Where is the tomb of Genghis Khan?

Genghis Khan unified the Mongols and created an enormous empire that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to Ukraine by the time of his death in 1227; and his successors would go on to conquer even more territory.   

So, where is this charismatic leader buried? Does he have a monumental tomb like the pyramids built for the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, or a mausoleum with terra–cotta warriors, like the one built for China's  first Qin emperor?

The answer is that the location of Genghis Khan's tomb is unknown and unlikely to be found anytime soon. Moreover, some people in Mongolia might prefer that it is never found, as Genghis is regarded by some today with an almost religious reverence, experts tell Live Science. 

The tomb, wherever it may be, "is very important to the people of Mongolia with almost religious overtones," William Honeychurch, an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, told Live Science in an email. He declined to speculate on where the tomb may be located. 

Related: What was the largest empire in the world?

One possibility is that Genghis Khan was buried in Mongolia's eastern Khentii province, where he was born. "I think the tomb is in [the] mountains in Khentii Province," Nancy Steinhardt, a professor of East Asian art at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Museum, told Live Science in an email. "I don't think it will be found any time soon," she added.

Contemporary sources are largely silent on where Genghis Khan’s tomb is or what it looked like. "There exists no historical or archaeological record describing the physical appearance of this tomb," a team of researchers wrote in a study published in 2014 in the journal PLOS One. The researchers used satellite imagery to search for the tomb, and the satellite survey identified a variety of archaeological remains, but not the tomb of Genghis Khan.