I would say the vilification of the Mongols runs deep in every civilisation.

The band of civilisations, running from Europe, through the Middle East, to India and into China and Korea, has always feared the Eurasian hordes in their middle, always looked down on them, their different ways. Not until the 19th century were they ever put under control.

The nomad doesn't wage war for conquest and settlement - that would mean the end of his ways. He wars for plunder. But not even that all that much - the nomad can only posses what he can carry. In the end, the nomad wars for glory and status, to relieve population pressure - the plains can't carry a high density of people.


When they do ride out for conquest, they tend to do so with a bang. Many of us are their descendants. If you are Indo-European, whether in India, Iran or Europe, or Hungarian, or Turkish in Asia Minor or central Asia, or Mongol, or any of very many more peoples, then much of your ancestry would've once roamed the central Asian plains, mobile, outside of scared, settled civilisation.