was not inspired by anything else”. As I understand it, allegory in storytelling is when there’s a significant primary meaning to get from a story based on an interpretation that doesn't take the events of the story literally or at face value. For example, Plato’s allegory of the cave is (sorry Plato) NOT a very good story -- when evaluated at face value, literally, as a story. It has a weird premise, no action scenes, no car chases, no sexy romance scenes -- two thumbs down, taken as a story on a literal level. But interpreting it with a meaning APART from its literal events, taking it as a metaphor, THAT’S where the primary meaning of this story is. Look at Tolkien’s own example of allegory, “5 wizards, 5 sense” -- that’s trying to use metaphor to find some primary meaning somewhere else, somewhere that’s NOT the literal events of the story. This genghis khan idea is not saying The Lord of the Rings is TRYING TO TEACH US something about the Mongol invasion period. It’s not saying we can find STORY MEANING by treating the story of Sauron as a correlate to this historical event, like “ah this story is NOT about Frodo and the Ring, there’s a deeper symbolic meaning behind Tolkien’s words!” No, this is not that. Just like it’s not Tolkien trying to tell us something ABOUT World War 1, or the industrial revolution. There’s no PRIMARY meaning in those ways of understanding the story. But that doesn't mean that tolkien wasn’t inspired by his experiences in the war. It doesn’t mean that his values relating to industrialization won’t shine through in the story he chooses to tell. And it doesn’t mean that he didn’t borrow resonance from history: from nordic people, from languages, and from the Mongols. That’s how I see this topic.
Very well said. Thank you for making these last few videos / writing this comment that put so much of the immediately felt but hard to describe magic and profundity of the middle-earth stories into coherent explicitly stated ideas. Wonderfully done 👏😎
I truly have so much respect for how you're able to see multiple perspectives & incorporate them into your thinking even if you only can truly subscribe to 1 at the end of the day. You may well have no idea how ACTUALLY rare that is
Out of curiosity did you change the title of the video from "Sauron is Ghengis Khan"? I recall seeing the thumbnail a few hours ago with a different title. Regardless this is a really good video.
I was with you up until you started to take the 'orc' view on them being the 'good guys', and destroying oppressive systems. Honestly that part is a bit ridiculous; you're blending too much history and fiction at that point. I get what you're trying to say; orcs are based off Mongolians, but these people are not monsters, and have fascinating history and culture. But to compare Sauron to Ghengis Kahn in absolute terms is just dumb. Sauron was the lieutenant of a literal demon god; Morgoth. Also; all the corruption happening in the world *was* largely due to Sauron and Morgoth. The Silmarilion shows us that elves can be terrible, brutal and even treacherous or corrupt, but it is made very explicitly clear that Morgoth was the source of it all. Real history does not have an actual Satan (Morgoth) that walked the earth, destroyed and corrupted real people, and fucked things up for everyone. You're missing that obvious historical connection between Sauron and his master. And while we can fill in the blank by saying; westerners saw Ghengis Kahn as a lieutenant of the devil himself; it still falls short. Sauron in the fiction inherits everything from his master, the real Ghengis Kahn did not make a pact with Satan, or inherit an army of imps. Sorry, I still think this is a fascinating video, but some of it is just plain conjecture. The orcs in LOTR were not farmers, they were not like the vikings; who raided periodically but farmed most of the time. They survived by pillaging and were cannibals.
For number one it should be noted that usage of borrowed stereotypes of the Mongol Invasion was popularized in the English-speaking world during WW1 as largely Entente propaganda. Even before the war there was an entire subgenre of fiction about 'eastern enemy invaders' that was making the rounds. To say that this time was formative would be *stares at the swamp full of corpses that drag people to their death* saying it lightly. At this stage your point about disconnecting the people from the mythology has already 100% happened. The propagandists were using this vision to describe... Imperial Germany.
As a Mongolian, it makes me really happy to see you enjoy Mongolia. The theory that Sauron is based on Genghis Khan is a really fascinating one and one that I never even thought about. Great video!
@@JackSparrow-re4ql I don’t fucking vibe with racism of any kind in the least, for any reason. That said, this episode will always be one of the funniest fucking things I’ve ever seen.
same, never made the connection, also had no idea about the not washing, medieval times were so dumb. tbh our ancestors were scarry. They allegedly made a pyramid of heads outside of Moscow... kinda like Guyladriel.
Tolkien talked about this in a 1964 interview. He said that the Orcs were certainly inspired by the Eastern Powers that encroached on Western territories (mostly before the Mongolians, however). You're explanation of your theory on how the Mongolians birthed the archetype is interesting! It wouldn't surprise me if it was 100% where it came from! Great video man
@@dechskaison2497 I'm fairly certain that links get auto-deleted on youtube, but it's not too hard to find if you just search "Tolkien 1964 Interview" It's a little over half of an hour long.
@@Himmyjewett Links to other UA-cam videos don't get deleted, links to sites outside of UA-cam do unless the video's creator specifically allows them. This has been the case for years now.
15:40 in Mordor, there's really only the land around the active volcano that is "unhabitable with poison gas and stuff". The land below is actually really green and fertile thanks to the same volcano (that's how Sauron fed his army) Yet (in the movie) you only hear (and see) Boromir's description. Interesting.
Wow. This was fascinating. I doubt Tolkien consciously based his story off of this event. I think he was deeply inspired by much older myths. But the basic structure of the story may have been ingrained into his subconscious from this event.
I think at the end that’s what he means by its not allegory. Sauron isn’t supposed to be Genghis Khan directly but he’s the mythological ideas that Genghis Khan created in the west
@@deanrichard1770 if you say Genghis Khan was a purely evil tyrant who wanted to dominate though slavery and terror then maybe. I think its better to see it from a nordic myth perspective.
@@deanrichard1770 I don't know where you live but I don't think it's in western europe, because I can tell you that western europe dosen't give a flying fuck about Genghis Khan. He probably created a great deal of trauma to easter europe but europe his not one culture of people and in western europe I think that Genghis Khan is view in a much more neutral light compare to little guy named Attila who did the same thing hundreds of year prieor to the heart of western civilization. (And is for me a much more plausible inspiration for sauron)
@@archeogeek315 I think Genghis Khan is just an example here, I doubt Tolkien had any specific person in mind - it's more the general impression that the invaders from the East left, no matter if their name was Genghis, Attila, Batu, or something else.
"Let's sit in the messiness of the differences and feel the humanity that lives and breathes between the gap of the horribly true and the horribly imagined." What a quote. I LOVE your thoughtful analyses, well done. Thank you for your respect and for always making me think. Thank you for this video!
I would say this "evil from the east" trope is much older than the mongols, but they definitely did reinforce it. I mean you had the Germanic tribes during the migration followed/teamed up with the huns, then the slavs, Cumans or whatever other tribe. then the black death, but also I don't know if the people back in the day understood it actually came from the east.
@@yuvalgabay1023 Basically what I was going to say. The ones in charge of manage the various armies, forts and borders would for sure have known. They are also the only people who were literate at the time afaik.
it might be a stretch but you can probably take that "trope" at least as far back as the hittites in asia minor : to the greek peoples trying to settle there they were a constant source of harassement and raids and fear ... up until the day they vanished from history i think that really sets up the idea of "unknowable barbarian from the east"
@@axeldesaintalbin4922 Well i'd think that cultural memories of the acient greeks would survive until the present, at least with the Renaissance they'd be reinforced
Hungarians also gave some hard times ("strange people on horses with strange customs"), and then they settled, only to be ran over by the Mongols. Fun fact, the Jász people and Cumans were fleeing from the Mongols, found shelter in the Hungarian Kingdom, even pledged to help (as they knew the steppe tactics which Hungarians have forgot in a matter of just a few centuries), but then "strange people with strange traditions" caused a bloody disagreement, and they left the country causing destruction along their way. Some of them eventually returned to help, and settled (with unique rights granted), but many stayed away in present day Moldova and Bessarabia (where they already had related tribes).
Given the Volsunga saga and the Poetic Edda(which Tolkien adapted into english btw) both feature as an antagonist Atli AKA Attila the Hun, a weird looking and powerful warlord from the east that had a lot in common with Genghis Khan, I don't find this surprising at all, its a tale as old as rideable horses I suppose, but with Genghis it ended up being writ a great deal larger.
After ghosting UA-cam for countless hours meaning to like videos and support content, this video broke me. My first like! Well done, sir. Fascinating, brilliantly edited, and thoughtful. I’ve embraced my love of Early Medieval History, and the “key-spring” was my love of Tolkien’s “lost mythology” and the histories that captivated his whole life and all their messy complexities. I was aware of Tolkien’s private letter passage thanks to Lindsay Ellis’s BRIGHT analysis, and while I believe she said “Yikes”, I discerned Tolkien’s intent of capturing the fear Western cultures had for the Great Khan’s Eastern subjects. Also, believing that Tolkien no doubt wanted to capture the chaos of different cultures scrounging for survival and a slice of glory in the over-ambitious Roman Empire, the time his beloved Anglo-Saxons appeared on the scene. This train of thought reached a point in my own amateur research when reading a copy of Tim Newark’s The Barbarians (1985) which the first chapter titles “The most terrible of all: The Huns and Eastern Germans”, citing Roman rumors of a race of men “hideous to behold; skulls deformed by binding when young and slits for eyes. Swollen cheeks disfigured by scars and covered in wispy hair” (11). Moreover, “The Huns spent so much of their life on horseback that they had difficulty walking. Like American cowboys, they developed a bowlegged gait” (12). Orcs in Tolkien’s mythology absolutely fascinate me on their own merit. I understand the races of Middle Earth to be caricatures of the vast aspects of our shared humanity, orcs exemplifying our tendencies to rage, bully, wrinkle, and give in to fear and despair. And imo it’s not their fault. And I like to think Tolkien was aware of this. I believe tolkien said the creation of orcs was Melkor’s most evil attack on his creator’s intended good. I can ramble more. I’m sure I left holes to fill and think this isn’t a wise note to end on. Still, well done, Schnee! Thank you. PS the Boromir in my own fellowship, whom I sent your video to and loved it, wants to plan a trip to Mongolia after his first naval deployment. I hope to go with. Cheers!
Attila's Huns also rampaged through Europe from the East and retreated after their leader's death. Tolkien didn't base his stories on singular figures or events, but rather on the accumulated common lore of European history and mythology; and since Europe is the West End of Eurasia, stories about "invaders from the East" are abundant.
The funny thing about your comment about imagining if the Fellowship got to Mordor and it was all green like Mongolia, is that there are actually parts of Mordor that are actually green and lush (particularly by the sea). It’s just the area we see is desolate because it’s in the lava plain of an actively erupting volcano, and because the orcs have made their war base there, mining all the resources to make armor and weapons, and to make room for their camps
Well they also must have kept those stolen horses somewhere :) so maybe in Nurn there are some good grassy plains for herds, along with the fields for farming for the food production in Mordor :). "'Some years ago the Lord of the Black Land wished to purchase horses of us at great price, but we refused him. for he puts beasts to evil use. Then he sent plundering Orcs, and they carry off what they can, choosing always the black horses: few of these are now left.'" Since they stole these horses and further bred them in Mordor to accustom them to the presence of Nazgul one wonders where they would keep them..there would be some space in the region of Nurn no doubt hehe.
@@AICW "Neither he nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beyond the fumes of the Mountain by the dark sad waters of Lake Núrnen..."
The trope about monsters coming from nowhere, causing caos and destruction can also be found in the history of the Viking invansions (from the british isles perspective) and in the least known Sea Peoples that cause the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200-900 BCE) and simply disappeared.
Great video, I can't wait to see more from you about LotR especially. One quick nitpick: Mount Doom isn't called that by the orcs (and by comparison, isn't a name "those scary eastern people" would use). It's a common name used by people who don't live in Mordor. The native name of the mountain is Orodruin, which means something close to "mountain of fire". I'd say that's a pretty straightforward name for a volcano. Also the word "doom" today has lost one of its connotations today which is something like "fate". Now when we hear "doom" we think pretty much exclusively of a bad end, but in earlier times it was more associated with fate in general, as more like a "final destination." Still kind of a cheesy name but a bit less ridiculous with that connotation. I know it was a minor point in the video, but you seem very thorough in your work so I figure you might want this kind of thing pointed out. Thanks again for making these videos.
