Hundreds of Human Skeletons Found at a Lake in the Himalayas

KirTop Archeology

Hundreds of bones emerge from a Himalayan glacier—and DNA reveals Greek roots, deaths a thousand years apart, and a mystery tourists may have muddied forever. What were Mediterranean travelers doing at this deadly lake? Join us as we follow the clues.  Subscribe for more stories like this! Comment what you liked most from the video. #Mystery #History #Science #Himalayas #DNA  👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kirtop-channel  0:00 - Roopkund’s Discovery and Early Theories 4:43 - The Pilgrimage Legend and Hail Theory 10:14 - Dating Reveals Separate Tragedies 12:54 - Greek DNA in the Himalayas 17:11 - Foreign Travelers on a Deadly Route 19:17 - Searching for the Travelers’ Descendants 21:26 - Lost Evidence and Roopkund’s Unanswered Mystery  We're now available on Spotify! Listen now https://open.spotify.com/show/03446o1UkrphwLdUErZj1B

Transcript

00:00Altitude. 5,000 meters. The glacier is melting and hundreds of human skulls are appearing on

00:06the surface. For decades, it was believed that all these people were killed by an ancient storm.

00:11But DNA analysis shocked the scientists. These people died a thousand years apart,

00:16and some of them came from the Greek island of Crete. Hello, my friend. You're on the

00:21Kirtop channel. My name is Alexander, and today we will find out what the most terrifying lake

00:26on the planet. Rupkund is hiding. Let's figure it out. A cemetery at an altitude of 5,000 meters.

00:35Some remains at Lake Rupkund are so well preserved that researchers have found not only hair and

00:40nails on them, but even remnants of soft tissues. At first glance, one might think that these people

00:46died relatively recently. However, in these mountains, appearances are deceiving. The cold

00:52helped preserve what might have simply disappeared elsewhere. And that means it's simply impossible

00:57to determine the age of the find just because it looks frightening. The lake itself is located

01:02in the Indian Himalayas at an altitude of just over 5,000 meters. It's quite small, about 40 meters

01:08across, and for most of the year it's hidden under snow and ice. When the snow recedes, skulls, ribs,

01:14and long human bones become visible among the rocks and in the water. This is not a cemetery with neat

01:19rows of graves. The remains are mixed together, scattered along the shore and slopes, and no one

01:25knows the exact number of people who died. Scientists talk about hundreds of bodies, but no one can give

01:30an exact number. The mountains are literally strewn with bones. To reach this place, you have to cross

01:36mountains, and the last stretches are already above the tree line. If the weather turns bad, you can't

01:42just wait it out under a tree here, and the nearest shelter isn't just around the corner. Honestly, I'm

01:47cautious about a route that's described as just a few days on foot. The word just is usually said by

01:54someone who doesn't actually have to walk this path. But the jokes end when you realize that there

02:00really are people here for whom there was no way back. The panic of 1942 and Japanese saboteurs.

02:09The lake became widely known after the remains were discovered by forest workers in 1942.

02:16And this is where the real detective story begins, which is often forgotten today. It was 1942. The

02:24height of World War II. The Japanese Imperial Army was advancing rapidly in Belarus, Burma, and had

02:31come close to British India. And when the Indian forest ranger Hari Kishan Madwal accidentally stumbled

02:37upon hundreds of frozen human bodies on a remote mountain pass, the British command went into a real

02:42panic. The military's first thought was that the Japanese had found a secret passage through the

02:46Himalayas. The British decided that it was an elite sabotage unit that tried to bypass the defensive

02:51line from the north, but froze on the pass. A military commission was urgently sent to the mountains.

02:56The officers literally examined everything under a magnifying glass. The uniforms, buttons, scraps of

03:02fabric, equipment, and shoes of the dead, trying to find any traces of Japanese army gear. And only when it

03:08became obvious that the fabrics were too ancient and the bones had been lying in the ice long before

03:12the war, did the headquarters breathe a sigh of relief. The panic subsided. But questions remained

03:18in the air. If these aren't Japanese and not soldiers, then who are they? Later, research expeditions

03:23came here. They took samples and tried to understand what kind of people died so far from populated areas.

03:29Among the explanations were a military unit, traders, pilgrims, and victims of an epidemic. Just by looking at the

03:36scattered bones, it's impossible to choose between these stories. Each one explains a part of the

03:41picture, but not the whole discovery. Gradually, details began to emerge that didn't fit well with

03:46the version of an ordinary military unit. Anthropologists saw that among the dead, there were

03:51not only men, but also women, including elderly ones. Nearby, they found jewelry and umbrellas of the type

03:57used by participants in local religious pilgrimages. This still doesn't reveal the identities of the

04:02deceased, but it does make us look at the route itself differently. Perhaps people came up here

04:08not to fight or transport goods, but for something that was more important to them than comfort and

04:14safety. Even before the genetic research, anthropologists noticed how much people differed

04:18in their body types. From individual long bones, they reconstructed the height of several people

04:23at about 1 meter 85 and above, while others were significantly shorter. The idea of adoption came up.

04:30It came up. But you can't prove that just by height. Tall and short people can be found in any

04:37community. For now, it was just a lead that fit well with a diverse group of travelers.

04:42But if the military trail led to a dead end, why did the locals avoid this lake and whisper the

04:50same

04:50song to each other? Now you'll understand why. Why did the goddess execute the king? What Rupkund has an unusual

04:59clue for such a mystery? The local legend doesn't just declare the lake cursed. It explains in quite some detail

05:06who died here and why. It features a ruler, his entourage, and a punishment that came down from the heavens.

05:12And before dismissing this story, it's worth seeing where the trail by the lake leads. Through these

05:18mountains passes the Nandadevi Raj Jat pilgrimage. Raj Jat, dedicated to the goddess. The large procession

05:25is traditionally associated with a 12-year cycle, and the entire route stretches for 100 kilometers.

05:31Ancient manuscripts about this pilgrimage have hardly survived to our time. But on the walls of

05:35neighboring temples, these routes were carved into the walls a thousand years ago. So people went to the

05:40pass not for fun, but driven by blind faith. According to one version of the legend, King Kanaoj

05:46Just Kaval went on a pilgrimage with his wife, courtiers, and servants. But instead of behaving as

05:52the sacred path traditionally required, he brought dancers and musicians, turning the journey into a

05:58noisy procession. According to legend, this angered Nandadevi, and the goddess sent a deadly storm upon the

06:04people. A local song speaks of hail as hard as iron, from which the group could not escape. It's easy

06:10to

06:10get carried away here and start assigning roles to the scattered skulls. This one belonged to the king,

06:15this one to the musician, and over there perhaps lay the guide. But Kostya wasn't told anything like

06:21that. The legend has characters, the discoveries don't have names yet, and it's tempting to connect

06:26them with one beautiful story. Especially because half the work has already been done for us. At the same

06:31time, some details really do fit the idea of travelers with an escort. They found dents on the skull bones.

06:37Exactly the same marks can still be seen today on Himalayan porters who spend their whole lives

06:43carrying loads on their heads. So what we have here is not just gentlemen, but an entire expedition

06:48with servants, along with items that resemble those of pilgrims. This makes the theory of a religious

06:53journey much more convincing than just a story about a king who made a poor choice of entertainment.

06:58There is also a human question, which is easy to overlook behind all the theories. For you and me,

07:04the altitude and the difficult road seem like reasons not to go. But for the participants of

07:08the pilgrimage, the journey had a completely different meaning. I can say, yes, I would have

07:13turned back even before the pass. But that doesn't explain anything for a person for whom making this

07:18journey was very important. To understand those who died, it's not enough to judge the route by our own

07:24ideas of a reasonable descent. We need to figure out what made them willing to endure its hardships.

07:29But the most interesting connection with the legend turned out not to be in the ornaments or the

07:34supposed porters. Among the skulls, there were some damaged by heavy blows and some injuries could

07:39have occurred around the time of death. So the story about deadly hail and the actual bone damage,

07:45at least partially match. I would also like to see here the memory of eyewitnesses who survived the

07:50suffering. But for now, the opposite is also possible. People first saw the bones and only then

07:57came up with the legend. Knowing exactly what delivered the blows could help us distinguish

08:01between these possibilities. But the most terrifying thing was hidden in the injuries.

08:06The experts looked at the pierced skulls and realized the murder weapon had literally melted

08:10before their eyes. The murder weapon melted without a trace. The supposed murder weapon used on these

08:17people could have simply melted away, leaving nothing behind except damaged bones. Researchers

08:23considered giant hailstones. And for this, it wasn't necessary to take the story of an enraged goddess

08:29literally. It's enough to imagine a severe storm in an open, high-altitude area where a large group

08:35simply has no reliable shelter. In such a situation, hail doesn't have to kill everyone with a direct hit.

