Giant Killer Birds + Modern Nomads: Secrets of Mongolia Exposed

At just five people per square mile, Mongolia is far and away the least densely populated nation on the planet… but that doesn’t mean it’s not home to some of the strangest phenomena out there…

Let’s just start with this:

Now we all know that Golden Eagles are “birds of prey” and falconry is ridiculous but it’s not really new news, but did you know that these birds could pull off this kind of thing:

Mongolia or Naboo?

I watched that one five times before I finally decided that it wasn’t CGI, but what else is there to say except that these birds are the real deal? They don’t just take out rabbits or little things, but they are swooping large sheep into the air, mauling wolves on command, and there is even some footage out there of them attacking grizzly bears. The crazy part: how well Mongolian nomads have trained them to hunt. Apparently in a laughably sparsely populated spot like the Mongolian Steppe, the best way to hunt is to cover as much ground as possible by driving a car/horse and having your Eagle survey the land. Check this out…

(But first, how identical is this Mongolian Royalty outfit to the clothing that Queen Amidala rocked in Star Wars Episode One. I guess we can add her to the list of ridiculous token racial figures in the movie that includes Jamaican Jar Jar Binks, Japanese “Viceroys”, and Jewish/Arab (you choose) slave dealer “Watto”. That could be a black and white promotional photo of Natalie Portman for all I know.)

At this point, we “get it” that these creatures can take down large predators, but isn’t it kinda crazy to see birds hunting in packs? Multiple eagles, of course, implies that multiple eagle master nomads have to be present. In fact, the semi-nomadic people of the steppe celebrate by coming together to watch their eagles collectively maul stuff in what is apparently one of the biggest festivals of the year…

Which vaguely reminds me of this…

But how do the Mongolians train their Eagles to be such efficient hunters? They maintain a relationship with the birds from birth and teach them to hunt with skins and small prey until they can cut it in the big leagues: wolves… and how do they get them to come back? It’s simple: they need their masters for water. Eventually though, all of these birds are released into the wild. Only females are used as hunters, and by age 10, the birds are too ornary to handle because they want to make a nest of their own… Check out this Eagle Hunter talking about his birds… (Interview starts at 2 min – note how they wear GAP clothing in Mongolia).

Who are these people? Of Mongolia’s 2.7 million people, 1.2 or so live in the capital Ulanbatur, a city that has been growing at a pretty crazy rate. Check out these pictures of the world’s northernmost Capital from 2005 and 2009 respectively:

Four Years Earlier...

Four Years later...

You’d barely be able to tell, but those two pictures really were taken from the same physical spot (try matching up objects in each scene… I promise you can). Mongolia is modernizing at a crazy rate. Last decade, they went from having 30,000 internet users to having 300,000, but given that 40% of the population lives in one place, that means the other 1.5 million are spread out over 600,000 square miles… and there are only 1500 miles of paved road in the entire country. So what do they do? 30% of Mongolians (800,000) are semi-nomadic, living in portable yurts where their herds of animals can graze and moving ten times a year to find viable meadows. While such may seem primitive and many Mongolians live on under 2 dollars/ day, the nation boasts a respectable life expectancy of 67 years, and the way of life has been incredibly sustainable for centuries. Under communist rule (you see the occasional token commie smokestacks still here and there throughout the Mongolia footage), the semi-nomadic lifestyle was oppressed: herds were confiscated, and these people were forced onto collectives. The return to capitalism, though, has seen a return to relative prosperity for these people, who even occasionally make it into Ulanbatur to rage at the hot new clubs before heading back out to the steppes. Check out this great mini-documentary on the Mongolian Steppe Peoples…

And how do you take a yurt (funny word) up and down? Like So:

Step 1)

You could grow some killer Ivy on that...

Step 2)

Put the tarp on it...

Step 3)

Tie It Tight...

When you ask “people on the street” what they know about Mongolia? The first answer you get is probably “Mongolian Beef” (which isn’t Mongolian at all) or “Mongolian Barbeque” (which is Japanese). In a great irony, the first American franchise to open in Ulanbatur (and it’s become very popular): B.D.’s Mongolian Barbeque of course:

This one is in the Chicago suburbs... but I'm glad the namesakes approve.

Mongolia is clearly a world very alien to the west, one whose geographic realities have lead to a lifestyle and culture that seem nearly unfathomable. The country is surely barren and surely poor, but how beautiful do these landscapes look? and could you call the fortitude and industry of the semi-nomadic people anything but incredible? Also, you can’t ever quite forget this: