Original subtitles

Tonight, Genghis Khan, a legendary ancient ruler who amassed unimaginable

wealth. His riches would be worth in the neighborhood of $120 trillion today.

The influence of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire is still felt across Asia and

beyond. But the fate of his treasure remains a mystery.

He absolutely wanted to keep his enemies guessing, so he probably engaged in

substantial amounts of deception regarding his fortune.

Great leaders like Khan were known to be buried with their treasure. But 800

years later, neither his tomb nor his supposed hoard have been found.

Was he buried with his treasure? Is it scattered across Asia? Or could it be

both? There's also a curse.

Anybody who deserves his tomb will actually cause the end of the world.

Now. We'll explore the top theories around exactly where Genghis Khan's

treasure might be.

The Kente Mountains, a rugged and remote region in the most sparsely populated

nation on the planet.

Mongolia. But turn the clock back 800 years, and it's the heart of an empire

that covers one -fifth of all land on Earth.

And it's ruled by one man, Genghis Khan.

Historians have often struggled to put the sheer size of Genghis's empire into

some kind of comprehensible scale. At its height under his rule, it was well

over 9 million square miles. It stretched from the Caspian Sea to the

Ocean. He conquered civilization after civilization, civilizations that have

stood in many cases for thousands of years on their own. And now this group

pastoral nomads are coming out of essentially no man's land in the central

steppes of Mongolia and winning nothing but victory after victory.

Although a lot of times he's referred to as Genghis Khan, we believe it's

probably more accurate to refer to him as Chinggis Khan.

But for a lot of people, especially in the West, when you hear the name Genghis

Khan, you think about brutality. You think about this kind of cruel, almost

barbaric ruler.

But that's really one small part of the story.

He rules, actually, with a ton of tolerance.

In a lot of ways, he's a lot more progressive than his European

He understands that allowing the people that he's ruling to continue their

customs, their religious practices, is probably what's best for his empire.

In a lot of ways, his rule sets the stage for the modern world.

Genghis Khan builds his empire from practically nothing.

The man we think of as Genghis Khan was born Temujin in the late 12th century,

and his father was fairly prominent within their tribe.

However... When Temujin is about 10 years old, his father is murdered by a

tribe. And when that happens, all of the standing of his family essentially

declines within the tribe.

To be fatherless in one of the Mongol tribes is really a huge liability.

His entire family is cast out. They're essentially homeless, wandering the

steppes, hunting for their own food, rodents, or whatever other animal they

could find.

At one point, there's a dispute within the family over the distribution of

Temujin actually murders his half -brother to end the dispute.

And that tells us something about his ruthlessness, even as a young boy.

So as Temujin grows into his adulthood, he's able to gain some followers.

He establishes this meritocracy.

So basically, if you are the strongest soldier, if you're the best fighter, the

best provider, then you're going to have a place in Temujin's tribe.

And this really makes people want to join him and follow him.

He starts to develop a reputation for being both ruthless and crafty. And it

seems in hindsight that Temujin was probably plotting his revenge against

tribe that murdered his father all along.

And here is where we see the ruthlessness of what Temujin brings to

Because he does take an awful revenge for the death of his father. He orders

murder of every member of the tribe taller than a cart axle.

In other words, only small children were spared.

Everybody else was killed.

This area of the world was characterized by groups of nomadic tribes.

There is no sense of social cohesion like we would think of today, living in

communities together.

So because they are tribal, there tends to be a lot of conflict.

And it is that sort of situation that almost requires someone who could step

and unify.

And that's what Temujin does.

An assembly of Mongol tribesmen proclaims Temujin their new leader and

a new name.

Chinggis Khan, which means universal ruler.

He decides to expand the territories he rules.

Chinggis builds an empire within a generation.

When you think about this is 25 years, how can you even draw a parallel with

Roman Empire, which is built over 400 years?

If you resist Chinggis Khan, it's probably not going to end very well for

A lot of times there are very few people left in a village to survive. Often

he'll only allow a few people to survive to go and tell the other villages, the

other tribes about his cruelty and then hopefully surrender in advance.

The Mongols understand intrinsically that it's inherently better to actually

convince the enemy to surrender and collaborate than it is to have to

them or wear them down through an attrition approach to war.

So on the one hand, he needs to be a fairly generous conqueror. When he

you, he offers to let you join his society under very specific rules.

In addition to the territorial expansion that goes on as a result of his

conquest, he's also acquiring treasure.

And treasure not just in the sense that we might think of coins and jewels.

He's also amassing a treasure of people, of livestock, of land.

At the height of his empire, Genghis Khan amassed a fortune estimated to be

worth over $120 trillion in today's money.

When it comes to the spoils of war, whether it was forcibly taken from a

given voluntarily through tribute, the possibilities are quite literally

endless.

Any kind of treasure made of anything from jade to porcelain to ivory to gold

silver. And so it's fair to think that all of these treasures, ranging from the

Far East to the edge of Europe, may have made their way back to the heart of

their empire.

Genghis Khan establishes his own new currency system, which is based on

coins. We also have some evidence that him and his successors were some of the

first to use paper money, which is really interesting. So we have to

that there was a lot of gold and silver and precious metals floating around the

empire as well.

But all of Genghis Khan's riches can't save him from a mysterious death.

We're not sure exactly how Genghis Khan died, but we do know when and where he

died, which is August 18th, 1227, somewhere in what's today northwestern

There are a lot of stories about how he died. He was almost 70 years old at the

time, so that might have been one of the main causes.

But some stories say that he took an arrow and he fell off his horse and

suffered an injury.

There are others who say he might have died of some disease like the bubonic

plague. There's even a story that a conquered princess might have injured

genitalia leading to his death. But a lot of these sound kind of legendary,

befitting Genghis Khan, but we'll never exactly know what happened.

The Mongols have some very interesting beliefs about death and burial.

In particular, they believe that you really can take it with you. You require

wealth and riches in the afterlife.

And so it is entirely plausible that Genghis Khan was buried with a

amount of treasure.

So most experts believe that if you can find the burial site of Genghis Khan,

you are going to find a great cache of treasure.

Genghis Khan made sure that it would be incredibly difficult to find his tomb.

So even to this day, we really don't know exactly where he was buried. He

it to be kept a secret. There's a lot of legends and stories around how this

happened.

one of which suggests that almost no one was trusted with the actual burial

location. The troops that were detailed to create the tomb and place Genghis

Khan within it were ordered to kill anyone they met on the route to the tomb

were then themselves killed in turn by a separate unit.

That separate unit...

was killed by a third unit, thus continually breaking the chain of

and evidence as to where the tomb might be located.

One of the oldest clues pointing to a potential location of the tomb comes

a young explorer employed by the Mongol Empire about 50 years after Genghis

Khan's death, Marco Polo.

Marco Polo served as an emissary at the court of Kupala Khan, Genghis Khan's

grandson. He reports that what he's hearing at the court of Kublai Khan is

the great Genghis Khan is buried in the Kinti Mountain region.

In a specific mountain, which he does not name, the challenge is that we're

talking about an area that is thousands of square miles.

After the fall of the Mongol Empire in 1368, the ruling powers of Mongolia

change hands several times.

Then in the 1920s, the northern region known as Outer Mongolia joins the newly

formed Soviet Union.

After World War II, the southern region known as Inner Mongolia becomes part of

China, where it remains today.

For the next few centuries, whoever is in charge of this mountain range is

to make it really difficult to go in and explore. Even once Mongolia becomes a

puppet state of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the Soviets also want to keep

this area off -limits.

There is the added dramatic element here that there's a curse associated with

his burial.

Anyone who opens the grave of the great Genghis Khan doesn't just doom their own

life.

They bring about the end of the world.

It's not really until the Iron Curtain falls that we get to have some

exploration of this region of the Kente Mountains.

So starting in 1989, people come and start exploring the region looking for

tomb.

During this time, a wealthy Chicago commodities trader named Maury Kravitz

obsessed with finding Genghis Khan's tomb.

He identifies multiple locations in the Kente Mountains that he believes might

hold the remains of the great Khan.

In the summer of 2000, he's ready to begin.

Almost from the beginning, the Kravitz expedition is all but doomed.