08:41In the reconstruction proposed by researchers, some people could have received fatal blows,

08:46while others could have been left injured in the cold and failed to survive the storm. A difficult trek,

08:51an exposed slope, and the inability to descend quickly make this version quite understandable without

08:56any mysticism. In the early 2000s, it became widely known, including thanks to the National Geographic

09:02Project. And, it must be admitted, the explanation turned out to be quite tempting. The pilgrimage

09:07gives a reason to go up into the mountains, the storm explains the deaths, and a local song seems to

09:12preserve the memory of what happened. Usually, in stories like this, at least one link is missing.

09:17But here, it seems everything fits together. At this point, I'm ready to believe. Especially since this

09:22version doesn't require any secret weapon or vanished civilization. But in the actual anthropologist

09:27report, everything is much more mundane. Fatal holes in the skull caused by hail were found in

09:33only three people. The rest had their skulls fractured after death. They were simply crushed

09:37by rocks and landslides. So, the hail theory explains the deaths of only a few travelers,

09:42but certainly not all the deaths at the lake. This isn't a refutation of the hail theory,

09:46but there's a huge difference between it could have happened this way and we have established the

09:51cause of death for everyone at the lake. For some of the victims, the storm remains a plausible

09:55explanation. But for the rest, there is still no answer. Before applying a single explanation to

10:01the entire Roopkund, we need to check a simple thing. Could these people have even been caught in the

10:07same storm? And this is where historians were literally left speechless. Because physicists got

10:12involved in the case, a thousand-year mistake and the collapse of the old theory. Some of the supposed

10:20victims of this catastrophe couldn't have met even in theory. When some died, there was still a whole

10:27century left before the others. This was shown by the dating results published in a major study in 2019.

10:32The researchers determined the ages of 37 people, and they saw not one compact group, but two periods

10:39that were very far apart from each other. The early remains dated back to approximately the 7th to 10th

10:44centuries AD, the later ones to the 17th to 20th centuries, with a gap of about 1,000 years between

10:51the main groups. And no margin of error in the instruments can merge this data together. The early

10:56middle ages and the 19th century could not have met on the same day. No way. Moreover, even within the

11:02early group, the story doesn't add up to a single catastrophe. One person's remains date to between 675 and

11:08769. Another one is dated between 894 and 985. Even the closest boundaries of these ranges are

11:16separated by more than a century. So while we were trying to imagine a single procession, we already

11:21had evidence of separate fatal incidents. And this was long before the arrival of later travelers.

11:26This naturally raises a perfectly reasonable question. Why wasn't this noticed earlier? It might

11:31seem that the old instruments were simply off by a thousand years. But the situation turned out to be

11:36more interesting. Before the major study, there were already dating results for five samples.

11:41And all of them really pointed to the early middle ages. People from a much later group simply weren't

11:47included in that small sample. The new study did not overturn the age of the old samples. It just

11:52showed that the history of the lake doesn't end with them. And here the scientists made a classic

11:56mistake. They only examined five ancient bones and decided they had solved the mystery of all the

12:02hundreds who died. But five bones are not the whole lake. The device can give a completely correct answer

12:08to a question that isn't enough to solve the mystery. Now a new theory can be proposed. And it's

12:14even simpler than the previous one. Pilgrims traveled through dangerous areas. In different years,

12:19tragedies happened. And the remains gradually accumulated by the lake. You don't need one incredible storm for

12:25that. A long history of the route is enough, where people from time to time didn't make it back home.

12:29But that same 2019 study contained another set of results, which didn't really fit this

12:36convenient theory anymore. And so we found out people had been dying here for centuries.

12:42It would seem the mystery was solved, but not quite. Because the results of the 2019 genetic test

12:49truly shocked biologists. No one expected this.

12:54The mystery of Greek DNA in the Himalayas.

12:57The age difference can still be explained by centuries of pilgrimage.

13:02But how do you explain people whose closest genetic ties lead to the other end of a vast continent?

13:09Out of the 38 people whose DNA was studied, not all of them turned out to be similar to the

13:15inhabitants of South Asia. And it's not just about one strange sample that accidentally stood out

13:20from the general pattern. 23 people really had origins connected to South Asia. And they were

13:26noticeably different from each other. It didn't look like a small community where everyone married

13:30only among themselves for generations. Among the people studied, there were both men and women.

