The small glacial lake Roopkund is located in the Nanda Devi National Park in the state of Uttarakhand in northern India. The lake is located at an altitude of about 5029 meters above sea level, in an inaccessible saddle between the two magnificent peaks of the Himalayas Trisul and Nandgungti, and its water is bound by a dense ice shell for most of the year. The remains of many people lie on the banks, some of whom lived more than a thousand years ago. How did these people, belonging to different nations, end up here, and why did they travel hundreds of kilometers along high-mountain trails to stay forever in a narrow valley? Modern science is trying to answer these questions …
Taboo
Not far from Lake Roopkund, there is a sacred path popular since the Middle Ages, leading pilgrims to the slopes of the main peak of Nanda Devi. Following the big zodiac circle, every 12 years people who want to worship the Great Mountain Goddess, the incarnation of Parvati herself, the wife of the god Shiva, go along this path. Having overcome a long way through high-mountainous meadows and dangerous steep slopes, pilgrims can approach the sanctuary of the goddess and ask for their blessing. This pious ceremony sometimes became a real test for Hindus, but many of them did not even suspect what danger this path actually poses. An unspoken taboo protected them from crossing the mountain saddle. Even in the heat, none of the pilgrims dared to go down to the lake to get fresh water, because death awaited casual travelers on its cold shores. No wonder this place was called the Skeleton Lake …
Revenge of the angry goddess
In the local Hindu tribe, there has long been an old song, which, according to tradition, is performed only by women. In this song, on behalf of the mountain goddess, the story is told about how once Parvati was angry with the pilgrims who committed a monstrous sacrilege: breaking the vow to neglect everything bodily, endure thirst, hunger and other privations, the pilgrims on their way to the sanctuary descended to the reserved lake of the goddess, to get drunk. The giantess Nanda Devi punished the frivolous travelers in a terrible way - she threw at them a necklace of huge pearls, each the size of a cricket ball, torn from her neck. A hail of pearls killed all the pilgrims on the spot.
Hearing this legend, the curious forester from Haridwar Hai Madhaval decided to check the legend on the ground. He found himself on the shores of a glacial lake in the late spring of 1942 and was horrified to find human remains protruding from under the melted ice - hundreds of skeletons and half-decayed bodies covered the entire visible surface of the coast, some even peeped through the transparent waters of Roopkund. There was a feeling that these people had died quite recently, perhaps last fall, on the eve of severe frosts. Madhaval immediately reported his terrible find to the colonial administration, from where an operational detachment of British military intelligence was immediately dispatched. Based on the description of the forester, the authorities of the state of Uttarakhand decided that he had stumbled upon the remains of a Japanese sabotage group that had died for an unknown reason, making its way through the Himalayas. However, the very first examination of the bones showed that the deceased were victims of events that took place long before the outbreak of World War II …
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Cursed lakes
Lakes, like other water sources, have attracted people's attention since prehistoric times. They say that people began to sail on water on the first home-made ships much earlier than the wheel was invented. However, over the centuries, some lakes have gained notoriety and even a reputation as damned places. Such lakes include, for example, the infamous Lake Nyos in Cameroon, which on August 21, 1985 killed 1,746 residents of nearby villages, as well as all livestock and all living things in the vicinity for several miles. All the fault was carbon monoxide, which accumulated in gigantic volumes in the bottom sediments of the lake and once escaped to freedom.
Lake Natron, located in Tanzania, is known not only for the strange purple color of the water, but also has a notorious taxidermist killer. The hydrogen-rich alkaline water of this lake slowly kills all living things that live on the shore, and the bodies of the unfortunate creatures remain incorrupt where they were found death. It's all about the high concentration of salt, soda and lime. The Sicilian Lake of Death contains in its waters a deadly concentration of volcanic sulfuric acid. The lake itself, of course, does not kill anyone, but the inhabitants of Sicily immersed many of their brothers in its waters, who violated the law of Omerta (Omerta is the code of honor of the mafia, non-cooperation with the state - ed.). The lake, with its Sicilian character, reliably destroys all evidence and cherishes the island's darkest secrets.
But all these lakes are far from Roopkund, which has become a grave for more than 600 people. All these people died a terrible death, and only recently, with the help of the latest research methods, it was finally possible to find the possible causes of the long-standing tragedy.