His horses become exhausted when they're only halfway to the elevation of the

intended site.

They have to be taken the rest of the way by helicopter.

But they do eventually discover some really interesting sites.

About 150 tombs, but none of them are Genghis Khan's.

So on his second excursion in 2001, they meet a local herdsman who tells him

about this walled structure on one side of a mountain that's signifying some

place of importance.

As they crest the rise on their climb, they discover a wall stretching two

in distance, reaching heights as high as 12 feet high, surrounding a mysterious

complex.

In 2002, the Mongolian government gives Kravitz's team permission to dig.

Then trouble hits basically at every step of the way.

Several of Kravitz's team are bitten by pit vipers, which can be deadly. They

have to be medevaced out.

At one point, one of their cars rolls off the side of a mountain, and

surprisingly, no one is hurt.

There's also an outbreak of anthrax among some of the animals.

So at that point, the Mongolian government decides to shut it down.

Kravitz is unable to resume the expedition and dies in 2012.

There has been no return to that site to explore since.

But whenever you're talking about 800 -year -old loot involving a great Mongol

emperor, there'll be treasure hunters from all over the world who are going to

seek this site.

Genghis Khan's riches may have been buried with him according to Mongolian

beliefs, but his tomb has eluded discovery for nearly 800 years.

After Genghis Khan's death in 1227, there's a special work commissioned

The Secret History of the Mongols that chronicles his life and that of his

court. This was never a text that was meant for public consumption.

This is something that was written for the private use of those closest to the

emperor.

This document was lost for centuries.

It was originally written in a Mongol dialect, but eventually, since the

later conquer China, it gets translated into Chinese, and it is rediscovered in

the 1800s in a Chinese version, which we've been able now to read.

So according to the secret history of the Mongols, Genghis Khan is buried in a

sacred mountain in the Kinti Mountain Range, one of the highest mountains

some 8 ,000 feet, called Burkhan Khaldun.

And this is also the place where he was born.

Burkhan Khaldun actually translates to God Mountain.

So it's a very sacred site to begin with in Mongolian thinking.

It was a site that was very, very special to Genghis Khan himself.

It was a site where early in his life he had escaped to find refuge during a

battle that had gone south on him.

He kind of felt this life debt to the mountain itself.

And it was this place where he had returned to often. In fact, there's one

account found in the Secret History of the Mongols.

which says that one day he was out on the plains there at the foot of the

Kaldun mountain, and there was a solitary tree growing there, and that he

beneath its shade, and while sitting there, he came to the realization that

was where he wanted to be buried.

If Genghis Khan's wish was honored, then it's very possible that not only is he

buried there on Birkan Kaldun, but some of the treasure could be as well.

In 2009, Albert Lin, an American explorer, decides he's going to take a

modern approach to searching for Genghis Khan's tomb.

Using drones and satellites, Lin and his team collect over 85 ,000 aerial images

of the Kente Mountains.

It's a very large area. He has 85 ,000 images.

So he can't do all this himself, but in our modern age, he decides that he can

bring in more people through the Internet in a form of crowdsourcing.

Now, these people don't necessarily have to be experts. They just have to look

for things that seem unusual, that doesn't look natural there.

And he creates an algorithm for all of the hits that people identify there. And

in narrowing these down, one spot in particular, on the slopes of the Burkhan

Khaldun, there seems to be a large man -made structural remains there.

The only problem for Lin is that this site is right in the middle of an area

known as the Great Taboo or the Forbidden Zone.

Almost as soon as Genghis Khan is gone, this area becomes off -limits to

everyone except for the Mongol elite.

In fact, it's even said that it's guarded by a shaman tribe of Mongols

the Darkhan who protect the area.

This goes hand in hand with this notion of there being a curse for anybody who

disturbs the tomb.

This great taboo continues even during the Soviet rule of Mongolia. The Soviets

don't want anyone getting hold of Genghis Khan, his tomb, any of his

that could be used to spark Mongol nationalism.

It's not until the 2010s that the Mongolian government finally allows some

-person research there.

In 2012, Dr. Lin and his team are allowed to examine the site of the stone

structure in person.