13:35And the team didn't find any pairs of close relatives. For a pilgrimage that gathers people from

13:40different places, such a picture fits quite well. Although, of course, genetics alone doesn't prove it

13:46was a religious journey. But 14 people showed similarities with the population of the eastern

13:53Mediterranean, especially with modern Greeks and the inhabitants of Crete. This was actually the later group,

13:59who lived a thousand years after those who died earlier. So, the explanation that people from

14:04different regions simply came here no longer covers everyone who was studied. Somewhere between the

14:09Mediterranean and the Himalayan pass, the story was missing an enormous journey. DNA showed a direct

14:15relationship with Crete and Greece. The first thought was, come on, this must be a lab error. One of the

14:20scientists or guides just sneezed on the sample. But the biologist double-checked everything down to the

14:25molecule. The DNA is genuine. And when the physicists looked at the chemical composition of the bones,

14:31the puzzle finally came together. What we eat is literally recorded in our skeleton. The Indians from

14:38Rupkund ate millet, but the second group grew up on Mediterranean wheat. These are not the mythical

14:43descendants of Alexander the Great's warriors who lived in India for centuries. These were outsiders with

14:48no local ancestry who arrived in the Himalayas literally just months before their deaths. Add to that

14:54another traveler from Southeast Asia whose remains were found. The picture that emerges is absolutely

14:59bizarre. Why did the Europeans come here without maps or equipment, where even your breath freezes?

15:07Why did the Europeans go to certain death? The simplest explanation wouldn't require this

15:12group to have traveled halfway around the world at all. What if their ancestors reached South Asia a long

15:17time ago and they were already born here? A scientific article does indeed consider such a possibility.

15:23Related to the Indo-Greek communities that emerged after the era of Alexander the Great.

15:29Admit it, it makes things much simpler. No mysterious expedition from the Mediterranean,

15:34just descendants of people who had lived nearby for a long time. But this elegant theory has a solid

15:39refutation. If these were distant descendants of Alexander the Great's soldiers, over 2000 years,

15:44their genome would inevitably have mixed with the Indian one. Just as it happened, for example, with the Kalash

15:49people. But here, geneticists were stunned. There are absolutely no local admixtures at all. Not a

15:55single percent. These 14 people were from the eastern Mediterranean with no Indian ancestry. They

16:02hadn't lived in India for centuries. They arrived here from Europe in the 19th century and immediately

16:08went to the deadly pass. That leaves travelers, merchants, or members of some expedition. However,

16:14Lake Rubekund itself is not on a major trade route. So just saying merchants isn't enough. We need to

16:20explain why they needed that particular high-altitude stretch. At the same time, I wouldn't call such a

16:26journey impossible. After all, we're not discussing the impossibility of crossing the distance, but rather

16:31the lack of a clear reason to do so. The person might have had a very compelling reason. One that

16:36simply

16:37didn't survive, along with his bones. What if they were just foreign pilgrims who came to believe

16:42in the local gods? That sounds naive if you know the realities of that time. The 19th century. A

16:48sacred ritual honoring the goddess Nanda Devi closed to outsiders. For centuries, outsiders were not

16:53allowed in under threat of death. The appearance of a group of Europeans in the middle of a Hindu sacred

16:57procession would have caused a religious riot. Not a single Brahmin would have blessed outsiders for this

17:02journey. And yet, bones don't lie. 14 Mediterranean people lay mixed with the locals, at an altitude of

17:105,000 meters. To understand the scale of that tragedy, you need to realize what 5,000 meters above sea

17:17level means. That's the altitude of Everest's base camp. At this altitude, atmospheric pressure drops by

17:24almost half, and there's critically little oxygen in the air. In such conditions, even professional

17:29climbers move slowly, counting every step. For an unprepared person, this is where hell begins.

17:36Acute mountain sickness hits the body instantly. Severe headache, loss of coordination, nausea,

17:42and confusion. At any moment, pulmonary or cerebral edema can begin. That's when a person simply stops

17:48understanding where they are and where they're going. Now imagine people from the 19th century,

17:53in woolen or leather clothing, without waterproof breathable jackets,

17:57without oxygen tanks, and without maps. If a sudden blizzard catches you at this altitude,

18:03or the temperature drops to minus 20 degrees celsius, you don't even have half an hour to think.

18:08Panic, hypoxia, and hypothermia kill faster than any weapon. The people by the lake may not have died

18:14from a mythical blow from the sky, but simply because their bodies couldn't handle the altitude.