I like the touching on etymology; and would like to mention that "Destiny" once had the same connotations as "Doom". From what I understand, all of those fate synonyms came from the idea of heroic tragedy. Death is certain, always - everyone knows this. So, stories integrated this into the plots - having a hero be told of their death, and the manner of it for dramatic reasons, while still engaging with that fear-of-death empathy. The noble side of Doom/Destiny/Fate is was not the evasion of it, that was impossible in the old stories - in fact, trying to do so often resulted in self-fulfillment of the Doom; but they prided the hero on how then went to meet it. Having a fate, or a doom was, and should be in terms of character; all about how the character of the person receiving it. A person who tries to avoid destiny is seen as cowardly, foolish, and wasteful of the time they had. A character that marches towards their doom, head high is seen as self-aware, courageous, and impetuous. Remember what Achilles said, when his seeress mother told him that if he went to war that he would certainly die. "A short life, and a long fame for me."
Something interesting is that, at least, the translators were aware of this, because the Spanish version of the movies, the Southamerican version at least, calls it the "Montaña del Destino". Literally, the Mountain of Fate
It should be noted that 'renaming' the mountain was done by the Gondorians when it first erupted after return of Sauron after Downfall of Numenor: "Sauron... came in secret... to his ancient kingdom of Mordor beyond the Ephel Dúath..., and that country marched with Gondor upon the east. There... was a fiery mountain in that land that the Elves named Orodruin.... Now Sauron prepared war against the Eldar and the Men of Westernesse, and the fires of the Mountain were wakened again. Wherefore seeing the smoke of Orodruin from afar, and perceiving that Sauron had returned, the Númenóreans named that mountain anew Amon Amarth, which is Mount Doom. And Sauron gathered to him great strength of his servants out of the east and the south; and among them were not a few of the high race of Númenor. For in the days of the sojourn of Sauron in that land the hearts of well nigh all its people had been turned towards darkness. Therefore many of those who sailed east in that time... were already bent to his will, and they served him still gladly in Middle-earth. But because of the power of Gil-galad these renegades, lords both mighty and evil, for the most part took up their abodes in the southlands far away.... When therefore Sauron saw his time he came with great force against the new realm of Gondor...." The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age
This was fascinating! I'm very interested in the relationship between myth and history, and I've never seen it articulated like this before. Just... the simple idea of "how do mothers articulate their cultural trauma to their children?", specifying that history descends from different channels, that myth is at once rooted in real events but takes on a life of its own... I'm more familiar with the sorts of functions myths have, and how rewriting them can reshape a culture, but the more unconscious processing of historical events into stories... I need to think about this more :) Your content is consistently awesome, thank you for sharing.
I'm blown away how good this video is. Very interesting take. Also the part where you go to Mongolia feels so sincere and looks beautiful. Makes me want to visit too.
Very thoughtful video i never got any of the trauma Chingis khaan caused because i grew up in mongolia but it does seem like a very traumatizing event. We learn about him from a boy to a slave to a chieftain to a Khaan so its a really inspirational story with a bloody ending. A big man that grew up in a really harsh environment that preserved through a lot to get to where he died. Great video !
Imagine putting all this effort into a pretty compelling video and only getting 39,000 views out of it. This video is awesome and deserves more recognition
Your commentary is phenomenal as always, but your commitment to these last few videos is amazing! I loved seeing all the footage you had of Mongolia, and it really did a lot to bring your points home throughout this video. Great stuff!
Tolkien was said to be very careful to avoid allegory. I think parallels are clear here, but I don't think that is intentional. A lot of what makes a dark lord and what makes a conqueror are pretty parallel.
I don't think it's supposed to be an allegory, it's more about what inspired this part of Tolkien's work. That's a difference: Sauron is not supposed to represent Genghis Khan (allegory), but he along with the Orcs may be inspired by various historical invaders from the East.
@@Lothiril way more likely that the extremely religious Tolkien was inspired by the Bible. It has many, many verses about tyranny coming from the east.
As a fan of your channel, and a Canadian living in Mongolia I was super disappointed when you said "It's not like I'm going to Mongolia," haha, I'm glad you got to see so much of this very beautiful country. If you come here in the middle of winter it'll feel a bit more like Mordor though ; )
invading hordes from the east is an ancient western trope, definitely agreed. but I think it's also global. the story of nomadic horsemen developing a warrior culture, invading their soft but sophisticated agricultural and metropolitan neighbors, easily conquering their vulnerable cities, but becoming enamored with their civilization and picking up much of their culture, is something that repeats often in history. it's especially salient in Europe because it's part of our ethnogenesis. Europeans as we know them today are the result of horselords from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe invading the vulnerable agricultural west some 4 to 5 thousand years ago. the western Europeans were mostly farmers at the time and had little facility for war. riding horses would have been completely foreign to these agriculturalists. those eastern horselords killed most of the men, taking their women and producing a new population with their admixture, with their language and customs and cultural institutions dominating and defining the higher class. their cousins did the same thing in Anatolia, Iran, and in northwest India. so already by 500 BC, Europeans were largely genetically, culturally, and linguistically defined by hordes from the steppe, but they surely retained a cultural memory of the carnage. it's an interesting situation, when the boogeyman who slaughtered your ancestors is also your ancestor. how should you remember him? and then began the period of Rome's dominance, and Rome's cultural and mythological legacy is preserved today in all European societies and many Near Eastern societies too. and Rome always remembered when the Gauls sacked Rome, when the Scythians/Saka terrorized the Eastern Roman Empire, when the Germanic barbarians slaughtered the western legions, when Atilla and his Huns invaded, and when the world ended (i.e. when the Western Roman Empire fell). and throughout the Middle Ages, Europe had to contend with attacks from the east. of course, there was nothing to the west or to the north, Europe being the furthest northwestern continent, and the south (Africa) was generally weak (excepting Carthage), so the only direction evil hordes could come from was east. but anyway, the same story has played out in the east, and is pivotal in eastern cultures as well. from the earliest periods of its history, China (an agricultural and cultural powerhouse) had to contend with their nomadic, northern neighbors. the Eurasian Steppe is the cradle of a certain kind of civilization that has popped up many times in history. the Donghu and Xiongnu were the eastern counterpart of the Proto-Indo-European speakers that conquered Europe. it seems that agriculture promotes highly organized, large, urban settlements, which have favorable conditions for the development of very sophisticated culture and institutions. China had many things their northern neighbors lacked. every sophisticated craft you can think of. being an urban, river-bound civilization, they lacked horses. and horses can run circles around men. a man on horseback is damn near invincible next to a man on foot. so they compensated for their vulnerability on the field by building huge walls and artillery. these different ways of life promote the development of very different cultures and technologies. different specializations. but when the nomads eventually conquer the cities (as they nearly always do, as their way of life promotes the development of a warlike culture and warfare technologies), they always seem to become enamored with the more metropolitan way of life. they want to rule it, but they end up adopting many of its customs. that is why the great khans gave their children a traditional Chinese education. eventually, over a few generations, the nomads either disappear into the native populations they rule, becoming a "superstratum" influence on the host culture but losing any distinct identity of their own, or else they lose what made them powerful. their empires are usually very short-lived, separating along the same lines as the native populations that once comprised them. Genghis Khan's great Khaganate split into many separate polities, as his descendants were influenced by the various cultures they ruled. the Golden Horde in the west was more western-influenced than the Yuan dynasty in the east, resulting in a feud that split the Khaganate. and as we know, the Yuan dynasty lost its "Mongolness" and became just another Chinese dynasty, and something analogous happened to the Golden Horde. I find this historical pattern so interesting. and it's important to me because I, like many people, am essentially the legacy of that pattern. I'm the product of my nomadic ancestors mingling with my agricultural ancestors. I inherit the spirit of both. and so I respect Genghis Khan, yet I simultaneously sympathize with the demonization of him. and I suspect his European victims would have felt the same way if it was not happening to them, because they too came from nomadic stock. like I said before, the Europeans were already the descendants of nomadic horsemen. two thousand years earlier, they were not so different from the Mongol hordes. but due to the pattern I described, the nomadic way of life quickly gave way to the more sophisticated, agricultural civilization. so even though the nomads left a huge legacy, not least of which is every surviving language native to Europe except Basque, that legacy was largely forgotten or divorced from its nomadic roots. the European upper class was still defined by equestrian culture, i.e. knighthood, but that existed as a tiny fixture against a backdrop of Christian culture, which came from the cities and encouraged a radically different life than the ancestral life of a nomadic pastoralist warlord. so when the Khaganate came to Europe, it was already unrecognizable, completely alien to the Europeans.
I'm Brazilian, and Brazilian folklore is full of things like this. Brazil is a country built (not only culturally, but also physically) by slavery, eugenics and the conflict between ethnicities and classes (not a very politically stable place). Part of our folklore came from demonized indigenous religions, part of it came from Africa and what black people went through, part of it came from Europe. This process is very interesting to learn about, because it highlights not what actually happened, but what a specific people actually saw. The morals, and the fears of a culture, how we think, what gives us hope. Most of the indigenous-rooted legends, for example, revolve around spirits that protect the forests, places that are sacred to them. And people that became part of nature. In Brazilian folklore, there is also a lit of fire imagery, which I actually need to understand better (i'm white), but shows that fire, at least to some extent, is equates to protection. The thing of "bad Europeans" is also clear. There is the tale of Labatut (a horrible monster, that I don't know how to tell the story of). If you know something about South American Native Languages, Bantu Languages, or Portuguese, you are probabbly questioning the origin of that name. Labatut was actually a French general, who people really hated. But that mistification also happens the other way around. The imagery of the lonely sailor, who left his country and family, to sing about his terrible fate [fado, a Portuguese tradition], and drown in his saudade [a word so important that people refuse to translate], is very important to Portugal's cultural identity. Just as the enslaved kings and queens who formed the quilombos, who made capoeira, and samba, fighting against white enslavers are to Brazil. That last example is one that I'm more familiar with, and one that has many impacts on culture, like the depth of meaning that turbants have for black people and traditions. But one that I wanted to highlight here is the story of Chico Rei. [King Francisco]. He was a Congolese prince, who was kidnapped and brought in a negreiro ship [I don't know the translation of negreiro, but it's the type of ship that would bring in enslaved people]. There was too much weight, so the Portuguese throw two people to the see: Chico's parents, the royals of his country. Without them, and without his land, he had to became king in the see. When his people arrived in Brazilian shores, the Portuguese named them all with Biblical names, and made all the efforts to erase their traditions. That is how the Congolese got the name Francisco, abreviated as Chico. They went to work in Minas Gerais (General Mines). If they didn't make enough gold in a day, they eould be punished, but Chico always made sure the gold was evenly distributed. They kept stealing, discreetly, the gold, and, person by person, buying their Carte de Alforria (the document that granted freedom). When they were all free, Chico Rei was crowned the King of Congo in Brazil. There are many stories about black resistency, the most important of them being the Quilombo dos Palmares, that is now sacred ground, leadered by Zumbi & Dandara, and black wealth, like Xica da Silva, an enslaved woman who arised to the top and was treated like a queen, as Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery. I told the story of Chico Rei not only because that's the one I know more about, but also because I was curious about what Congolese people have to say about it.
What I know from iranians, they seem even today have a love-hate relationship for alexander (please iranians correct me if I'm talking out of my ass...) Like he was a mighty conqueror who kind of loved Persia etc., but on the other hand he sacked Persepolis, and was also a drunkard using psychoactive wine enhanced with ergot or some other stuff etc... So, them iranians have very mixed feelings about Alexander at least. But he must have made an impression, as they are still talking about the dude.
Have you read the "Last ring-bearer" by Kirill Yeskov? It is a retelling of LOTR with the orcs "realistic" view on the war, and has some very interesting insights in Arda history.