They're able to do preliminary digging, and they do find things like arrowheads

and ceramic pottery shards, which they are then able to actually date to the

1200s when Genghis Khan would have lived. But unfortunately, the Mongolian

government hasn't granted them permission to go back and follow up on

So that mysterious stone structure...

remains something of a mystery to us.

But Lynn is not the only one who's interested in this site.

In 2015, there's a team of French researchers who use a drone and identify

site on the side of a mountain at Burkhan Khaldun.

It appears to be an ancient mound surrounded by stones.

So this is intriguing because it has all the features of being a potential

burial site. The challenge is that these French researchers didn't receive the

proper approvals of the Mongolian government.

So the investigation is shut down.

Although Burkhan Khaldun seems like the most likely spot for Genghis Khan's

tomb, there are still other possibilities.

And in fact, maybe people are working backwards. We shouldn't think about the

tomb first. Maybe we got to go to Genghis Khan's death and start working

there.

2016, Yinchuan, China.

American explorer Alan Nichols leads an expedition he believes will finally end

the mystery of Genghis Khan's tomb and treasure.

Alan Nichols is an attorney and an explorer who has made himself into

of an expert on sacred mountains.

So Nichols' idea is to start with the last information that we know is true

about Genghis Khan, which is when and where he died, and work backwards from

there.

Nichols instead essentially looks at a map and he says, well, we know where

Genghis Khan died and we know that was Chinese territory.

We're relatively certain that the Mongols would not have buried him there.

However, we also know that the Mongols believed that burial needed to occur

immediately after death.

And as such, they probably would have taken the most direct route out of

territory and buried the Great Khan as soon as it was culturally permissive to

do so.

According to Nichols, there's another reason why the Khan would not be buried

where historical accounts indicate.

It's quite possible that there's false information, deception in these sources,

like the secret history of the Mongols, because we know that Genghis Khan

himself was a master of deception. He used deception frequently in his

tactics.

Besides the feigned retreats and then turning on enemies, we also know that he

would do things to make the enemy think that his force was much greater in size

than it was. For example, having his cavalry drag branches and wood behind

to kick up dust to make it seem like they had a huge force.

So it was common for him to use deception like this, and so why not

people about where he's buried?

There is a belief in shamanism that as soon as you die, your physical remains

can be invaded by evil spirits.

Because he represents the identity of the Mongolian people, there would be a

special attention made to an immediate burial for him to prohibit that from

happening. Nichols believes that Genghis Khan's army...

does not go the distance to take him back home, but instead goes to the

place that is just over the boundary of what is Mongol land.

The land today is inside China.

But at the time, this was Mongol territory.

In 2016.

Nichols claims to have found Genghis Khan's likely burial location in

China, which he refers to only as Mountain X.

Do you know that this so -called Mountain X is in a very modern Chinese

Yinshuan? And in addition to ruins of earlier things, there's also modern

structures. Unfortunately, he won't tell us what that mountain is. He just calls

it Mountain X.

He doesn't want anybody else to go in there and excavate it and beat him to

punch and get all the glory.

Applying for permission to dig in such an area is going to require permission

the government.

So we have the challenge of requesting permission to explore a site that we

are simultaneously unwilling to reveal. The Chinese government says no.

to further exploration and shut this team down.

Finding Genghis Khan's tomb has been an obsession of archaeologists and

explorers for hundreds of years.

But for those focused on locating the treasure, his tomb may not be the only

answer. Not all of his treasure might be in his tomb.

After all, the Mongol Empire continued. In fact, it continued to expand even

after Genghis Khan under his successors. And they would have had to have some

wealth to continue on the empire, so surely his successors would have

some, if not most, of that wealth.

We don't have an exact number for how many children Genghis Khan produced, but

we're fairly certain that it's well over a thousand. There is a 2003 DNA study

conducted.

that suggests that 16 million men on Earth may have a direct genetic heritage

that can be drawn from Genghis Khan. However, in his lifetime, he only

acknowledged four sons, and he determines that the third of those sons,

will be his chosen successor.

When Genghis Khan dies in 1227, he leaves his vast Mongol Empire to his

son, Ogedei Khan.

The new emperor, much like his father, conquers people and territory with

terrifying efficiency.

He expands the Empire West all the way to modern -day Poland.

But it's Ogedei's transformation of the Mongolian capital that may hold clues to

his father's missing riches.

The capital of the Mongol Empire was Karakorum, which is located on the

Silk Road. It is the nexus of the east -west trading route.

So Genghis Khan established this capital really as a base of operations from

which his armies would go out. At his time, it was not much more than a

collection of yurts. But this is going to dramatically transform under the

of his son.

Ogedei, unlike Genghis, doesn't really see himself as a nomadic warrior of the

steppes. He's been raised in the environment that's populated by Mongol

and all of these riches.

And so Ogedei is going to start to look for more forms of permanence.

And that's going to include the construction of a massive palace at

What's really interesting about Karakorum is that it's not a village

gradually from a village into a town into a city. It's essentially like a pop

-up city all at once that Ogedei creates.

And it's meant to be sort of the jewel of the Mongol Empire, the place where

people from all over can come and visit and essentially be impressed by what

they've accomplished.

One of the first things that he does is he brings in all of the conquered,

captured, and conscripted craftsmen from across the Eurasian continent. And

collectively, they pour their talents into the construction of this quite

glorious capital city. It was kind of a site of cultural blending, unparalleled

at that time.

Walking down the street, you would see Buddhist temples next to Islamic mosques

next to Christian churches.

It is designed to overawe anyone that visits it.

When you start to think about how you show off wealth and power, that's what

see embodied in this palace.

And it's where the loot flows back to, because it's important to keep in mind

that Ogedei is still conquering. He's still expanding the empire.

So that's probably where a lot of this treasure was.

We have eyewitness accounts showing all of this opulence. Everything seems to be

covered in gold and silver, ivory and precious gems.

One of the most detailed accounts of the palace is written by a visiting

missionary known as William of Rubruck.

William of Rubruck describes these buildings, calling them as long as

He describes these barns as holding treasures.

And if you consider what that means to a European observer, you're talking about

a vast, long hallway.

William of Rubik describes this incredibly opulent silver and gold

the shape of a tree where literally the tree branches serve as pipes that can

dispense and serve wine, milk, mead. It's incredible.

Just this fountain alone is a really good indicator that the Mongols have a

of precious metals on hand.

In regards to the wealth accumulated by the Mongols, while it's doubtful that

all of it was contained in a tomb left for the great Khan himself, much of it

would have been brought into the city of Karakorum. However, the city of

Karakorum is kind of a temporary capital in the history of the Mongol Empire.

By the 1270s, the Mongols have abandoned Karakorum as their capital, basically

because it doesn't really have the resources to support such a large

And then later on in 1380, it gets ransacked and destroyed by a marauding

Chinese army.

For all intents and purposes, it's no longer a center of imperial power of any

type. It's a relatively small settlement. But what's left there is

200 years after that, in 1586, a large Buddhist monastery is built on the same

site.

In the 1940s, Soviet archaeologists claimed that they have discovered the

of this palace of the Great Khan, but other experts disagree and believe that

what they found was a temple and that it's possible that the ruins of the

are actually underneath the monastery itself.

The main problem is that the monastery is still in use today. They have to get

lot of permission from the Mongolian government to actually dig under the

But technological advances in the 2000s make it possible to search Karakorum

without extensive digging.

This sparks renewed interest in the hunt for Genghis Khan's riches.

In 2021, German researchers spent 52 days surveying the site using something

called supersensitive magnetometry.

It's designed to detect voids and pockets beneath the surface of the earth

might identify previously existing structures.

So they were able to discern that this was probably the site of a palace

the monastery.

Archaeologists have discovered a lot of really interesting artifacts around

Karakoram, including Muslim silver coins, Chinese pottery, an Egyptian

even a gold bracelet in the shape of a phoenix.

The main problem is that we don't know if these treasures are related to

Khan's leadership or they're just more evidence of Karakoram as this bustling

center of trade.

The Mongols built great palaces in many locations. This is not the only one.

If you really want to make sure that you have ruled out every possible location

for this treasure, you've got to go to Xanadu.

Some believe the key to finding Genghis Khan's riches is to investigate his

successor's extravagant palaces.

