The Eerie Skeletons Of India’s Roopkund Lake
Schwiki/Wikimedia CommonsHuman skeletons at Roopkund Lake, one of the scariest places on Earth. Hundreds of skeletons have been discovered at this Indian lake since the 1940s.
Roopkund Lake in Uttarakhand, India would be a nice place to visit — if it weren’t for all the human skeletons that keep washing up on its shores.
The skeletons of Roopkund Lake were first documented in 1942, when forest ranger H. K. Madhawl reported finding bones at the lake, which is located 16,000 feet above sea level. Though the lake froze in the winter, the summer months would eventually reveal even more skeletons, baffling experts.
At first, some reasoned that the more than 200 skeletons that washed ashore might have belonged to Japanese troops who died of exposure during World War II. But an examination by British scientists revealed that the skeletons were not nearly as young as they appeared.
Thus, the World War II theory quickly fell apart. And it would take decades for the mystery of this creepy place to finally be solved.
Neha iitb/Wikimedia CommonsRoopkund Lake in the winter. When the lake thawed in the warm months in the 1940s, it started to reveal skeletons.
In 2004, researchers in Hyderabad studied the Roopkund Lake skeletons anew using DNA evidence and updated technology. They found that the remains dated back to 850 C.E. and that they could be split into two groups: a family or tribe connected by DNA and several unrelated people who were smaller in stature. The researchers hypothesized that the smaller people had been hired to lead the family or tribe through the region.
Significantly, researchers also determined that the skeletons had suffered from fatal blows to the head and shoulders. Because the blows appeared to have been left by round objects instead of weapons, the researchers came to believe that the entire 200-person party was killed by a freak hailstorm.
Though some of the Roopkund Lake skeletons have disappeared over time, many still remain along the lake’s shores. To some, this makes the Indian lake, the site of a centuries-old tragedy, one of the scariest places on Earth.
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