The incredible story of Roopkund Lake, a place in the Himalayas located five thousand meters high and surrounded by rock glaciers. Its peculiarity: every so often hundreds of human remains emerge. The most plausible theory has just been thrown out, and now the mystery is even bigger.
The first reports regarding the remains that have been found date back to the 19th century. Then an unusual fact was already noticed. It happens for one month a year, always at the same time, when the glacial lake is due to thaw.
Then a chilling secret comes to the surface: hundreds of human remains, skeletons mixed with pieces of meat and hair preserved by the area’s dry and frozen climate.
Along with the first myths and legends that spoke of monsters and the like, we stop in 1942, the year a British forest guard, H. K. Madhwal, arrived in the area.
The man was in the lake a few months before the thaw, and then he was already able to appreciate the strange episode that was being experienced in the heights of the Himalayas. Madhwal believed that the bones he had seen were due to the death of some small group that was passing by, he did not give it any more importance.
However, when the thaw revealed the interior of Roopkund, Madhwal couldn’t believe what he was seeing. They were no longer a pair of bones. The melting showed a “valley of death”, hundreds of skeletons that opened the possibility of a macabre massacre that was totally unknown.
In addition, pieces of wood, iron spikes, some leather slippers and even jewelry were found, but no one could determine their exact origin.
The immediate assumption, being 1942 and in the middle of World War II, was that these were the remains of Japanese soldiers who had died en route while fleeing through India.
Then came other theories: from a possible epidemic, to a possible landslide, to Kashmiri warriors returning from the battle of Tibet in 1841, or perhaps some kind of group suicide in the form of a ritual.
Thus we arrive at the year 2004, when an expedition of researchers organized by National Geographic went to the area to find out once and for all the secret that the glacial lake hid. From there, 30 skeletons and remains were taken to the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad for a series of DNA tests.
The samples were sent to the Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford to carry out radiocarbon dating on the remains. The results revealed something much stranger than anyone could guess: the skeletons dated back to 850 AD. c.
Furthermore, DNA evidence indicated that there were two distinct groups of people, one a family or tribe of closely related individuals, and a second somewhat smaller group, possibly locals hired as porters and guides.
When the analyzes began, the scientists looked at several details. They had all died in a similar way, with blows to the head. However, those deep gaps in the skulls did not seem to be the result of weapons, but rather something rounded. Furthermore, the bodies only had those wounds on the head and shoulders, as if the blows had come from above.
Thus the conclusion was reached that has lasted until some time ago: more than 200 people died due to a sudden and devastating hail storm. Trapped in the valley and with nowhere to hide or seek shelter, the rain wiped out the entire group.
And we say until some time ago, because in a study published in Nature, a team led by Éadaoin Harney analyzed DNA extracted from 38 skeletons. This analysis now revealed that it was actually different populations that experienced fatal incidents at the lake, including one that occurred in the 19th century.
According to the study, “the Roopkund skeletons were found to belong to three genetically distinct groups that were deposited during multiple events, separated in time by approximately 1,000 years. These findings refute previous suggestions that the Roopkund lake skeletons were deposited in a single catastrophic event.
Apparently, most of the skeletons analyzed belonged to an Indian ethnic group, but the DNA of another 14 revealed “the heritage of the Greek island of the eastern Mediterranean.” The ancestry of a single individual appears to have been in Southeast Asia, extremely distant and in the opposite direction.
Instead of a single storm that kills them all, radiocarbon dating indicated that the locals died more than 1,000 years ago, while the “foreigners” were much more recent, probably around 1800. Even stranger, the group Older people appear to have come from many parts of India, with at least two centuries between the oldest and youngest populations.
Findings so unlikely that researchers verified them by testing isotopes of the bones, confirming large variations in their diets and probable places of origin. So the mystery now is even bigger.