And none are more impressive than those constructed by the mighty Kublai Khan.

Kublai Khan is Genghis Khan's grandson.

He's actually going to oversee the Mongol Empire kind of at its height, at

absolute apex.

Kublai Khan is the one that actually kind of wins the war with China once and

for all. He's obsessed with bringing about the final conquest of the southern

Chinese cities that up until the time of his reign had been able to withstand

the Mongol assault.

So one of the things that helped Kublai Khan conquer China is...

a new kind of catapult the mongols called it the huiwi pow and basically by

having a heavy counterweight it can fling a large projectile of some 600

pounds a good 300 yards to smash through enemy walls of fortified

cities the mongols don't just fling stone projectiles or explosives

into chinese cities They will also try to poison the water supplies by flinging

the carcasses of dead livestock over the walls.

They will also fling the heads of their enemies over the walls. There's nothing

quite like a pile of skulls to serve as a wonderful message to anyone who might

be thinking about resisting your conquest.

With his invasion of China complete, Kublai Khan now controls 20 % of all

on Earth.

So Kublai Khan inherits the capital in Karakoram, but because his focus is on

controlling and ruling China, he wants to build palaces further south, closer

where he can keep an eye on the Chinese.

So after he conquers China, Kublai Khan wants to be closer to it rather than

staying in Karakoram. And so he creates this new capital some 200 miles away

from Beijing.

There are many experts who believe that Kublai Khan would have wanted to bring

Genghis Khan's treasure along with him to this new capital that he built to

showcase all of the Mongol riches.

Kublai Khan names his new capital Shangdu.

But at the same time, Marco Polo is working for the empire as an advisor.

And through his accounts, the name becomes somewhat garbled, and it's why

know it as Xanadu.

Xanadu is this splendid, wealthy, magnificent place with a couple of

palaces, gardens, hunting grounds, streams running through it. In fact,

what inspired the famous poem called Kublai Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

which starts off with the famous line, In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a pleasure

decree.

Xanadu is in some ways mythological and in some ways entirely real. It's like a

Shangri -La, only we know for sure that it was actually constructed.

Marco Polo claimed to have seen storehouses filled with treasures

the Great Khan, as well as golden and bronze statues in every room.

Several surviving accounts document the vast treasure held at Xanadu, but none

of them indicate what happened to that treasure.

When Kublai Khan dies in 1294, there's a lot of infighting among the Mongol

successors. There's a lot of Chinese revolt, and things really go south for

Mongols. And by 1368, about 75 years after Kublai Khan's death, the empire

falls.

So by 1430, the city of Xanadu no longer has any real influence. And as a matter

of fact, the great structures themselves begin to be reused to build domestic

dwellings or for other civil purposes. So the image that we might have of

is lost to us because it is incorporated into the next page of history.

There's really no doubt that a lot of the loot conquered by Genghis Khan's

armies continues to amass in the various palaces.

It starts in Karakorum, it winds up next in Thanadu.

That's how empires work.

And as their capital moves, the riches that underpin it move along with it. And

so it really shouldn't come as a surprise that when you go to construct a

palace, you're probably going to strip the old one of most of its wealth.

You're going to reuse a lot of the same materials.

But the legend of this glittering city lives on.

The legacy of Xanadu lives on partly because of Marco Polo's writing, partly

because of the Coleridge poem. But it's important to remember that this is not a

fictional paradise. It was a real place.

We know where Xanadu is.

You can Google map it right now with satellite and you can see where it is.

There's still a possibility with further archaeological investigation that

something more can be found there. It's just a matter of what.

In the 1930s, we know that there are Japanese soldiers that are using metal

detection as a way of exploring Xanadu, and they came up empty.

But in many ways, that only contributes to the mystique.

We know that we found clay figures, things that would be considered great

treasures, but not the kind of treasure that we're talking about when we say

we're looking for the treasure of Genghis Khan.

So with no luck so far in Xanadu, some treasure hunters believe that we should

look a little bit further south, a few hundred miles down the Silk Road, at

another place where Kublai Khan held court.

Kublai Khan decides that he needs to move his palace even closer to the

of power in China. And so he's going to wind up building an even bigger palace,

thus outdoing what his predecessors had done.

Beijing has been China's capital for over 3 ,000 years.

But in the late 1200s, it's not the Chinese who control it. At the time, the

city is known as Zhongdu and is the capital of Kublai Khan's empire.

Kublai Khan really sees himself as both Mongolian and Chinese in a lot of ways.

He's adopted many of the mores of Chinese culture.

And so he's going to move to what we now call Beijing and build a massive palace

there as the center point to administer his far -flung empire.

Everywhere you look, all of the treasure and loot and inordinate wealth of the

Mongols is within this great palace of Kublai Khan.

And this is, of course, Kublai Khan's proudest achievement, the conquest of

China. So if that's going to be his new capital city, he's going to bring his

treasury with him. And that, again, is the inheritance that goes back to

Khan.

In 1271, Kublai Khan builds his most over -the -top palace yet. In fact,

Polo describes this palace as the greatest palace that ever was.

Its walls were covered with gold and silver.

It has a dining hall that could seat some 6 ,000 people.

And then it had private chambers, according to Marco Polo, which housed

treasures including gold, silver, gems.

and the private property of the great Khan, but these were off limits to

outsiders, so who knows how much was in these private rooms.

The cult of worship that springs up around Genghis Khan intensifies under

reign of his grandson Kublai Khan.

At one point, Kublai Khan is going to go so far as to construct a giant eight

-chambered temple at the palace there at Chengdu in devotion to Genghis Khan

himself. And this was going to become a site of great ceremonial importance.

In this temple, he's going to stock it with several relics that were associated

with Genghis Khan, along with perhaps jade ornaments and porcelain goods.

Chengdu is where Kublai Khan settles down for the remainder of his rule until

his death in 1294.

After Kublai Khan, we don't have a clear line of succession.

The Mongol Empire effectively tears itself apart.

Administering this size of an empire over this wide of an area is all but

impossible unless you have a very charismatic leader, a shared common

and a willingness for the different disparate parts of the empire to remain

together. And that's just really not the case with the Mongols.

Given that this is the primary location of Kublai Khan for over 20 years, this

is a really good potential site for Genghis Khan's treasure.

After the Mongol Empire falls in the late 1300s, the Chinese retake Chengdu

according to some accounts, burn Mongol palaces to the ground.

They renamed the city Beijing, capital of a new Chinese regime, the Ming

Dynasty.

They destroy Kublai Khan's Mongol palace, and they set up a new palace

for themselves called the Forbidden City.

This would be the administrative center for the royal family of the Chinese

emperor and his administration, and it was off -limits to everyone else. The

Mongol period is forgotten. Those buildings were destroyed. Who knows what

happened to them?

Then, in 2016...

Archaeologists working in Beijing propose a startling new theory.

Archaeologists examining the Forbidden City find that beneath the palace today

are earlier levels.

They find from the more recent Qing period that underneath this you have the

Ming period, and below that there is the Mongol period. So it turns out

that the palace of Kublai Khan...

It's probably there. It's not near there. It's actually under the Forbidden

today.

It's very possible that if we explore these ruins, that that might be the site

of Genghis Khan's lost treasure.

But like with a lot of these other sites, the Chinese government has been

hesitant to allow digs underneath the Forbidden City. For one, it's an

incredibly important historic site, and it's a very large tourist attraction.

If it's the case that Genghis Khan's treasure is retained by his successor

is brought to Beijing to be in Kublai Khan's palace there, it's still possible

that it's down there today.

But unless a way can be found to do less invasive archaeological

investigation using modern technologies, we're in the dark. We're just going to

have to wait until that day comes to figure out what's under there.

The influence of the Mongolian Empire, and specifically Genghis Khan, is still

felt around the globe today.

Genghis Khan might very well have been the wealthiest human ever on Earth.

And yet, we've found very little evidence of what happened to his wealth.

After 800 years, the lure of Genghis Khan's lost riches is still driving

explorers to corners of his vast empire in search of clues.

Archaeologists have uncovered more ancient burial sites in Mongolia and a

in Turkey belonging to one of Genghis Khan's grandsons.

Nothing of great value has been found yet, but treasure hunters can take

There's no shortage of places to search.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.