@@magister343 I believe thats the point kind of like Game of Thrones and Witcher focus on the ugly and intense in attempt to be more "realistic". Tho i think it could be possible to have Tolkien like writing that shows both sided in more detail, just basing it off how Gondor, Rohan and other locations and cultures are explored and described
It is funny how all 3 of those 'more realsitic' stories, judged as such by people who are neither historians nor veterans, about war were written by people who never experianced war and are not historians. While the 'less reaslisitc' war story was written by someone who experienced ww1.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 I think George RR Martin did write at least one history book, you could consider him a historian. Also the way war worked in ww1 was a lot different than any war before that, especially one in medieval times. So although Tolkien war it wasn’t like he was an expert on medieval warfare
excellent video! i really do like the comparison to star wars, because those two stories also have another connection that i believe i heard from matthew colville: in both of them, the personal craft is seen as an art, while industrialisation is seen as a tool for evil. its very nature vs machinery, and can become very on-the-nose with treants vs mining equipment or ewoks vs ATST or gungans vs droids. the moment when luke turns off the targeting computer and trusts in the force is kind of a mirror to when saruman chooses to use blackpowder against helms klamm. as a maia, he literally has the ability to rewrite the rules of reality, but he chooses to invent bombs. another thing i want to mention is a video i would suggest you watch: HelloFutureMe made a video about sauron as the nietzsch’ian ubermensch. that idea sort of gives more of a shape to what the western nightmare is.
As I watched this video all I could think was, "holy, cow, of course!" It was staring me in the face all these years and I never saw it. Brilliant insights. And it's just as amazing, as you pointed out, that this mythologizing is going on around us everyday and we don't see that, either. Subscribed. Looking forward to watching your other videos.
`dude this vid might be a new favorite of yours. i really appreciate your approach to the subject matter i used to be a lot bigger of a LotR fan when i was little, and growing up it's been harder for me to enjoy for a few reasons. it feels kinda cliché now (not its fault! it predated and inspired so much), and also the racial overtones have made me hesitant. but i'm really grateful for this analysis of the subject. you weren't judgmental. you were just being loving and educational, and that's the best thing a person can be IMO
I want to transpose the history of disability struggles (as a person with a visible physical disability) into fantasy in exactly this same way as you pose here. Thanks for this, good inspiration.
The way you explained the way we mythologize our interactions with other cultures, like through wars in ancient times where our world was just our local community and all that, reminded me of the Overly Sarcastic Productions video about the ancient Minoans and how Athens’s myth of the Minotaur is one of the few pieces we have to go on about the Minoan civilization since we still can’t read their writing system. A bull-loving kingdom on an island with labyrinthine palaces and cities forcing neighboring lands to give up their resources through piracy became an antagonistic king forcing enslaved Athenians into a labyrinth to be devoured by a bull-headed monster, and it was stopped by a heroic Athenian with the favor of the gods. We have no records of how exactly the Minoan civilization fell because it was in the recordless dark ages, but presumably the Athenians fought the Minoans and won, leaving us with a biased narrative written by the winners and practically nothing left of the losers.
This was a great analysis, loved the way it was structured. Also provides a new perspective on how to observe, criticize and analyse history from that old perspective and way to understand the world.
I've been thinking about this! With Rings of Power out and replaying Shadow of Mordor, it's been on my mind. The first historical figure that came to mind when I mulling this over was Atilla the Hun. He had very similar tactics to Genghis Khan, though his territory was significantly smaller. I suspect Attila had a great impact on the western conception of the east as well. His campaigns were all occurring during the fall of the Roman Empire, a period which laid the foundations of the Europe we know today. I'm particularly drawn to how Atilla was defeated in battle by a broad coalition of Roman/Germanic/Celtic groups at Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. It sounds like the War of the Last Alliance at the end of the Second Age. While the significance of that battle is debated, it certainly holds a lot of narrative importance to the western powers that survived afterwards. The often used term of Hun as a derogative for the Germans during World War 1 also comes to mind, Tolkien was developing a lot of his earliest linguistic work on Elvish during that period. The Huns themselves were known to practice artificial cranial deformation by binding their skulls so they would elongate. I wonder if this practice may have influenced terrorized Romans to describe the Huns as more beast like or monstrous than their Germanic neighbors, who raided just about as often as the Huns and Alans did.
Very interesting theory, I’ve never heard of it before. I guess another way to put this is Genghis Khan had such a traumatizing impact on the peoples he conquered, that he entered the collective Zeitgeist. Over the years, we forgot the connection to Genghis Khan because of the separation between us and the people he directly impacted. Similar to Hitler: finding “positive” impacts of his is seen as absolutely abhorrent because we are only one/two generations away from those who lived through his atrocities. He was objectively terrible, but as time passes, we become less and less separated from the trauma. Our historical commentary on older time periods reflects this. Seeing Genghis Khan in a positive light reminds me of how Europeans see men like Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Europeans emphasize the “positive impacts” that were ultimately ONLY side effects to the massively negative impact they had on history so I always remind myself this: “was the “positive” impact worth the cost?” My answer to this question is always: no, never.
One important aspect of Tolkien's stories I think should be mentioned here is that, Orcs aside, Tolkien did allude to Mongolians, Arabs and various other cultures that Western civilization considered "savage", through the Easterlings and Haradrim. And the best part is that at no point he describes them as being "absolutely evil", "inhuman" or "inferior". Easterlings and Haradrim were under the thrall of Sauron and Morgoth, being tricked or manipulated towards evil, and even then many of them rebelled against this control across history. And once Aragorn became King and Sauron was defeated, he reached out and made peace with them. Not "dominated", "colonized, "civilized" or "evangelized" (or the Eru/Valar equivalent of it). The tyrant controlling them was vanquished, and Aragorn established a peaceful common ground where Easterlings and Haradrim could continue to live as their own kingdoms, only as allies or at least neutral towards the Free-People of Middle Earth. At separate points, he also says the Men of Rohan gained respect for the Haradrim as fellow warriors, and Sam pondering that perhaps these men fighting for Sauron probably aren't doing this out of their own volition or malice and perhaps would have preferred a different path. The Orcs and Sauron are the fantasy element that needs to get "exterminated", but that begins and ends with them, much like the idea of "Dark Lord Genghis Khan". And, oddly enough, both Sauron and Genghis Khan have a personal context where, as you say, their actions made sense, but obviously Sauron is far more diabolical and cataclysmic; Sauron believed he must take over the world so he can make it an orderly place no matter what, because HE thinks he's the best person for the job and his vision is better than everyone else's. Genghis probably didn't have THIS level of narcissism, and was mostly operating on the good ol' medieval mentality of "Everyone is only out for theirselves and their tribe, so I need to be THE best at it so me and MY tribe can survive, no matter how gruesome I need to be to ensure that". There was cruelty and violence involved, naturally, but it was out of "Do Unto Them Before They Do Unto Us" concerns, not "MWAHAHAHA, I'M SO EVIL AND DIABOLICAL" or even Sauron's "I'm the Uber-Man who knows what's best for everyone, so KNEEL MORTALS!". The best part of this is that you can infer that Tolkien was also and specifically talking about the German here. Germans weren't the ultimate evil of WWII; Hitler & Nazism was. Tyranny and Greed are the ultimate evil, and anyone can fall under their dominion. Considering what Tolkien and the UK went through during the World Wars, that's VERY progressive and admirable of Tolkien. "Once the war is done, let's stop demonizing each other and try making peace for a change".
As some have pointed out I would say they archetype goes deeper, from the Persian Empire to the Sasanids, Huns,Ottomans, Mongols and many more. Western Europe has been in existencial crisis for thousands of years from of an great eastern empire, you could even say the Soviet Union also fits the archetype. Great video!
Awesome video! It reminded me of an even older “monsters from the east” account of the Assyrians fighting the “Umman Manda” (Horde from Who Knows Where). Horse archers got around haha
Great video. Subbed. If you wanted to go even deeper, the first time murder happens in the Bible is in the story of Cain and Abel. One was a pastoralist, the other a settled farmer. The archetype of nomadic pastoral people vs settled agrarian people is deeply ingrained in all of humanity. At some point we were all part of a nomadic group, until we settled down. Those who we encountered who were still nomads seemed savage and uncivilized to us who decided to plant roots (quite literally) and take up subsistence agriculture.
There's certainly no coincidence that the story of cain and Abel came out of the "Near East". The story of the fertile crescent is one long series of settled, centralised farming civilisations being overrun by nomadic peoples from the hills and the plains, whose kingdoms would eventually fall to the next wave of invaders. It's the story of civilisations across the world, but in the Near East, that process is sped up to eleven.
This would fit better with the mythology surrounding Atilla and the Huns. Almost everything noted about the Mongols already existed in the myths about the Huns including the dehumanizing otherness, see Roman writings of the period, the sudden collapse following Atilla's death and their alleged brutality. The Mongols were just more successful at empire building and have more documented brutal tactics. The tropes and myths already exisited due to millenia of conflict between various steppes nomads groups and their settled neighbors. Persia has its own mythologized enemy with the Turanians which probably take themes from clashes with various neighboring cultures.
If you had argued Atilla the Hun rather than Genghis Khan it might have had some merit. The Lord of the Rings is loosely based on the Dark Age period with Gondor being roughly equivalent the waning Roman civilization. It is said Atilla created nothing while destroying everything around the Huns.
What an awesome way to engage with a topic. Just take us there and show us the reality. It really is so balancing and thoughtful to contrast the imagined negative perception you are discussing with the beautiful visuals you are showing. Talk about a show don’t tell for the win!
The second this started I thought of the Saga of the Volsungs - The Norse Epic of Sigurd The Dragon Slayer as it likely influenced quite a few parts of Tolkiens universe. I had read a borrowed copy of an edition that was blue and yellow/brown with a ship on the cover. It said "Introduction and Translation by Jesse L. Byock".
Great video, made with passion and care. It wouldn't surprise me if Tolkien looked to many cultures and histories for inspiration as he was curious about a great deal! My only reservation is that in my opinion he did have other cultures of men in his work, such as the Easterlings and he went to great lengths to humanise them. The Orcs however were not men, nor did they have a culture. History, as you've beautifully shown in your video is full or grey but Tolkien made sure to put some examples of truly good and evil in his stories. The Orcs, for me are those. Not simply creatures that happen to be a threat like wolves or bears, not 'fallen' characters like Saruman or Gollum but evil, like Shelob, Ungoliant or the Orcs. Anyway, just my thoughts. Great work, looking forward to more!
I've always thought that the Easterlings and the Khandish warriors were the direct archetype of Mongols, Persians, Sassanids, etc. Its an interesting and thought out analysis though, perhaps Sauron is a mashup of multiple figures of history and mythology? I've seen similarities between him and King Solomon and now this as well, its plausible. I wonder if you have theories on Morgoth or the the Kingdom of Angmar?
This theory is very interesting. I don't know exactly what to make of it myself, but I enjoyed hearing your take on it. When comparing fictional writings to real historical figures, I think you did a good job weighing the prose and khans.
What isn't explained in the novel is that good doesn't always win Also ghengis eventually won global dominance Except of course with places like Egypt Muslims really pulled of the còup De Gràce in the battle of Ain Jalut
Great video although Tolkien said his story isn't an allegory. Many people tried to theorize on what The Lord of The Rings was. Some people said it was an allegory of World War 1 to The Holy Wars/Crusades (Islamic Invasion of Western Europe in the Middle Ages), The Persian Invasion of Greece and finally yes the Mongolian Invasion. But like I said Tolkien claimed he wasn't writing an allgory. With that being said, I would say that the ethnic and religious make up of the Enemies of the Men of the West in Lord of the Rings would be: Easternlings (Mongolians/Turks), Haradim (North African Muslims), Orcs (Nephilim/Demonic).
Fantastic video. I had not realized how closely Sauron mirrored Genghis Khan! I want to say a lot more, but can't seem to find words, lol. So just, thank you for a great video, great content, and a great analysis of a complex topic.
as a Mongolian, imagine my surprise when fucking GENGHIS KHAN showed up in my feed like, what? but thank you for enjoying my country and thank you for the great video!!!
