Searching For Genghis Khan

Jacki Lyden in for Tom Ashbrook

We’ll talk to a research scientist just back from Mongolia about his super high-tech search for the tomb of Genghis Khan.

On the Mongolian plains, men ride on horseback searching for the tomb of Chingis Khan, warrior-king who conquered a vast empire. They’re also bringing high-tech, non-invasive tools which rely on the ‘crowd sourcing’ of people on their laptops at home.

And they’re operating under the skepticism, by some scholars, that the great Khan ever had a tomb anywhere at all. That hasn’t stopped U.C. San Diego scientist Albert Lin and a Mongol battalion of explorers.

This hour On Point: Ghingis Khan’s secrets.
-Jacki Lyden
Guests:

Albert Lin, research scientist at the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology at the University of California, San Diego. You can find his work with National Geographic here.

Morris Rossabi, professor of history at the City University of New York, and adjunct professor of Mongolian and inner Asian history at Columbia University.

From The Reading List:

• The Washington Post: "Albert Lin is hunting for Genghis Khan. Legend has it that Khan, the ruthless conqueror who was the first emperor of the Mongol Empire, was buried in an unmarked tomb in northern Mongolia about 800 years ago. "

• California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology: "Lin’s explorations are groundbreaking, in part, because he never breaks ground. He uses non-invasive, computer-based technologies to gather, synthesize and visualize data in previously unreachable places, with no damage to the environment."

• The Sunday Times: "It may be the biggest manhunt ever launched. Thousands of volunteers have been recruited to trawl satellite photographs for the resting place of Genghis Khan, the 13th-century Mongol emperor whose conquests stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea."