Was the Mongol Empire Not an Environmental Warrior?

‌In the trend of re-evaluating the Mongol Empire that began in the late 20th century, it was widely known to the public that the expansion of the Mongol Empire was "peaceful and voluntary."
However, recent evidence suggests that the Mongol Empire committed immense acts of cruelty.
Through recent archaeological excavations, "traces of violent deaths" were found on the bones of corpses in pits at various mass burial sites from the 13th-century Mongol conquest period.
Traces of fire were also discovered, suggesting fires that swept through cities. There have also been instances where mysterious burial pits containing layers of skulls from children, donkeys, goats, cats, and birds caused a stir.


The appearance of mass grave excavations from the period of the Mongol Empire invasions
Conversely, there are studies suggesting that the destructive actions of the Mongol Empire helped the global environment. In 2011, research results were widely reported stating that the Mongol Empire somewhat decelerated global warming.
If one were to imagine an "eco-friendly warrior," one might picture a warrior who loves tending to vegetation or stroking newly growing saplings, but the reality was entirely different.
The study suggested that while the Mongol Empire did not plant trees, because they killed so many people, nature briefly regained its strength, forests regrew, and carbon dioxide concentrations dropped.
After constructing a global land cover model, researchers applied climate data obtained from analyzing ice cores extracted from Greenland and Antarctica to the model. They then studied how carbon dioxide concentrations changed throughout world history. According to this study, the most significant event in terms of the environment was the emergence of the Mongol Empire.
According to the research team, they claimed that because the Mongol invaders killed so many people, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations decreased by as much as 700 million tons.
However, skepticism has recently increased. It is estimated that about 40 million people were killed by the Mongol Empire (usually Mongol and Turkic soldiers), and the skepticism lies in whether a single event of 40 million deaths (10% of the world population at the time) could truly have had that much impact on the Earth.
Recent scientists explain these bizarre results by stating that along with the scale of population decline, the duration is also important, suggesting that a short-term catastrophe would have had less influence than a long-term one. The explanation is that while the Mongol Empire was a destructive tragedy and its economic aftermath was significant, it did not have such a massive impact on the environment.
The expansion of the Mongol Empire pushed vast territories into a pit of chaos and violence, and as mentioned before, it is estimated to have taken more than 40 million lives. However, the Mongol Empire settled and ruled across Eurasia for about 175 years. Because it was politically stable, trade flourished and prosperity was achieved during this period.
In other words, the Mongol Empire did not benefit the environment in the long term, was the complete opposite of an environmental activist, and there is no particular reason to defend it on those grounds.
Regardless of what anyone says, while it escaped the arrows of criticism by being buried under the condemnation of Europe's colonial history, the Mongol Empire also killed massive numbers of people through its conquest activities. It was a terrifying empire, and though perhaps exaggerated, it is said that they piled up 1.75 million skulls like a mountain in the city of Nishapur to teach what happens when one opposes the Mongol Empire.
In fact, if you study ice core samples, there is a different period that is highly likely to have actually impacted the environment. These samples deal with what changes occurred in the American continent due to the aforementioned European colonization. What changes occurred?
According to research by modern scientists and climatologists, due to the collapse of the Americas in the 16th century, tens of millions of hectares of land that were indigenous farmlands turned back into vast forests and jungles. It is said that as these enormous amounts of trees rapidly absorbed carbon dioxide from the Earth, it even led to the arrival of the 'Little Ice Age,' where global temperatures dropped sharply in the late 16th and 17th centuries.
While European violence was also cruel, the number of Europeans who arrived in the Americas until the end of the event known as the 'Great Collapse of the Americas,' which lasted until the mid-to-late 16th century, was only 60,000 including simple migrants (however, in the late 16th century, 180,000 poured in, meaning three times the cumulative total arrived in just 20 years). The reason tens of millions of people disappeared in an instant was plague. Tens of millions lost their lives, and about 90% of the indigenous population was wiped out.
How was this possible? Common wisdom suggests that if a host dies too quickly, the virus also goes extinct, so viruses usually evolve toward lower lethality and higher transmissibility. This knowledge itself is generally correct in modern medicine.
Of course, in pre-modern times, there were large-scale events where more than 30% of the population disappeared, such as the Black Death in Europe, but the situation in the 16th-century Americas was an unprecedented biological special case in human history, so that rule did not apply at all, and it was far more catastrophic than the Black Death in Europe.
At the time, the American continent had incomparably fewer deadly infectious viruses or acute infectious diseases compared to the Old World. In other words, due to the "virgin soil" effect of 0% immunity, from the virus's perspective, there were no firewalls in front of it, and it was surrounded by hosts ready to accept it, like dry straw catching fire. The structure was such that just as one disease passed and people barely survived to gain immunity, another new deadly disease would enter a few years later and sweep away the remaining population.
Indigenous communities never recovered from this.
At the same time, indigenous animal species in the Americas that emitted carbon dioxide died off and went extinct in large numbers. In fact, more impact was exerted on the global environment here. (However, some species like buffalo were exceptions; not only did they not catch human diseases, but they actually experienced a dramatic reversal, with their numbers exploding until American/British settlers arrived, as they held hegemony over the North American continent while the population declined due to the collapse of the Native American population in the 16th century. This was because, due to the species barrier of diseases, the human diseases of the time did not pass to cattle, and there was spatial isolation and livestock disease prevention. The tragedy of the buffalo was not in the 16th century, but in the much later 19th century, during a period of human-led massacre where the US intentionally wiped them out.)
This was because not only humans but also the unique animals of the American continent were in a "virgin soil" state with zero immunity to Old World diseases. Llamas and alpacas are species that have survived until now, but they suffered immense damage, dying in large numbers with hair falling out and flesh rotting.
In the case of alpacas, it was known that their population decreased so rapidly that 98% died and they were completely extinct, but they are a case where survival was confirmed after being rediscovered by humans at some point in the 19th century.
As a result, as trees regrew over a long period, the carbon storage of the American continent surged, and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations decreased. Research suggests this was a major cause of the global Little Ice Age in the 17th century, but it is not yet certain that this has become an established theory.
However, protecting the environment through the sacrifice of others is likely not the best way to save the planet in the first place.