While searching for tomb of Genghis Khan, archaeologists make a 4,000-year-old discovery

Genghis Khan, the notorious Mongolian leader from the 13th century, might have a documented history of his conquests but one important mystery remains.

Where is he buried?

The search for the infamous tomb of Genghis Khan continues. (Image source: YouTube)

Here's more from a UCLA news release issued a few years ago to give you some insight into the legend:

According to legend, Genghis Khan lies buried somewhere beneath the dusty steppe of Northeastern Mongolia, entombed in a spot so secretive that anyone who made the mistake of encountering his funeral procession was executed on the spot. Once he was below ground, his men brought in horses to trample evidence of his grave, and just to be absolutely sure he would never be found, they diverted a river to flow over their leader's final resting place.

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Khan's grave is presumably in a region bordered by Mongolia's Onon River and the Khan khentii mountains near his birthplace in Khentii Aimag, and some experts believe his sons and other family members were later buried beside him. The researchers, however, have little additional information to go on. Directly following Khan's death in 1227, the area around his tomb was deemed forbidden by the emperor's guards, and later in the 20th century, by strict Russian occupation, which prohibited Mongolians from even talking about Genghis Khan because they felt it might lead to nationalist uprising. Only since the 1990s have researchers been allowed in the area, and several other research teams have tried unsuccessfully to locate the tomb.

Well the fascination over the hidden burial site has not escaped the Travel Channel's second season of "Expedition Unknown." Last week its host Josh Gates took on the legend of King Aurthur and this week he looks at Genghis Khan.

"From the forbidden mountains of outer Mongolia to the punishing deserts of western Africa, we’re going off the map investigating the greatest legends in history," Gates said in a statement.

The Travel Channel shared an exclusive video with TheBlaze ahead of tonight's show of a discovery made while searching for the grave.

Though only a 56-second clip, it's cool none-the-less. Gates along with archaeologists at a site near the ancient capital of Karakorum, modern-day Kharkhorin, brushed dirt off a male human skull. Travel Channel revealed to us that it did not belong to Genghis Khan, but was from a 4,000-year-old tomb.

Watch the clip:

A study published earlier this year in the journal PLOS One detailed a crowd-sourced effort to search satellite images for the tomb, described as "an archaeological enigma that lacks any historical description of its potential visual appearance." This effort eventually led to a National Geographic expedition of 55 archaeological sites that could be in the region where he was buried.

Dr. Albert Yu-Min Lin with the University of California, San Diego, who led this an other studies to discover the burial site of Genghis Kahn, said in a statement a few years ago that researchers were turning toward advanced visualization technologies because "there are few clues and no factual evidence about Genghis Khan's burial."