On top of Genghis Khan, the exact same thing (and actually closer from Sauron) would be Attila, who relied a lot on subjugated peoples (Ostrogoths vs Easterlings & Haradrims), and once Attila is dead, not even a second wave of sons and grandsons, his empire instantly collapses and ceases to be a threat. Meanwhile Genghis Khan managed to pass his empire to his son Ogodei in one piece, and once Ogedei died his empire quickly split but each part remained a significant power for a while. The monstruous part was even stronger, as the Huns banded the skulls of their children to deform them.
This reminds me of the movie 300, it had overly exaggerated imagery of Persian army, but for a Greek soldier on the defensive, that might have been been the way those elephants, arrow volleys and all other crazy things felt like. Same here, when it comes to European view of the Mongol horde, seems like a very probable comparison.
Hey very interesting video as a tolkein fan from India the stories from the second age made me feel that there were themes of colonialism sauron whispering discord between the different allied races ( divide and rule) tempting the people with advanced technology ( the rings) a smaller group of people conquering a larger population and areas and sauron being defeated with an alliance of all native people of middle earth defeating him, division of a United people of gondor and arnor and there were also nuemenor colonies
That was very interesting! As a side note, I think you should have a longer and flashier title to attract more views. Doesn't have to be a ridiculous clickbait title, but something longer than four words. Maybe something like, "From Genghis Khan to Sauron: How History Shapes the Stories We Tell". You could probably come up with something better than that, but I just wanted to give an example. Great video!
Tolkien hated allegory. His world was based off of European mythology, not any traditional profane history. There may be a few similarities but the connections end there.
for schnee or anyone curious, please look up Kirill Yeskov's The Last Ringbearer, it's free, it's a well-written fanfic about how mordor was enlightened, industrializing, egalitarian, demonized by the west. i grew up on lotr. i remember looking at and wondering what was in rhun and harad, the edges of the known world. years later, i thought yeah the Easterlings in peter jackson's Two Towers looked cool in a meta way. now i'm basically with grrm, tolkien was an undeniable titan, but it def feels like we've Moved On in many ways.
I can agree with most of what you’re saying here. Perspective is really important and exposing complexity and examining it is vital. But I’m also curious what you think about the impact this kind of depiction can have on people. Especially when you watch the films, and see how the orcs and Haradrim are portrayed. The way people are portrayed in media has an effect on how we view them or people similar to them in real life. And if you consider the history of Hollywood and all the “yellow/brown peril” movies out there, how does LotR fit into that? That perspective has become the norm, even though as you said in the video, from the perspective of Africans or indigenous people things would be different. I’d really love to hear your take on this issue!
I'm glad to hear someone articulating this concept in the way that you are with your perspective on it. This is an idea that Ive tried to communicate to people plenty of times before and just fallen on completely deaf ears. As criticism, I would contend the same argument could be made for the Umayyad caliphate taking the eastern Mediterranean from Byzantium, or the Ottoman-Hapsburg wars - The battle of Helm's Deep is basically just copy pasted from the 1683 Siege of Vienna. When analyzing cultural narratives, I think it's exceptionally difficult to pick apart the myth-making from the actually lived factual history, and that's what makes this kind of "direct comparison" a bit dicey.
On another channel the guy was talking about how Sauron wasn't always evil. He saw the chaos and pain in the human world and wanted to establish order. Might be more intentional thinking than we give him credit for. Also, the orcs used to be elves, is that just more mythologizing? Saying these raiders used to be beautiful (if so, beautiful like caucasians or beautiful as their own people?) until they were corrupted. Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing your passion on this and the beautiful mess that is humanity.
Its interesting to see and think about how these events influenced people's perspectives and stories over the years and allows a person to take a deep dive in old perceptions of foreign overwhelming power. I am glad that modern historians are able to find all this information and build a somewhat (hopefully) accurate depiction of all events on both sides of the argument in order to convey the true circumstances of those times. Its also interesting to think of the Travels of Marco Polo and how he and the "books" might have influenced the perceptions of people in the West of the politics, cultures, customs and people in the East and the Mongol Empire and the perceptions of Kublai Khan as a ruler and conqueror.
That's a great theory! Tolkien certainly drew a lot of inspiration from the historic background of Europe. He also had the Dwarves' maps be oriented up = east 👍🏻👍🏼👍🏽
Why not have a fictional mythology of the Brits be influenced by what medieval people will have heard stories told of? Real world origins for the legend of Arthur, the Niebelungenlied, etc. are beimg discussed among scholars...
Since Sauron is an elf, that means elves are Asian. I did think that elves were always meant to represent Asians, since they live long lives and have a youthful appearance.
The UA-camr Hello Future Me made a video about Sauron's goals and motivation. Which he said was to bring order to the chaos of Middle Earth. His goal was "altruistic", to make Middle Earth a perfect utopia, but to do that he needed armies of Uruks to conquer Middle Earth so that he could "fix" everything that was wrong with Middle Earth.
I really like your approach to the fraught question of race(ism?) in Tolkien. It's almost that it's a false question, or a non-question. Some might say, "Look at how differently Tolkien portrays eastern people from the reality, that's racist and bad", and end the discussion there. But you're *embracing* that difference, as a starting point for asking questions about how storytelling works. It's an open-minded and inquisitive spirit that's very admirable. This European trope of the despoiling barbarians from the east is an old, old one -- other commenters have already mentioned that the Mongols were only the last and most successful in a series of invasion waves that probably stretches back into prehistory. What I'd add is, at least based on my half-remembered university history reading, the "monstrification" of these foreign cultures at the time was less than one might expect. Obviously Europeans didn't like getting raped and pillaged and saw the invaders as an enemy, but medieval depictions of them that I remember are distinctly human. Indeed, if there's a problem with them, it's that they're not alien *enough*. The Norse and German heroic traditions, for example, take the figure of Attila the Hun and plug him into the narratives functioning as a conventional Germanic king (in the Sigurd/Siegfried story he comes off as one of the few sane characters). And while the East was mysterious, that made it an object of curiosity. In the realm of nonfiction we have the Travels of Marco Polo, written less than a century after Genghis Khan's conquests, portraying the Mongol court in a generally positive and definitely human light. The book was wildly popular. I just don't recall seeing a lot commentary to the effect of "these people have different facial features and skin color and customs than us and therefore they are an innately different and worse species". Not, at least, before the early modern period, European intercontinental imperialism, and the slave trade. It is then, I think, that the old history of eastern invaders was reinterpreted through the lens of the new and ugly race-consciousness, and at the other end of that process you get stuff like the WWI-era Germans being called "Huns" and portrayed in propaganda posters with vaguely Asian features: the racism had so far progressed (in the manner of a cancer) that, far from envisioning actual Huns as being basically the same as Europeans, Europeans now found it necessary to redefine a conflict with other Europeans whose monarch was literally first cousin to their own as being with an alien race. Changing the subject somewhat, there's one observation I'd make about Tolkien's orcs, which is that, although they look different than the protagonists and come from a far-off part of the world, in the few places where Tolkien gives us a good look at them he does not portray them as particularly exotic. Their speech is not broken or foreign but rather the familiar (to him) dialect of English industrial laborers. They're the enemy, they're dangerous, but they're also miserable, kind of pitiable, and clearly don't want to be there. Also notable is their affinity for machinery. So in this light, is Sauron Genghis Khan, or is he the factory boss? Saruman, especially, seems like the latter, especially especially in the Scouring of the Shire. Sauron is maybe both at the same time -- after all, it's not an allegory, and Tolkien can be pulling inspiration simultaneously from multiple cultural currents.
I actually heard that the Battle Of Pelennor fields was based on the Battle Of Catalaunian Plains, with Theodoric The Goth being the basis for King Theoden, and the Western Roman Empire being Gondor. So armies of Mordor may have some basis in Attila and the Huns.
I doubt Genghis Khan directly inspired Sauron, but Sauron and Genghis Khan had similar ideologies lol. They had similar aspirations to universal monarchy.
I spent almost a month in Japan. I loved it. It was fascinating. Prior to that, I read books on Japanese culture and history (anything that I could get my hands on) because I loved manga and anime, but I was also a storyteller at heart and one of the things I noticed as the commonness of revenge and restoration of honor (personal or familial) within Japanese stories. And I wanted to know WHY. Why was this so common place in Japanese stories, what made it different from the Western view of revenge. So I read books about Japan. I'd love to go back to Japan. See more of it. I was limited to Tokyo because I was in the Navy. But I got the pleasure of spending two weekends in Tokyo.
Here’s what I think are the three biggest questions on this theory:
1| LOTR is supposed to be an invented mythology of England. The Mongols never invaded England.
2| This theory works for Uruk-hai and the orcish armies at Pelennor Fields, but not for other orcs (like Moria goblins).
3| “BUT NO HORSES…!” (ie detail X of history or detail Y lore are absent/don’t match at all)
There are some “handwavey” answers to these questions. Question 1 could be handwaved with a “something something general western consciousness” type answer, and question 3 with a “bahh details”. But I think the second question really points to the better direction for answers here.
While it was exciting to present this theory as a clean 1-to-1 parallel of orcs to Mongols, I think the more realistic version of what’s going on here is that Sauron/orcs are an amalgamation of a ton of different “villains”, both historical and societal, throughout western history. A loud sign of this is the oliphants, which is an explicit parallel to non-Mongolian villain-of-the-west Hannibal bringing his big buddies over the alps to attack Rome. Orcs also parallel a lot of other “barbarian” groups the west fought against, and you see signs of this in other media’s depiction of orcs wearing clothes and armor more reminiscent of Germanic people, vikings, etc. Moria goblins and other instances of orcs we see in Middle Earth really just seem to bring to mind medieval and ancient criminals, highwaymen, mountain bandits, who were also extremely violent, extremely filthy, ate raw meat, etc.. Historically, England had a variety of different historical ties with the mainland, as part of the Roman Empire, as a place frequented and settled by Nordic peoples and Germanic peoples, etc. So I think it’s realistic that England would end up with a lot of stories passed down and part of its mythological archetype set that weren’t necessarily anchored to English soil.
So what we end up with was a mish-mash fantasy race built from aspects of all sorts of western boogeymen: bandits, criminals, Mongols, Huns, Carthaginians, northern barbarians, vikings, etc.. Orcs don’t fit any of them exactly and are flexible enough for the storyteller to use them for desired story purposes, while also being flexible enough for the audience to associate to and attach whatever their strongest specific historical or societal resonances happen to be for that individual in their own life and their own nightmares.
I think that’s closer to the reality. Genghis Khan plays a large role in anchoring this story’s villain because he played a large antagonistic role in European history, but he’s not the only one. So we have other villains playing large roles as well.
- The ALLEGORY QUESTION -
First of all, most broadly, saying a story isn’t allegory doesn’t mean “you cannot compare this to anything else” and it doesn't mean “this story was not inspired by anything else”. As I understand it, allegory in storytelling is when there’s a significant primary meaning to get from a story based on an interpretation that doesn't take the events of the story literally or at face value. For example, Plato’s allegory of the cave is (sorry Plato) NOT a very good story -- when evaluated at face value, literally, as a story. It has a weird premise, no action scenes, no car chases, no sexy romance scenes -- two thumbs down, taken as a story on a literal level. But interpreting it with a meaning APART from its literal events, taking it as a metaphor, THAT’S where the primary meaning of this story is. Look at Tolkien’s own example of allegory, “5 wizards, 5 sense” -- that’s trying to use metaphor to find some primary meaning somewhere else, somewhere that’s NOT the literal events of the story.
This genghis khan idea is not saying The Lord of the Rings is TRYING TO TEACH US something about the Mongol invasion period. It’s not saying we can find STORY MEANING by treating the story of Sauron as a correlate to this historical event, like “ah this story is NOT about Frodo and the Ring, there’s a deeper symbolic meaning behind Tolkien’s words!” No, this is not that. Just like it’s not Tolkien trying to tell us something ABOUT World War 1, or the industrial revolution. There’s no PRIMARY meaning in those ways of understanding the story. But that doesn't mean that tolkien wasn’t inspired by his experiences in the war. It doesn’t mean that his values relating to industrialization won’t shine through in the story he chooses to tell. And it doesn’t mean that he didn’t borrow resonance from history: from nordic people, from languages, and from the Mongols. That’s how I see this topic.
