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The capital of the Mongol Empire has been mapped in unprecedented detail. It turns out that the city of Karakorum was far larger than once thought and was quite unlike medieval European cities in its layout.

In the late 1100s and early 1200s, the Mongol leader Tem眉jin established a vast empire spanning much of Asia and Europe.

Tem眉jin became known as Chinggis Khan, and is also remembered as Genghis Khan in many nations today. After his death in 1227, his son 脰g枚dei became the new Khan. He established Karakorum as the capital of the empire on a site that his father had used as a camp.

However, the Mongol Empire only lasted a few decades before becoming fractured into smaller states and eventually dissolving. As a result, by the early 1400s, Karakorum was largely abandoned. It was never forgotten, but for centuries its location was lost, until it was rediscovered in 1889 by Russian explorer Nikolai Yadrintsev. The city was mapped a few years later and further expeditions have since added data, but the overall scale of it remained unclear.

at the University of Bonn in Germany and his colleagues mapped the city using a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID), which senses disturbances in the magnetic field caused by underground structures. They also explored the area on foot.

The team concludes that Karakorum鈥檚 size has been underestimated. There is a central walled city with an area of 133 hectares that we already knew about, but there were also many buildings and structures outside the walls. This is unlike medieval European cities, which were confined within walls. The researchers roughly estimate that this outer region spans 1180 hectares, but they say that number is 鈥渉ighly speculative鈥�.

While the buildings sprawled far outside the city walls, much of the area within the walls wasn鈥檛 built on: about 40 per cent of it was classed as 鈥渆mpty space鈥�.

Karakorum was what is known as an 鈥渋mplanted city鈥� because it was created by a single emperor in a place with little urbanisation, says . 鈥淚n a landscape without cities, a new ruler constructs a city out of nothing.鈥�

脰g枚dei decided where it should be and had the power to make it happen. He built 鈥渁 complete new city with everything you need, with the pillars, the administration, the city wall with gates, with towers, with the temples and streets and so on鈥�, says Bemmann. 鈥淎nd it鈥檚 not only constructing the city but also bringing in all the people who live in the city.鈥�

Many of the inhabitants weren鈥檛 local people, says Bemmann. Written sources suggest that Karokorum was populated by artisans and other specialists introduced from abroad to facilitate the city鈥檚 construction and use as a capital. Some were attracted by money, while others were brought by force.

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