#skeleton lake

[holycatsandrabbits]

Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: Roopkund: Skeleton Lake

Welcome on this Weird Wednesday! Today we’re off to the Indian Himalayas to check out a lake that people are just dying to visit. Literally.

Also known as “Skeleton Lake,” Roopkund is famous for having shores littered with the scattered bones of at least 300 people (see pic, above). Who were they? How did they die and when? Unfortunately, nobody knows for sure. But there are some clues.

At first, people wondered if the skeletons might belong to a doomed army marching through the mountains, but the remains include women and children, and few weapons. There aren’t many elderly people whose presence might suggest the lake was used as a graveyard, and their bones show no sign of an epidemic disease that could have wiped out hundreds at once. Instead, the clothing and artifacts found with the bones suggest they belong to pilgrims on a holy voyage, and indeed, Roopkund is near several Hindu pilgrimage sites.

But how did they all die? Oddly enough, some of the bones show signs of blunt trauma. And there is a local legend that tells of a large party of pilgrims who angered the goddess Nanda Devi, who punished them with a hailstorm. Hail is common in the area, so it makes perfect sense: the legend is preserving a real weather event that killed hundreds.

Except recent DNA analysis and other scientific studies suggest something far stranger.

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

Visitors from another realm. Just when you think you understand what happened in the past, a new find changes everything. It’s especially unsettling when the evidence consists of human remains. You could write just that kind of mystery about our planet or a fantasy world, where scientists discover foreign travelers in a strange place, or evidence of ancient contact between two peoples long before they were thought to have met. Explanations could include voyages of exploration or just people getting lost, or less realistic ideas like teleportation, tunnels through the center of the earth, alien abductions that return people in the wrong place, or magic.

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers 

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[unexplained-events]

Skeleton Lake

Roopkund Lake, in the Indian Himalayas, is frozen for much of the year. But in warmer months it delivers a macabre performance, earning the nickname Skeleton Lake. After the lake melts, hundreds of skeletons (some with flesh still attached) begin to emerge. 

At first it was thought that all these people died simultaneously in a catastrophic event, but recent studies on the remains upended that theory. Studies showed that there wasn’t just one mass dumping of the dead, but several, spread over a millennium.

Further genetic analysis by researchers (particularly researchers Niraj Rai and David Reich) showed that the remains were mostly South Asian, East Asian, and Eastern Mediterranean and that a lot of the remains appeared hundreds and even a thousand years apart. Chemical signatures from the skeletons indicate that the individuals had significantly different diets, adding support to the notion that several distinct population groups are represented. Their sample size (they studied 38 different remains) also showed that none of the people were related.

None of the research has answered how and why all these remains got here. There’s no evidence of bacterial infections, so an epidemic was probably not to blame. Perhaps the challenging high-altitude environment proved fatal. Currently Skeleton Lake’s mystery remains unexplained.

SOURCE (def recommend reading the full story)

[earthstory]

How Hundreds of Bodies Ended up in Skeleton Lake

In 1942, during the height of World War II, a forest ranger in Roopkund, India made a grisly discovery – hundreds of skeletons along a frozen glacial lake in the Himalayas. Some of the bones still had hair and flesh attached to them. Fearful that the remains might be Japanese soldiers who died of exposure while sneaking through the mountains, the British government launched an investigation. When the ice melted the next summer, investigators found many more skeletons in the shallow waters of what is now called Roopkund Lake, but unofficially is known as Skeleton Lake.

The investigators quickly determined that the bones were much too old to have anything to do with the war. The remains had been well preserved by the cold, dry air, but technology at the time could not adequately determine the age of the bones.

Hypotheses began to emerge as to why so many bodies were in the lake: perhaps it was ritual suicide, maybe the lake had been used as a dumping ground for bodies after an epidemic, perhaps two warring factions had killed each other, or maybe it was a landslide. Finally, a 2004 scientific expedition provided a plausible explanation for what happened.

The 300-700 skeletons were dated to around 850 CE and showed the full spread of human ages. DNA showed that the bodies were from two distinct groups of people: most were from a large family or tribe of closely related humans, many of whom shared a rare minor genetic abnormality, and the second were a people of shorter stature who were likely locals. They were likely pilgrims with local guides and porters. Aside from their fatal injuries, they appear to have been generally healthy. They all died roughly at the same time.