Very well said. Thank you for making these last few videos / writing this comment that put so much of the immediately felt but hard to describe magic and profundity of the middle-earth stories into coherent explicitly stated ideas. Wonderfully done 👏😎
I truly have so much respect for how you're able to see multiple perspectives & incorporate them into your thinking even if you only can truly subscribe to 1 at the end of the day. You may well have no idea how ACTUALLY rare that is
Out of curiosity did you change the title of the video from "Sauron is Ghengis Khan"? I recall seeing the thumbnail a few hours ago with a different title. Regardless this is a really good video.
I was with you up until you started to take the 'orc' view on them being the 'good guys', and destroying oppressive systems. Honestly that part is a bit ridiculous; you're blending too much history and fiction at that point.
I get what you're trying to say; orcs are based off Mongolians, but these people are not monsters, and have fascinating history and culture. But to compare Sauron to Ghengis Kahn in absolute terms is just dumb.
Sauron was the lieutenant of a literal demon god; Morgoth. Also; all the corruption happening in the world *was* largely due to Sauron and Morgoth. The Silmarilion shows us that elves can be terrible, brutal and even treacherous or corrupt, but it is made very explicitly clear that Morgoth was the source of it all.
Real history does not have an actual Satan (Morgoth) that walked the earth, destroyed and corrupted real people, and fucked things up for everyone. You're missing that obvious historical connection between Sauron and his master. And while we can fill in the blank by saying; westerners saw Ghengis Kahn as a lieutenant of the devil himself; it still falls short. Sauron in the fiction inherits everything from his master, the real Ghengis Kahn did not make a pact with Satan, or inherit an army of imps.
Sorry, I still think this is a fascinating video, but some of it is just plain conjecture. The orcs in LOTR were not farmers, they were not like the vikings; who raided periodically but farmed most of the time. They survived by pillaging and were cannibals.
For number one it should be noted that usage of borrowed stereotypes of the Mongol Invasion was popularized in the English-speaking world during WW1 as largely Entente propaganda. Even before the war there was an entire subgenre of fiction about 'eastern enemy invaders' that was making the rounds. To say that this time was formative would be *stares at the swamp full of corpses that drag people to their death* saying it lightly. At this stage your point about disconnecting the people from the mythology has already 100% happened. The propagandists were using this vision to describe... Imperial Germany.
As a Mongolian, it makes me really happy to see you enjoy Mongolia. The theory that Sauron is based on Genghis Khan is a really fascinating one and one that I never even thought about. Great video!
баярлалаа!! glad you enjoyed!
Quit breaking my shitty wall!
@@JackSparrow-re4ql I don’t fucking vibe with racism of any kind in the least, for any reason.
That said, this episode will always be one of the funniest fucking things I’ve ever seen.
same, never made the connection, also had no idea about the not washing, medieval times were so dumb.
tbh our ancestors were scarry. They allegedly made a pyramid of heads outside of Moscow... kinda like Guyladriel.
SAN BEN OOOO
No way this dude just walked into Mordor
This killed me 🤣👻
Well no, he took a plane. Eagle Airlines, I think it's called.
No ring.
Surely one cant just simply walk into mordor
Tolkien talked about this in a 1964 interview. He said that the Orcs were certainly inspired by the Eastern Powers that encroached on Western territories (mostly before the Mongolians, however). You're explanation of your theory on how the Mongolians birthed the archetype is interesting! It wouldn't surprise me if it was 100% where it came from!
Great video man
Do you have a link to that interview?
@@dechskaison2497 I'm fairly certain that links get auto-deleted on youtube, but it's not too hard to find if you just search "Tolkien 1964 Interview" It's a little over half of an hour long.
@@boustrophedon5750 links don't get deleted
@@dechskaison2497 ua-cam.com/video/bzDtmMXJ1B4/v-deo.html
@@Himmyjewett Links to other UA-cam videos don't get deleted, links to sites outside of UA-cam do unless the video's creator specifically allows them. This has been the case for years now.
15:40 in Mordor, there's really only the land around the active volcano that is "unhabitable with poison gas and stuff". The land below is actually really green and fertile thanks to the same volcano (that's how Sauron fed his army)
Yet (in the movie) you only hear (and see) Boromir's description. Interesting.
Wow. This was fascinating. I doubt Tolkien consciously based his story off of this event. I think he was deeply inspired by much older myths. But the basic structure of the story may have been ingrained into his subconscious from this event.
I think at the end that’s what he means by its not allegory. Sauron isn’t supposed to be Genghis Khan directly but he’s the mythological ideas that Genghis Khan created in the west
@@deanrichard1770 if you say Genghis Khan was a purely evil tyrant who wanted to dominate though slavery and terror then maybe. I think its better to see it from a nordic myth perspective.
@@deanrichard1770 I don't know where you live but I don't think it's in western europe, because I can tell you that western europe dosen't give a flying fuck about Genghis Khan. He probably created a great deal of trauma to easter europe but europe his not one culture of people and in western europe I think that Genghis Khan is view in a much more neutral light compare to little guy named Attila who did the same thing hundreds of year prieor to the heart of western civilization. (And is for me a much more plausible inspiration for sauron)
@@archeogeek315 I think Genghis Khan is just an example here, I doubt Tolkien had any specific person in mind - it's more the general impression that the invaders from the East left, no matter if their name was Genghis, Attila, Batu, or something else.
@@archeogeek315 The idea is that the West has a cultural fear of the "Eastern Horde Lord"
"Let's sit in the messiness of the differences and feel the humanity that lives and breathes between the gap of the horribly true and the horribly imagined."
What a quote.
I LOVE your thoughtful analyses, well done. Thank you for your respect and for always making me think. Thank you for this video!
I would say this "evil from the east" trope is much older than the mongols, but they definitely did reinforce it. I mean you had the Germanic tribes during the migration followed/teamed up with the huns, then the slavs, Cumans or whatever other tribe. then the black death, but also I don't know if the people back in the day understood it actually came from the east.
I think the peasent mybe won't remember (but will know whan it's happens) but the nobility will know .
@@yuvalgabay1023 Basically what I was going to say. The ones in charge of manage the various armies, forts and borders would for sure have known. They are also the only people who were literate at the time afaik.
it might be a stretch but you can probably take that "trope" at least as far back as the hittites in asia minor : to the greek peoples trying to settle there they were a constant source of harassement and raids and fear ... up until the day they vanished from history
i think that really sets up the idea of "unknowable barbarian from the east"
@@axeldesaintalbin4922 Well i'd think that cultural memories of the acient greeks would survive until the present, at least with the Renaissance they'd be reinforced
Hungarians also gave some hard times ("strange people on horses with strange customs"), and then they settled, only to be ran over by the Mongols. Fun fact, the Jász people and Cumans were fleeing from the Mongols, found shelter in the Hungarian Kingdom, even pledged to help (as they knew the steppe tactics which Hungarians have forgot in a matter of just a few centuries), but then "strange people with strange traditions" caused a bloody disagreement, and they left the country causing destruction along their way.
Some of them eventually returned to help, and settled (with unique rights granted), but many stayed away in present day Moldova and Bessarabia (where they already had related tribes).
Given the Volsunga saga and the Poetic Edda(which Tolkien adapted into english btw) both feature as an antagonist Atli AKA Attila the Hun, a weird looking and powerful warlord from the east that had a lot in common with Genghis Khan, I don't find this surprising at all, its a tale as old as rideable horses I suppose, but with Genghis it ended up being writ a great deal larger.
After ghosting UA-cam for countless hours meaning to like videos and support content, this video broke me. My first like! Well done, sir. Fascinating, brilliantly edited, and thoughtful.
I’ve embraced my love of Early Medieval History, and the “key-spring” was my love of Tolkien’s “lost mythology” and the histories that captivated his whole life and all their messy complexities.
I was aware of Tolkien’s private letter passage thanks to Lindsay Ellis’s BRIGHT analysis, and while I believe she said “Yikes”, I discerned Tolkien’s intent of capturing the fear Western cultures had for the Great Khan’s Eastern subjects. Also, believing that Tolkien no doubt wanted to capture the chaos of different cultures scrounging for survival and a slice of glory in the over-ambitious Roman Empire, the time his beloved Anglo-Saxons appeared on the scene. This train of thought reached a point in my own amateur research when reading a copy of Tim Newark’s The Barbarians (1985) which the first chapter titles “The most terrible of all: The Huns and Eastern Germans”, citing Roman rumors of a race of men “hideous to behold; skulls deformed by binding when young and slits for eyes. Swollen cheeks disfigured by scars and covered in wispy hair” (11). Moreover, “The Huns spent so much of their life on horseback that they had difficulty walking. Like American cowboys, they developed a bowlegged gait” (12).
Orcs in Tolkien’s mythology absolutely fascinate me on their own merit. I understand the races of Middle Earth to be caricatures of the vast aspects of our shared humanity, orcs exemplifying our tendencies to rage, bully, wrinkle, and give in to fear and despair.
And imo it’s not their fault. And I like to think Tolkien was aware of this. I believe tolkien said the creation of orcs was Melkor’s most evil attack on his creator’s intended good.
I can ramble more. I’m sure I left holes to fill and think this isn’t a wise note to end on.
Still, well done, Schnee! Thank you. PS the Boromir in my own fellowship, whom I sent your video to and loved it, wants to plan a trip to Mongolia after his first naval deployment. I hope to go with. Cheers!
Attila's Huns also rampaged through Europe from the East and retreated after their leader's death. Tolkien didn't base his stories on singular figures or events, but rather on the accumulated common lore of European history and mythology; and since Europe is the West End of Eurasia, stories about "invaders from the East" are abundant.
The funny thing about your comment about imagining if the Fellowship got to Mordor and it was all green like Mongolia, is that there are actually parts of Mordor that are actually green and lush (particularly by the sea). It’s just the area we see is desolate because it’s in the lava plain of an actively erupting volcano, and because the orcs have made their war base there, mining all the resources to make armor and weapons, and to make room for their camps
Well they also must have kept those stolen horses somewhere :) so maybe in Nurn there are some good grassy plains for herds, along with the fields for farming for the food production in Mordor :).
"'Some years ago the Lord of the Black Land wished to purchase horses of us at great price, but we refused him. for he puts beasts to evil use. Then he sent plundering Orcs, and they carry off what they can, choosing always the black horses: few of these are now left.'"
Since they stole these horses and further bred them in Mordor to accustom them to the presence of Nazgul one wonders where they would keep them..there would be some space in the region of Nurn no doubt hehe.
The video game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor features the Sea of Nurnen, a great inland lake in southern Mordor that is lush and beautiful.
@@AICW "Neither he nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beyond the fumes of the Mountain by the dark sad waters of Lake Núrnen..."
That was a very fun topic! I've never thought of LOTR that way. And opened my eyes to a different perspective on Khan. More of this please!
This was a fascinating analysis. I'd love more videos like this!
Sir, that was just incredible
thanks!!
The trope about monsters coming from nowhere, causing caos and destruction can also be found in the history of the Viking invansions (from the british isles perspective) and in the least known Sea Peoples that cause the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200-900 BCE) and simply disappeared.
Great video, I can't wait to see more from you about LotR especially.
One quick nitpick: Mount Doom isn't called that by the orcs (and by comparison, isn't a name "those scary eastern people" would use). It's a common name used by people who don't live in Mordor. The native name of the mountain is Orodruin, which means something close to "mountain of fire". I'd say that's a pretty straightforward name for a volcano.
Also the word "doom" today has lost one of its connotations today which is something like "fate". Now when we hear "doom" we think pretty much exclusively of a bad end, but in earlier times it was more associated with fate in general, as more like a "final destination." Still kind of a cheesy name but a bit less ridiculous with that connotation.
