GENGHIS KHAN: THE BUTCHER WHO BUILT THE FIRST GLOBALIZATION

Here's the uncomfortable part: the same man who wiped Urgench off the map made it possible, a generation later, for a merchant to cross 4,000 kilometers alone carrying pure gold and arrive in one piece. It's not that Genghis Khan had a good side and a bad side neatly separated. According to the capsule's thesis, terror and order were the same move seen from different angles.

And that leaves us with no easy way out. You can't keep only the Pax Mongolica and pretend the million dead didn't foot the bill. Nor can you erase what he built.

So I'll ask you in earnest: if the safe road existed only because there was a massacre first, would you take that road knowing what paved it?