Brahmanas from the West
After India gained independence on August 15, 1947, the new national administration was up to its throat, and no one wanted to deal with the secrets of the high-mountain lake. However, in the mid-60s, a group of researchers from the University of Berlin still received the right to study the remains and found that they appeared here in the XIII-XIV centuries. However, the study of Skeleton Lake was interrupted for a long time.
The next attempt to find a solution to the mystery of the people who died in the glaciers was made only in 2004, when a joint Indo-European expedition again climbed to the Himalayas to study the remains that were preserved in an almost imperishable form in the conditions of the glacier. This expedition took a closer look at the bones and divided them into two categories - one belonged to short, dark-skinned people, possibly Sherpa carriers, and the other to tall, lighter-skinned people, whom scientists ranked among the Chitpavan caste, Brahmins from the coastal state of Maharashtra. They all died around 850. It would seem that you can put an end to this. The skeletons belonged to pilgrims heading to the sanctuary, as the legend said, and they died, possibly from some sudden natural disaster - an avalanche or from a large hail. But research in recent years has radically changed the situation, forcing us to look with different eyes at the terrible mystery of the Skeleton Lake.
Pilgrims from the Mediterranean
Not satisfied with fragmentary data, a group of scientists from Harvard University decided to continue studying the lake after 11 years. In 2015, they went to Roopkund and examined a total of 82 of the approximately 600 corpses found, 38 of which were studied in maximum detail and a comparative analysis of skeletons with data on 1521 ancient people and 7985 modern people. The comparison results confused the situation even more. It turned out that out of 38 people, only 23 belong to a group related to the population of modern India, 14 people belong to a genotype close to the inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean - Crete and mainland Greece, and one generally belongs to the type common in Southeast Asia. Moreover, they all died at different times' (over several centuries, approximately from the 7th to the 10th centuries),the victims of the lake were of different ages, men and women were approximately equal in number, and none of the victims was related to the other! Thus, all the previously existing theories were destroyed. The people who remained forever in the ice of the Himalayas were not one tribe, did not make joint and simultaneous pilgrimages, were not a military detachment, nor were they a tribe migrating somewhere. So who are they, the skeletons of Lake Roopkund, and how to explain the presence of inhabitants of distant Greece among them?Nor were they a tribe that had migrated somewhere. So who are they, the skeletons of Lake Roopkund, and how to explain the presence of inhabitants of distant Greece among them?Nor were they a tribe that had migrated somewhere. So who are they, the skeletons of Lake Roopkund, and how to explain the presence of inhabitants of distant Greece among them?
Death waiting in the gorge
According to William Sachs, dean of the anthropology department at the University of Heidelberg and author of a book on the pilgrimage of the followers of the Nanda Devi cult, the lake "is not and has never been very important for pilgrimage …". And in general, adds William Sachs, "… this is a rather dark and dirty place …". The study of the cult of the Mountain Goddess has just begun, but it is already known that to the site of the main cult ceremony - the holiday of Nanda Devi Raj Jat - the guards of this shrine allowed only absolutely pure pilgrims. Any suspicion of the impurity of thoughts could lead to the fact that the “wrath of Parvati” would really fall on the pilgrim, and here the legend of the monstrous beads did not lie. However, the strange round holes from the blow with a blunt object, found on the skulls of all the victims,were not at all a consequence of the revelry of the elements - even in the mountains such a large hail is rare, and it is unlikely to be able to kill 600 people for almost 13 centuries.
Another thing is the famous "otta" - an S-shaped stick made of hard wood with an additional handle at one end and with a spherical bulge at the other, which the mountaineers so skillfully wield. It is with it that, at an unexpected moment, one can strike a blow of such a crushing force that a person instantly falls dead. It is highly probable that the forbidden Lake of Skeletons was simply used for centuries by the guards of the way to the goddess Nanda Devi as … a burial ground for uninvited guests, which, perhaps, were curious merchants from Byzantium, which in the 800s belonged to a part of Greece …
But really intriguing the fact that some of the remains found on the lake are confidently dated to the 20th century. However, not all bones on the shore of a mountain lake have been studied yet, and the main discoveries are yet to come.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №44. Author: Victor Arshansky