I know it was a minor point in the video, but you seem very thorough in your work so I figure you might want this kind of thing pointed out. Thanks again for making these videos.
I like the touching on etymology; and would like to mention that "Destiny" once had the same connotations as "Doom".
From what I understand, all of those fate synonyms came from the idea of heroic tragedy.
Death is certain, always - everyone knows this. So, stories integrated this into the plots - having a hero be told of their death, and the manner of it for dramatic reasons, while still engaging with that fear-of-death empathy.
The noble side of Doom/Destiny/Fate is was not the evasion of it, that was impossible in the old stories - in fact, trying to do so often resulted in self-fulfillment of the Doom; but they prided the hero on how then went to meet it.
Having a fate, or a doom was, and should be in terms of character; all about how the character of the person receiving it. A person who tries to avoid destiny is seen as cowardly, foolish, and wasteful of the time they had. A character that marches towards their doom, head high is seen as self-aware, courageous, and impetuous.
Remember what Achilles said, when his seeress mother told him that if he went to war that he would certainly die.
"A short life, and a long fame for me."
Something interesting is that, at least, the translators were aware of this, because the Spanish version of the movies, the Southamerican version at least, calls it the "Montaña del Destino".
Literally, the Mountain of Fate
Orodruin is not the native name, its the elvish name (spefically the sindarin name)
We are never told the native name
It should be noted that 'renaming' the mountain was done by the Gondorians when it first erupted after return of Sauron after Downfall of Numenor:
"Sauron... came in secret... to his ancient kingdom of Mordor beyond the Ephel Dúath..., and that country marched with Gondor upon the east. There... was a fiery mountain in that land that the Elves named Orodruin....
Now Sauron prepared war against the Eldar and the Men of Westernesse, and the fires of the Mountain were wakened again. Wherefore seeing the smoke of Orodruin from afar, and perceiving that Sauron had returned, the Númenóreans named that mountain anew Amon Amarth, which is Mount Doom. And Sauron gathered to him great strength of his servants out of the east and the south; and among them were not a few of the high race of Númenor. For in the days of the sojourn of Sauron in that land the hearts of well nigh all its people had been turned towards darkness. Therefore many of those who sailed east in that time... were already bent to his will, and they served him still gladly in Middle-earth. But because of the power of Gil-galad these renegades, lords both mighty and evil, for the most part took up their abodes in the southlands far away....
When therefore Sauron saw his time he came with great force against the new realm of Gondor...."
The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age
This was fascinating! I'm very interested in the relationship between myth and history, and I've never seen it articulated like this before. Just... the simple idea of "how do mothers articulate their cultural trauma to their children?", specifying that history descends from different channels, that myth is at once rooted in real events but takes on a life of its own... I'm more familiar with the sorts of functions myths have, and how rewriting them can reshape a culture, but the more unconscious processing of historical events into stories... I need to think about this more :) Your content is consistently awesome, thank you for sharing.
I'm blown away how good this video is. Very interesting take. Also the part where you go to Mongolia feels so sincere and looks beautiful. Makes me want to visit too.
Very thoughtful video i never got any of the trauma Chingis khaan caused because i grew up in mongolia but it does seem like a very traumatizing event. We learn about him from a boy to a slave to a chieftain to a Khaan so its a really inspirational story with a bloody ending. A big man that grew up in a really harsh environment that preserved through a lot to get to where he died. Great video !
Didn't think 1 in 200 people in middle earth were direct descendants of sauron but ok
One cock ring to rule them all
UNLESS
@@SuperMaster000X yes every hobbis is related to Sauran
You haven't seen RoP have you... lol
@@nathanmorgan3647 if that shit's canon more than half the Tolkien fandom are going to war.
Half of Mordor was quite green and beautiful. Those images of Mongolia look almost exactly how I picture the region of Núrn.
Imagine putting all this effort into a pretty compelling video and only getting 39,000 views out of it. This video is awesome and deserves more recognition
Your commentary is phenomenal as always, but your commitment to these last few videos is amazing! I loved seeing all the footage you had of Mongolia, and it really did a lot to bring your points home throughout this video. Great stuff!
Another incredible video. The best storytelling channel on UA-cam.
Tolkien was said to be very careful to avoid allegory. I think parallels are clear here, but I don't think that is intentional. A lot of what makes a dark lord and what makes a conqueror are pretty parallel.
Definitely not intentional but archetypes are like that... unconscious
He said but at the same time he based his work on “Der Ring des Nibelungen”
Not what allegory means
I don't think it's supposed to be an allegory, it's more about what inspired this part of Tolkien's work. That's a difference: Sauron is not supposed to represent Genghis Khan (allegory), but he along with the Orcs may be inspired by various historical invaders from the East.
@@Lothiril way more likely that the extremely religious Tolkien was inspired by the Bible. It has many, many verses about tyranny coming from the east.
As a fan of your channel, and a Canadian living in Mongolia I was super disappointed when you said "It's not like I'm going to Mongolia," haha, I'm glad you got to see so much of this very beautiful country. If you come here in the middle of winter it'll feel a bit more like Mordor though ; )
invading hordes from the east is an ancient western trope, definitely agreed. but I think it's also global. the story of nomadic horsemen developing a warrior culture, invading their soft but sophisticated agricultural and metropolitan neighbors, easily conquering their vulnerable cities, but becoming enamored with their civilization and picking up much of their culture, is something that repeats often in history. it's especially salient in Europe because it's part of our ethnogenesis. Europeans as we know them today are the result of horselords from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe invading the vulnerable agricultural west some 4 to 5 thousand years ago. the western Europeans were mostly farmers at the time and had little facility for war. riding horses would have been completely foreign to these agriculturalists. those eastern horselords killed most of the men, taking their women and producing a new population with their admixture, with their language and customs and cultural institutions dominating and defining the higher class. their cousins did the same thing in Anatolia, Iran, and in northwest India. so already by 500 BC, Europeans were largely genetically, culturally, and linguistically defined by hordes from the steppe, but they surely retained a cultural memory of the carnage. it's an interesting situation, when the boogeyman who slaughtered your ancestors is also your ancestor. how should you remember him?
and then began the period of Rome's dominance, and Rome's cultural and mythological legacy is preserved today in all European societies and many Near Eastern societies too. and Rome always remembered when the Gauls sacked Rome, when the Scythians/Saka terrorized the Eastern Roman Empire, when the Germanic barbarians slaughtered the western legions, when Atilla and his Huns invaded, and when the world ended (i.e. when the Western Roman Empire fell). and throughout the Middle Ages, Europe had to contend with attacks from the east. of course, there was nothing to the west or to the north, Europe being the furthest northwestern continent, and the south (Africa) was generally weak (excepting Carthage), so the only direction evil hordes could come from was east.
but anyway, the same story has played out in the east, and is pivotal in eastern cultures as well. from the earliest periods of its history, China (an agricultural and cultural powerhouse) had to contend with their nomadic, northern neighbors. the Eurasian Steppe is the cradle of a certain kind of civilization that has popped up many times in history. the Donghu and Xiongnu were the eastern counterpart of the Proto-Indo-European speakers that conquered Europe. it seems that agriculture promotes highly organized, large, urban settlements, which have favorable conditions for the development of very sophisticated culture and institutions. China had many things their northern neighbors lacked. every sophisticated craft you can think of. being an urban, river-bound civilization, they lacked horses. and horses can run circles around men. a man on horseback is damn near invincible next to a man on foot. so they compensated for their vulnerability on the field by building huge walls and artillery. these different ways of life promote the development of very different cultures and technologies. different specializations.
but when the nomads eventually conquer the cities (as they nearly always do, as their way of life promotes the development of a warlike culture and warfare technologies), they always seem to become enamored with the more metropolitan way of life. they want to rule it, but they end up adopting many of its customs. that is why the great khans gave their children a traditional Chinese education. eventually, over a few generations, the nomads either disappear into the native populations they rule, becoming a "superstratum" influence on the host culture but losing any distinct identity of their own, or else they lose what made them powerful. their empires are usually very short-lived, separating along the same lines as the native populations that once comprised them. Genghis Khan's great Khaganate split into many separate polities, as his descendants were influenced by the various cultures they ruled. the Golden Horde in the west was more western-influenced than the Yuan dynasty in the east, resulting in a feud that split the Khaganate. and as we know, the Yuan dynasty lost its "Mongolness" and became just another Chinese dynasty, and something analogous happened to the Golden Horde.
I find this historical pattern so interesting. and it's important to me because I, like many people, am essentially the legacy of that pattern. I'm the product of my nomadic ancestors mingling with my agricultural ancestors. I inherit the spirit of both. and so I respect Genghis Khan, yet I simultaneously sympathize with the demonization of him. and I suspect his European victims would have felt the same way if it was not happening to them, because they too came from nomadic stock. like I said before, the Europeans were already the descendants of nomadic horsemen. two thousand years earlier, they were not so different from the Mongol hordes. but due to the pattern I described, the nomadic way of life quickly gave way to the more sophisticated, agricultural civilization. so even though the nomads left a huge legacy, not least of which is every surviving language native to Europe except Basque, that legacy was largely forgotten or divorced from its nomadic roots. the European upper class was still defined by equestrian culture, i.e. knighthood, but that existed as a tiny fixture against a backdrop of Christian culture, which came from the cities and encouraged a radically different life than the ancestral life of a nomadic pastoralist warlord. so when the Khaganate came to Europe, it was already unrecognizable, completely alien to the Europeans.
I'm Brazilian, and Brazilian folklore is full of things like this.
Brazil is a country built (not only culturally, but also physically) by slavery, eugenics and the conflict between ethnicities and classes (not a very politically stable place).
Part of our folklore came from demonized indigenous religions, part of it came from Africa and what black people went through, part of it came from Europe.
This process is very interesting to learn about, because it highlights not what actually happened, but what a specific people actually saw.
The morals, and the fears of a culture, how we think, what gives us hope.
Most of the indigenous-rooted legends, for example, revolve around spirits that protect the forests, places that are sacred to them. And people that became part of nature.
In Brazilian folklore, there is also a lit of fire imagery, which I actually need to understand better (i'm white), but shows that fire, at least to some extent, is equates to protection.
The thing of "bad Europeans" is also clear. There is the tale of Labatut (a horrible monster, that I don't know how to tell the story of). If you know something about South American Native Languages, Bantu Languages, or Portuguese, you are probabbly questioning the origin of that name.
Labatut was actually a French general, who people really hated.
But that mistification also happens the other way around.
The imagery of the lonely sailor, who left his country and family, to sing about his terrible fate [fado, a Portuguese tradition], and drown in his saudade [a word so important that people refuse to translate], is very important to Portugal's cultural identity.
Just as the enslaved kings and queens who formed the quilombos, who made capoeira, and samba, fighting against white enslavers are to Brazil.
That last example is one that I'm more familiar with, and one that has many impacts on culture, like the depth of meaning that turbants have for black people and traditions.
But one that I wanted to highlight here is the story of Chico Rei. [King Francisco].
He was a Congolese prince, who was kidnapped and brought in a negreiro ship [I don't know the translation of negreiro, but it's the type of ship that would bring in enslaved people].
There was too much weight, so the Portuguese throw two people to the see: Chico's parents, the royals of his country. Without them, and without his land, he had to became king in the see.
When his people arrived in Brazilian shores, the Portuguese named them all with Biblical names, and made all the efforts to erase their traditions. That is how the Congolese got the name Francisco, abreviated as Chico.
They went to work in Minas Gerais (General Mines). If they didn't make enough gold in a day, they eould be punished, but Chico always made sure the gold was evenly distributed. They kept stealing, discreetly, the gold, and, person by person, buying their Carte de Alforria (the document that granted freedom). When they were all free, Chico Rei was crowned the King of Congo in Brazil.
There are many stories about black resistency, the most important of them being the Quilombo dos Palmares, that is now sacred ground, leadered by Zumbi & Dandara, and black wealth, like Xica da Silva, an enslaved woman who arised to the top and was treated like a queen, as Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery.
I told the story of Chico Rei not only because that's the one I know more about, but also because I was curious about what Congolese people have to say about it.
