ABSTRACT
As a high school student I took a social studies class called Area Studies. When studying about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, I learned a little about Russian history. I learned about the Mongols who came thundering out from the east. They burned, raped, looted, killed, and pillaged everything in sight. Some time later, when studying about China, another of the “areas” in the course, I again learned about the Mongols. This time they were thundering from the west. They burned, raped, looted, killed, and pillaged everything in sight. I was flabbergasted. Could the Russian Mongols and the Chinese Mongols be one and the same? How could they be everywhere? Or were they two different peoples? My teacher had no satisfactory answers for my questions. And certainly there was no coherent awareness of an interconnected ecumene that for over a thousand years had linked the trading and traveling networks of Africa, Europe, and Asia.