The cause of death was determined to be a combination of geography and weather. Roopkund Lake is at an altitude of about 5,050 meters (16,500 feet). It is located in a small valley surrounded by steep jagged peaks, in an area prone to avalanches and storms that can produce large hailstones. Many of the skulls displayed evidence of trauma that occurred while the person was still alive, and is similar to injuries sustained from small rocks.

The research team suggested that the people were in the valley when a hailstorm hit. They had no shelter, and there is no cover in the valley. They fled up the steep sides of the valley, but were killed as the hail hit them and fractured their skulls. Eventually landslides pushed their bodies down into the valley and into the lake. The bones are so strewn about that the 2004 expedition fretted that they couldn’t take two steps without stepping on bones or flesh.

Support for this hypothesis comes from local legend. The people who live near the lake have passed down an oral tale through songs. It tells of a goddess becoming angry with her devotes and raining down hail as hard as iron in her anger, killing them.

RE

Photo Credit: Schwiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roopkund_Lake.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Skeletons_in_Roopkund_Lake.jpg Read More: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-skeleton-lake-of-roopkund-india Other Sources: National Geographic documentary “Riddles of the Dead: Skeleton Lake

[lovebizarreoddities]

Skeletal remains from as many as 500 people may be scattered and undisturbed around Roopkund, a glacial lake in the Uttarakhand state of India. The lake is of high altitude, uninhabited, and located in the Himalayas.  

The area is a popular trekking destination and the skeletons at the edge of the lake are visible in the clear water during a one-month period when the ice melts.

Recent research suggest the mass grave is from a semi-legendary event where a group of people were killed in a sudden, violent hailstorm in the 9th century.

[unsettlingthings]

[sciencenewsforstudents]

India’s Skeleton Lake contains the bones of mysterious European migrants

Not all of the hundreds of skeletons found at a north Indian lake are from the same place or period. What killed any of these people is still unknown.

High in the Himalayas, the bones of several hundred mysterious people lie scattered around a small lake, earning it the nickname Skeleton Lake.

Some of those people originated in the vicinity of Greece and Crete around 220 years ago, a new analysis of DNA and radiocarbon-dated bones finds. But why the genetically unrelated men and women traveled to Skeleton Lake, or how they died, is still a mystery, scientists report August 20 in Nature Communications.

“We were extremely surprised to find Mediterranean ancestry at such a harsh geographical location,” says paleogeneticist Niraj Rai of Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow, India.

Also known as Roopkund Lake, the pool sits more than 5,000 meters above sea level in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand. A trip from Greece to the sky-scraping lake covers about 5,000 kilometers.

Skeletal remains of several hundred people scattered around a northern Indian lake contain genetic clues to groups from different places that died there about 1,000 years apart. CREDIT: HIMADRI SINHA ROY

Other people whose bones rest at the site came from South Asia around 1,000 years before the enigmatic Europeans arrived, the team found. DNA extracted from 38 Roopkund Lake skeletons pegs 23 as having South Asian genetic roots, as opposed to 14 with eastern Mediterranean ancestry. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the South Asians, and a lakeside individual with Southeast Asian ancestry, lived around 1,200 years ago.

Present-day Hindu pilgrims travel past Roopkund Lake on their way to a northern Indian sanctuary where they worship the goddess Nanda Devi. Perhaps a catastrophe of some kind killed pilgrims there 1,200 years ago, the researchers speculate. But Mediterranean people in the Himalayas 200 years ago were likely neither Hindus nor pilgrims, they say.

[unexplained-mysteries]

Skeleton Lake of Roopkund, India - A Mystery Demystified - Unexplained Mysteries

A lake with hundreds of ancient skeletons surrounding it. The surprise is what killed them. Roopkund is better off known as The skeleton lake due to the presence of an enormous grave that holds about 300 to 600 skeletons. This discovery has revolutionized the world of ancient history ever since 1942, when a park ranger came across this mass deposition of bones.

[unexplained-events]

Skeleton Lake in Roopkund, India. First stumbled across by a British soldier in the 1940s, it wasn’t until 2004 that a plausible explanation behind the nearly two hundred skeletons was found. Distinct, rounded blunt force trauma to the skulls of every skeleton indicated that these people may have died from a severe hailstorm. The skeletons themselves date back to 850 AD.