5. The Horrific Cost of Chinggis’ Conquests
The Mongol invasions killed an estimated forty million people. That was in a world whose population was about a twentieth of the one we live in today. If extrapolated to modern population figures, it would be the equivalent of more than four times the deaths of World War I and World War II combined. That massive body count meant there were significantly fewer people to engage in activities that emitted carbon. Most significantly, many regions were depopulated, and vast swathes of what had once been cleared and cultivated fields reverted to forests, whose trees and vegetation absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Scholarsbegan their research with a global model of land cover in 800 AD. Then, as seen below, they examined four major historical events that could have impacted the climate because of reforestation after significant population declines.