18:20There's an even simpler explanation. Maybe the lake wasn't their destination. Anthropologist William Sachs,

18:26who has been here and studied the pilgrimage, explained that modern participants don't stay

18:30at Rupkin for long. They need to keep moving. That's an important difference. It's one thing to

18:35look for a mysterious place that for some reason attracted foreigners, and another thing entirely

18:41to look for a route on which they died. A person can die near a lake they never specifically intended

18:46to

18:46visit. The available dating results of the later group overlap, so they allow for the possibility that

18:51they died in the same event. But they don't prove that everyone died on the same day. A

18:55person of Southeast Asian origin could have been traveling with them, or could have ended up here

19:00separately. The authors suggested searching the archives for reports about travelers who died.

19:05But in the actual study, there is no document that would link the records to a specific expedition.

19:10However, a few years later, there was an attempt to look for answers, not in old documents,

19:15but among living people. Searching for living descendants in 2025. It's much easier to identify

19:24the deceased when you can find their relatives. But is it possible to do this after several centuries,

19:29when you don't even know which country to start searching in? In 2025, they tried to approach the

19:36remains at Rupkund from this angle, comparing their DNA with data from modern people. The 2-3-and-me team,

19:43which included one of the authors of the 2019 study, used 17 well-preserved genetic samples.

19:52They were compared with a database of more than 11 million participants who agreed to the study.

19:57Did they find any matches? They have already found matches in about 1,240 people, but only a few were

20:04strong. And even those, the team did not consider convincing evidence of close genealogical relationship.

20:11Can you imagine how tempting the next step is here? To find a family that has a story about an

20:16ancestor who went to India, and then compare it with documents and dates. That would already be the

20:21beginning of a biography, not just another theory made up. But no such result was announced, and a

20:28small genetic fragment by itself does not turn into a person's name. At the same time, the geographical

20:33clue remains. For the Mediterranean group, the most significant connections are again in Greater Greece and Crete.

20:39The new comparison supported the previous direction of the search, but it did not explain why people went

20:45to the mountains. And not finding a relative does not mean that the deceased had no family left.

20:50The huge database still doesn't contain everyone on Earth, so we still don't know our travelers' last

20:55names. But here it's especially clear what we expect from genetics. We don't just want to learn where

21:01they came from. We want to get a whole story with a beginning, a journey, and an ending. For that,

21:06one analysis is not enough. And some of the necessary clues could have been literally right

21:11next to the bones all this time. Among 11 million people, genetic matches were found. But why don't

21:18we know their names yet? The answer will make you angry. Because the crime scene was turned into a

21:25circus. How tourists destroyed the main evidence of the century. And here we come to the details that

21:31irritate researchers more than any unsolved theories. Imagine a crime scene where evidence

21:37of incredible importance is lying around. And now imagine that for 70 years, tourists have been

21:44allowed in there without any control. For a long time, Rupkund was open to anyone. Travelers and bloggers

21:51carried skulls around for dramatic shots, stacked bones into pyramids, and the most enterprising ones

21:56pocketed artifacts as souvenirs. Because of this, today we have a huge mess of bones. The position

22:02of the body at the place of death tells forensic experts almost more than the skull itself how the

22:07person fell, whether they tried to shield themselves with their hands, whether they were lying next to

22:12their companion or died alone. When tourists moved the bones, they erased the context. Add to this avalanches,

22:20spring glacier melt, and rockfalls that have ground up the remains and bones for decades. It is quite

22:25possible that the answer to why the Greeks came to the pass might have been a wooden box, a fragment

22:31of a scroll, or a seal lying right on the lakeshore. But someone simply threw this clue into the abyss

22:38to get a better photo angle. So what exactly happened at Lake Rupkund? Today we can finally put this puzzle

22:46together without any mysticism. Rupkund is not the site of a grand battle, nor is it the punishment of an

22:53angry goddess. It's a deadly trap spanning centuries. A thousand years ago, a procession of Indian

22:59pilgrims really did come here, and some of them were caught by a sudden storm and a rock fall. And

23:04ten centuries later, during the era of the great game between the British and Russian empires,

23:09a mysterious group from the Mediterranean climbed this same pass. A secret expedition of surveyors,

23:15mercenaries, mercenaries, or explorers, whose documents were lost in the ice. The mountain

23:20spared neither one nor the other. The eternal cold mingled their bones in a single mass grave,

23:25leaving scientists puzzled for half a century. And the main question now sounds different. Not what

23:31killed them, but what secret they were seeking here. And which theory seems the most plausible to you?

23:37What were 19th century Europeans doing on a closed Himalayan pass? A secret expedition? Lost merchants?

23:45Or something that science is still silent about? Write your thoughts in the comments right now.

23:50Like and subscribe. Alexander signing off. See you next time.

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