This makes me wonder what stories developed around Alexander the Great in the east.
Iskander, as he is called in Central Asia, is very popular boys name at the very least.
What I know from iranians, they seem even today have a love-hate relationship for alexander (please iranians correct me if I'm talking out of my ass...) Like he was a mighty conqueror who kind of loved Persia etc., but on the other hand he sacked Persepolis, and was also a drunkard using psychoactive wine enhanced with ergot or some other stuff etc... So, them iranians have very mixed feelings about Alexander at least. But he must have made an impression, as they are still talking about the dude.
He is mentioned in the Koran. Supposedly he had horns growing out of his head and was the only human being who'd seen both edges of the Earth.
Alexander is celebrated in South and Central Asia. Iskander and Sekander, variation of Alexander, is a popular boy name for South Asian muslims.
@@thenameisx Not true. Alexander was a monster who destroyed other cultures, religion. Example: Zorastrianism
Have you read the "Last ring-bearer" by Kirill Yeskov? It is a retelling of LOTR with the orcs "realistic" view on the war, and has some very interesting insights in Arda history.
I read it and liked it alright, although it really reads more like The Witcher than LotR. The spycraft in Umbar is way too modern.
@@magister343 I believe thats the point kind of like Game of Thrones and Witcher focus on the ugly and intense in attempt to be more "realistic".
Tho i think it could be possible to have Tolkien like writing that shows both sided in more detail, just basing it off how Gondor, Rohan and other locations and cultures are explored and described
It is funny how all 3 of those 'more realsitic' stories, judged as such by people who are neither historians nor veterans, about war were written by people who never experianced war and are not historians.
While the 'less reaslisitc' war story was written by someone who experienced ww1.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 I think George RR Martin did write at least one history book, you could consider him a historian. Also the way war worked in ww1 was a lot different than any war before that, especially one in medieval times. So although Tolkien war it wasn’t like he was an expert on medieval warfare
Understood war*
Wow, this is such an interesting perspective! Makes me wanna know more about the historical Ghengis Khan and his people. Thanks so much 👏😁
Dan Carlins podcast series The Wrath of the Khans is an excellent starting point
excellent video!
i really do like the comparison to star wars, because those two stories also have another connection that i believe i heard from matthew colville: in both of them, the personal craft is seen as an art, while industrialisation is seen as a tool for evil. its very nature vs machinery, and can become very on-the-nose with treants vs mining equipment or ewoks vs ATST or gungans vs droids. the moment when luke turns off the targeting computer and trusts in the force is kind of a mirror to when saruman chooses to use blackpowder against helms klamm. as a maia, he literally has the ability to rewrite the rules of reality, but he chooses to invent bombs.
another thing i want to mention is a video i would suggest you watch: HelloFutureMe made a video about sauron as the nietzsch’ian ubermensch. that idea sort of gives more of a shape to what the western nightmare is.
As I watched this video all I could think was, "holy, cow, of course!" It was staring me in the face all these years and I never saw it. Brilliant insights. And it's just as amazing, as you pointed out, that this mythologizing is going on around us everyday and we don't see that, either. Subscribed. Looking forward to watching your other videos.
This was such a brave video to make in 2022, and you did it super-well.
Fascinating video!
"that one time", you're forgetting about Attila, the EXACT same model applies to him.
Better actually since the Hunnic empire collapsed almost immediately while the Mongol empire thrived and faded out over a much longer time frame.
`dude this vid might be a new favorite of yours. i really appreciate your approach to the subject matter
i used to be a lot bigger of a LotR fan when i was little, and growing up it's been harder for me to enjoy for a few reasons. it feels kinda cliché now (not its fault! it predated and inspired so much), and also the racial overtones have made me hesitant. but i'm really grateful for this analysis of the subject. you weren't judgmental. you were just being loving and educational, and that's the best thing a person can be IMO
brroooooooo how dont you have 1 million subscribers?? what an amazing line of thinking and travelling to Mongolia and New Zeland was so cool
I want to transpose the history of disability struggles (as a person with a visible physical disability) into fantasy in exactly this same way as you pose here.
Thanks for this, good inspiration.
sounds interesting, good luck!
I'd read it.
The way you explained the way we mythologize our interactions with other cultures, like through wars in ancient times where our world was just our local community and all that, reminded me of the Overly Sarcastic Productions video about the ancient Minoans and how Athens’s myth of the Minotaur is one of the few pieces we have to go on about the Minoan civilization since we still can’t read their writing system. A bull-loving kingdom on an island with labyrinthine palaces and cities forcing neighboring lands to give up their resources through piracy became an antagonistic king forcing enslaved Athenians into a labyrinth to be devoured by a bull-headed monster, and it was stopped by a heroic Athenian with the favor of the gods. We have no records of how exactly the Minoan civilization fell because it was in the recordless dark ages, but presumably the Athenians fought the Minoans and won, leaving us with a biased narrative written by the winners and practically nothing left of the losers.
This was a great analysis, loved the way it was structured. Also provides a new perspective on how to observe, criticize and analyse history from that old perspective and way to understand the world.
I've been thinking about this! With Rings of Power out and replaying Shadow of Mordor, it's been on my mind. The first historical figure that came to mind when I mulling this over was Atilla the Hun. He had very similar tactics to Genghis Khan, though his territory was significantly smaller. I suspect Attila had a great impact on the western conception of the east as well. His campaigns were all occurring during the fall of the Roman Empire, a period which laid the foundations of the Europe we know today. I'm particularly drawn to how Atilla was defeated in battle by a broad coalition of Roman/Germanic/Celtic groups at Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. It sounds like the War of the Last Alliance at the end of the Second Age. While the significance of that battle is debated, it certainly holds a lot of narrative importance to the western powers that survived afterwards. The often used term of Hun as a derogative for the Germans during World War 1 also comes to mind, Tolkien was developing a lot of his earliest linguistic work on Elvish during that period. The Huns themselves were known to practice artificial cranial deformation by binding their skulls so they would elongate. I wonder if this practice may have influenced terrorized Romans to describe the Huns as more beast like or monstrous than their Germanic neighbors, who raided just about as often as the Huns and Alans did.
It might be that Attila is more of morgoth than Sauron
Very interesting theory, I’ve never heard of it before.
I guess another way to put this is Genghis Khan had such a traumatizing impact on the peoples he conquered, that he entered the collective Zeitgeist. Over the years, we forgot the connection to Genghis Khan because of the separation between us and the people he directly impacted. Similar to Hitler: finding “positive” impacts of his is seen as absolutely abhorrent because we are only one/two generations away from those who lived through his atrocities. He was objectively terrible, but as time passes, we become less and less separated from the trauma. Our historical commentary on older time periods reflects this.
Seeing Genghis Khan in a positive light reminds me of how Europeans see men like Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Europeans emphasize the “positive impacts” that were ultimately ONLY side effects to the massively negative impact they had on history so I always remind myself this: “was the “positive” impact worth the cost?”
My answer to this question is always: no, never.
One important aspect of Tolkien's stories I think should be mentioned here is that, Orcs aside, Tolkien did allude to Mongolians, Arabs and various other cultures that Western civilization considered "savage", through the Easterlings and Haradrim.
And the best part is that at no point he describes them as being "absolutely evil", "inhuman" or "inferior". Easterlings and Haradrim were under the thrall of Sauron and Morgoth, being tricked or manipulated towards evil, and even then many of them rebelled against this control across history. And once Aragorn became King and Sauron was defeated, he reached out and made peace with them. Not "dominated", "colonized, "civilized" or "evangelized" (or the Eru/Valar equivalent of it). The tyrant controlling them was vanquished, and Aragorn established a peaceful common ground where Easterlings and Haradrim could continue to live as their own kingdoms, only as allies or at least neutral towards the Free-People of Middle Earth. At separate points, he also says the Men of Rohan gained respect for the Haradrim as fellow warriors, and Sam pondering that perhaps these men fighting for Sauron probably aren't doing this out of their own volition or malice and perhaps would have preferred a different path.
The Orcs and Sauron are the fantasy element that needs to get "exterminated", but that begins and ends with them, much like the idea of "Dark Lord Genghis Khan". And, oddly enough, both Sauron and Genghis Khan have a personal context where, as you say, their actions made sense, but obviously Sauron is far more diabolical and cataclysmic; Sauron believed he must take over the world so he can make it an orderly place no matter what, because HE thinks he's the best person for the job and his vision is better than everyone else's. Genghis probably didn't have THIS level of narcissism, and was mostly operating on the good ol' medieval mentality of "Everyone is only out for theirselves and their tribe, so I need to be THE best at it so me and MY tribe can survive, no matter how gruesome I need to be to ensure that". There was cruelty and violence involved, naturally, but it was out of "Do Unto Them Before They Do Unto Us" concerns, not "MWAHAHAHA, I'M SO EVIL AND DIABOLICAL" or even Sauron's "I'm the Uber-Man who knows what's best for everyone, so KNEEL MORTALS!".
The best part of this is that you can infer that Tolkien was also and specifically talking about the German here. Germans weren't the ultimate evil of WWII; Hitler & Nazism was. Tyranny and Greed are the ultimate evil, and anyone can fall under their dominion. Considering what Tolkien and the UK went through during the World Wars, that's VERY progressive and admirable of Tolkien. "Once the war is done, let's stop demonizing each other and try making peace for a change".
Extremely interesting discussion. You raised a lot of questions that provide excellent food for thought. And thanks for the music at the end!
Bro your videos are just the best. I look forward to each one and this was no exception. Great stuff!
As some have pointed out I would say they archetype goes deeper, from the Persian Empire to the Sasanids, Huns,Ottomans, Mongols and many more. Western Europe has been in existencial crisis for thousands of years from of an great eastern empire, you could even say the Soviet Union also fits the archetype. Great video!
So much perspective! ♡
Awesome video! It reminded me of an even older “monsters from the east” account of the Assyrians fighting the “Umman Manda” (Horde from Who Knows Where). Horse archers got around haha
Totally logical theory. Makes sense in way. I’m kinda mind blown right now. Great vid buddy
This was a fantastic video and a very even handed take.
Great video. Subbed. If you wanted to go even deeper, the first time murder happens in the Bible is in the story of Cain and Abel. One was a pastoralist, the other a settled farmer. The archetype of nomadic pastoral people vs settled agrarian people is deeply ingrained in all of humanity. At some point we were all part of a nomadic group, until we settled down. Those who we encountered who were still nomads seemed savage and uncivilized to us who decided to plant roots (quite literally) and take up subsistence agriculture.
There's certainly no coincidence that the story of cain and Abel came out of the "Near East". The story of the fertile crescent is one long series of settled, centralised farming civilisations being overrun by nomadic peoples from the hills and the plains, whose kingdoms would eventually fall to the next wave of invaders.
It's the story of civilisations across the world, but in the Near East, that process is sped up to eleven.
This would fit better with the mythology surrounding Atilla and the Huns. Almost everything noted about the Mongols already existed in the myths about the Huns including the dehumanizing otherness, see Roman writings of the period, the sudden collapse following Atilla's death and their alleged brutality. The Mongols were just more successful at empire building and have more documented brutal tactics. The tropes and myths already exisited due to millenia of conflict between various steppes nomads groups and their settled neighbors. Persia has its own mythologized enemy with the Turanians which probably take themes from clashes with various neighboring cultures.
“feel the humanity that lives and breathes in the gap between the horribly true and the horribly imagined”
… woah. Adding that one to the quote book.
Wow what a great video. Thanks so much for this!
One of the greatest shows has one of my favorite quotes ," It's A lot harder to hate up close" I love it
If you had argued Atilla the Hun rather than Genghis Khan it might have had some merit. The Lord of the Rings is loosely based on the Dark Age period with Gondor being roughly equivalent the waning Roman civilization. It is said Atilla created nothing while destroying everything around the Huns.
What an awesome way to engage with a topic. Just take us there and show us the reality. It really is so balancing and thoughtful to contrast the imagined negative perception you are discussing with the beautiful visuals you are showing. Talk about a show don’t tell for the win!
great vid!
