The mystery of the missing Mongolian graves in Hungary
Hungarian archaeology has identified several hundred victims from the Mongol invasion period so far. Not a single one of them is Mongolian.
There are several reasons for this. According to chronicles, they took many of their dead back with them. In addition, it was a common custom among them to simply leave commoners out on the steppe, and the animals took care of the rest. This practice still existed in the first half of the 20th century.
In other words, just because we don’t find them doesn’t mean they didn’t die in large numbers.
And we have one astonishing sentence about exactly this. The pope’s envoy visited the Mongol capital, Karakorum, in 1246.
In his report, he describes that in the land of the Tatars there are two cemeteries. In one, the khans and the commanders are buried. In the other, those who died in Hungary.
A separate cemetery. For the dead of a single campaign.
For a long time, this sentence could be read as just a curiosity from a distant traveler. Today, when we know that there was a fortification at every village on the Great Plain, and that the population defended themselves to the last person, it sounds entirely different.
Incidentally, we also find surprisingly few Hungarian soldiers — we’re only just starting to discover them. The reason is the same: anything that doesn’t end up underground disappears within a few years.
There is one single exception: in the settlement of Muhi, the remains of two people were found in a pit, both with eastern weaponry. Whether they were Mongols or Cumans, fighting in Hungarian ranks, we still can’t tell today. The era is that complex.
If a separate cemetery had to be opened for them, then there were a lot of them.
Aranymonostor – We brought the history locked in the sand back to life.