Wow what an absolutely brilliant video. Chills and inspiring
this might be one of your best videos, and all your videos are fantastic to start with. good on you, schnee.
The second this started I thought of the Saga of the Volsungs - The Norse Epic of Sigurd The Dragon Slayer as it likely influenced quite a few parts of Tolkiens universe.
I had read a borrowed copy of an edition that was blue and yellow/brown with a ship on the cover. It said "Introduction and Translation by Jesse L. Byock".
Great video, made with passion and care. It wouldn't surprise me if Tolkien looked to many cultures and histories for inspiration as he was curious about a great deal! My only reservation is that in my opinion he did have other cultures of men in his work, such as the Easterlings and he went to great lengths to humanise them. The Orcs however were not men, nor did they have a culture. History, as you've beautifully shown in your video is full or grey but Tolkien made sure to put some examples of truly good and evil in his stories. The Orcs, for me are those. Not simply creatures that happen to be a threat like wolves or bears, not 'fallen' characters like Saruman or Gollum but evil, like Shelob, Ungoliant or the Orcs. Anyway, just my thoughts. Great work, looking forward to more!
Very well made video, good on ya. Facinating topic and well articulated ideas!
Pre-premiere comment: as a Genghis fan I'm curious to see what this video will be like~
I've always thought that the Easterlings and the Khandish warriors were the direct archetype of Mongols, Persians, Sassanids, etc. Its an interesting and thought out analysis though, perhaps Sauron is a mashup of multiple figures of history and mythology? I've seen similarities between him and King Solomon and now this as well, its plausible. I wonder if you have theories on Morgoth or the the Kingdom of Angmar?
I really love the LOTRs movies and you're videos on Tolkien's work have inspired to read the books! Thanks a lot for these!
This theory is very interesting. I don't know exactly what to make of it myself, but I enjoyed hearing your take on it. When comparing fictional writings to real historical figures, I think you did a good job weighing the prose and khans.
What isn't explained in the novel is that good doesn't always win
Also ghengis eventually won global dominance
Except of course with places like Egypt
Muslims really pulled of the còup De Gràce in the battle of Ain Jalut
Great video although Tolkien said his story isn't an allegory. Many people tried to theorize on what The Lord of The Rings was. Some people said it was an allegory of World War 1 to The Holy Wars/Crusades (Islamic Invasion of Western Europe in the Middle Ages), The Persian Invasion of Greece and finally yes the Mongolian Invasion. But like I said Tolkien claimed he wasn't writing an allgory.
With that being said, I would say that the ethnic and religious make up of the Enemies of the Men of the West in Lord of the Rings would be: Easternlings (Mongolians/Turks), Haradim (North African Muslims), Orcs (Nephilim/Demonic).
Fantastic video. I had not realized how closely Sauron mirrored Genghis Khan! I want to say a lot more, but can't seem to find words, lol. So just, thank you for a great video, great content, and a great analysis of a complex topic.
as a Mongolian, imagine my surprise when fucking GENGHIS KHAN showed up in my feed like, what? but thank you for enjoying my country and thank you for the great video!!!
Сайн байна уу! I'm shocked (but happy) at learning today how many Mongolians apparently watch my videos 😆 🇲🇳
Great analysis ! Love your content
Amazing video mate 👍
On top of Genghis Khan, the exact same thing (and actually closer from Sauron) would be Attila, who relied a lot on subjugated peoples (Ostrogoths vs Easterlings & Haradrims), and once Attila is dead, not even a second wave of sons and grandsons, his empire instantly collapses and ceases to be a threat. Meanwhile Genghis Khan managed to pass his empire to his son Ogodei in one piece, and once Ogedei died his empire quickly split but each part remained a significant power for a while. The monstruous part was even stronger, as the Huns banded the skulls of their children to deform them.
This reminds me of the movie 300, it had overly exaggerated imagery of Persian army, but for a Greek soldier on the defensive, that might have been been the way those elephants, arrow volleys and all other crazy things felt like.
Same here, when it comes to European view of the Mongol horde, seems like a very probable comparison.
Hey very interesting video as a tolkein fan from India the stories from the second age made me feel that there were themes of colonialism sauron whispering discord between the different allied races ( divide and rule) tempting the people with advanced technology ( the rings) a smaller group of people conquering a larger population and areas and sauron being defeated with an alliance of all native people of middle earth defeating him, division of a United people of gondor and arnor and there were also nuemenor colonies
That was very interesting! As a side note, I think you should have a longer and flashier title to attract more views. Doesn't have to be a ridiculous clickbait title, but something longer than four words. Maybe something like, "From Genghis Khan to Sauron: How History Shapes the Stories We Tell". You could probably come up with something better than that, but I just wanted to give an example. Great video!
Tolkien hated allegory. His world was based off of European mythology, not any traditional profane history. There may be a few similarities but the connections end there.
Ive always read, seen and been told that Sauron and his army was an allegory for Hitler and the Nazis.
for schnee or anyone curious, please look up Kirill Yeskov's The Last Ringbearer, it's free, it's a well-written fanfic about how mordor was enlightened, industrializing, egalitarian, demonized by the west.
i grew up on lotr. i remember looking at and wondering what was in rhun and harad, the edges of the known world. years later, i thought yeah the Easterlings in peter jackson's Two Towers looked cool in a meta way. now i'm basically with grrm, tolkien was an undeniable titan, but it def feels like we've Moved On in many ways.
Wonderful window on the past and how it affects us, and illustrated with wonderful imagery. Thanks for this man.
I can agree with most of what you’re saying here. Perspective is really important and exposing complexity and examining it is vital. But I’m also curious what you think about the impact this kind of depiction can have on people. Especially when you watch the films, and see how the orcs and Haradrim are portrayed. The way people are portrayed in media has an effect on how we view them or people similar to them in real life. And if you consider the history of Hollywood and all the “yellow/brown peril” movies out there, how does LotR fit into that? That perspective has become the norm, even though as you said in the video, from the perspective of Africans or indigenous people things would be different. I’d really love to hear your take on this issue!
Very impressive video my dude, loved it.
Great. Job. Outstanding message.
I'm glad to hear someone articulating this concept in the way that you are with your perspective on it. This is an idea that Ive tried to communicate to people plenty of times before and just fallen on completely deaf ears.
As criticism, I would contend the same argument could be made for the Umayyad caliphate taking the eastern Mediterranean from Byzantium, or the Ottoman-Hapsburg wars - The battle of Helm's Deep is basically just copy pasted from the 1683 Siege of Vienna. When analyzing cultural narratives, I think it's exceptionally difficult to pick apart the myth-making from the actually lived factual history, and that's what makes this kind of "direct comparison" a bit dicey.
Very good video
On another channel the guy was talking about how Sauron wasn't always evil. He saw the chaos and pain in the human world and wanted to establish order. Might be more intentional thinking than we give him credit for.
Also, the orcs used to be elves, is that just more mythologizing? Saying these raiders used to be beautiful (if so, beautiful like caucasians or beautiful as their own people?) until they were corrupted.
Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing your passion on this and the beautiful mess that is humanity.
Its interesting to see and think about how these events influenced people's perspectives and stories over the years and allows a person to take a deep dive in old perceptions of foreign overwhelming power. I am glad that modern historians are able to find all this information and build a somewhat (hopefully) accurate depiction of all events on both sides of the argument in order to convey the true circumstances of those times. Its also interesting to think of the Travels of Marco Polo and how he and the "books" might have influenced the perceptions of people in the West of the politics, cultures, customs and people in the East and the Mongol Empire and the perceptions of Kublai Khan as a ruler and conqueror.
That's a great theory! Tolkien certainly drew a lot of inspiration from the historic background of Europe. He also had the Dwarves' maps be oriented up = east 👍🏻👍🏼👍🏽
Why not have a fictional mythology of the Brits be influenced by what medieval people will have heard stories told of? Real world origins for the legend of Arthur, the Niebelungenlied, etc. are beimg discussed among scholars...
Since Sauron is an elf, that means elves are Asian. I did think that elves were always meant to represent Asians, since they live long lives and have a youthful appearance.
Great analysis!!!
The UA-camr Hello Future Me made a video about Sauron's goals and motivation. Which he said was to bring order to the chaos of Middle Earth. His goal was "altruistic", to make Middle Earth a perfect utopia, but to do that he needed armies of Uruks to conquer Middle Earth so that he could "fix" everything that was wrong with Middle Earth.
I really like your approach to the fraught question of race(ism?) in Tolkien. It's almost that it's a false question, or a non-question. Some might say, "Look at how differently Tolkien portrays eastern people from the reality, that's racist and bad", and end the discussion there. But you're *embracing* that difference, as a starting point for asking questions about how storytelling works. It's an open-minded and inquisitive spirit that's very admirable.
This European trope of the despoiling barbarians from the east is an old, old one -- other commenters have already mentioned that the Mongols were only the last and most successful in a series of invasion waves that probably stretches back into prehistory. What I'd add is, at least based on my half-remembered university history reading, the "monstrification" of these foreign cultures at the time was less than one might expect. Obviously Europeans didn't like getting raped and pillaged and saw the invaders as an enemy, but medieval depictions of them that I remember are distinctly human. Indeed, if there's a problem with them, it's that they're not alien *enough*. The Norse and German heroic traditions, for example, take the figure of Attila the Hun and plug him into the narratives functioning as a conventional Germanic king (in the Sigurd/Siegfried story he comes off as one of the few sane characters). And while the East was mysterious, that made it an object of curiosity. In the realm of nonfiction we have the Travels of Marco Polo, written less than a century after Genghis Khan's conquests, portraying the Mongol court in a generally positive and definitely human light. The book was wildly popular.
I just don't recall seeing a lot commentary to the effect of "these people have different facial features and skin color and customs than us and therefore they are an innately different and worse species". Not, at least, before the early modern period, European intercontinental imperialism, and the slave trade. It is then, I think, that the old history of eastern invaders was reinterpreted through the lens of the new and ugly race-consciousness, and at the other end of that process you get stuff like the WWI-era Germans being called "Huns" and portrayed in propaganda posters with vaguely Asian features: the racism had so far progressed (in the manner of a cancer) that, far from envisioning actual Huns as being basically the same as Europeans, Europeans now found it necessary to redefine a conflict with other Europeans whose monarch was literally first cousin to their own as being with an alien race.
Changing the subject somewhat, there's one observation I'd make about Tolkien's orcs, which is that, although they look different than the protagonists and come from a far-off part of the world, in the few places where Tolkien gives us a good look at them he does not portray them as particularly exotic. Their speech is not broken or foreign but rather the familiar (to him) dialect of English industrial laborers. They're the enemy, they're dangerous, but they're also miserable, kind of pitiable, and clearly don't want to be there. Also notable is their affinity for machinery. So in this light, is Sauron Genghis Khan, or is he the factory boss? Saruman, especially, seems like the latter, especially especially in the Scouring of the Shire. Sauron is maybe both at the same time -- after all, it's not an allegory, and Tolkien can be pulling inspiration simultaneously from multiple cultural currents.
I actually heard that the Battle Of Pelennor fields was based on the Battle Of Catalaunian Plains, with Theodoric The Goth being the basis for King Theoden, and the Western Roman Empire being Gondor. So armies of Mordor may have some basis in Attila and the Huns.
I doubt Genghis Khan directly inspired Sauron, but Sauron and Genghis Khan had similar ideologies lol. They had similar aspirations to universal monarchy.
Love your passion for beautifully flawed and rich humanity. Right there with you.
I spent almost a month in Japan. I loved it. It was fascinating. Prior to that, I read books on Japanese culture and history (anything that I could get my hands on) because I loved manga and anime, but I was also a storyteller at heart and one of the things I noticed as the commonness of revenge and restoration of honor (personal or familial) within Japanese stories. And I wanted to know WHY. Why was this so common place in Japanese stories, what made it different from the Western view of revenge. So I read books about Japan.
I'd love to go back to Japan. See more of it. I was limited to Tokyo because I was in the Navy. But I got the pleasure of spending two weekends in Tokyo.
Loved the vid!