26 Denisovans Gave Tibetans Altitude Adaptation
Tibetans in the Himalayas carry a genetic adaptation that helps them thrive at high altitude. In 2014, researchers analyzed the EPAS1 gene region in 40 Tibetans and 40 Han Chinese and traced the Tibetan variant to interbreeding with Denisovans or Denisovan-related humans. Natural selection drove this inherited variant to high frequency after people colonized the Tibetan Plateau, producing the most extreme signal of positive selection found among Tibetans.
27. Across Tibet in the Himalayas, Tibetan Buddhists practice sky burial partly because permafrost and solid rock make graves difficult, while scarce wood above the tree line complicates cremation. After a lama prays over the seated body for two days, attendants break the spine, fold the corpse, and typically transport it to the burial site by yak. Rogyapas, or body breakers, dismember the remains and feed the flesh to vultures, then grind the bones and mix them with barley flour, tea, and yak butter for crows and hawks. Buddhists view the body as an empty shell after the spirit leaves, allowing the deceased to perform a final act of generosity by feeding other creatures.
28. On May 22, 1998, an American mountaineer named Francys Arsentiev became the first American woman to summit Mount Everest in the Himalayas without bottled oxygen. She and her husband, Russian mountaineer Sergei Arsentiev, reached the summit dangerously late and became separated during their descent. British climber Ian Woodall, South African climber Cathy O’Dowd, and several Uzbek climbers tried to rescue Francys on May 24, but she died at age 40 after they had to abandon the attempt. Her body, nicknamed “Sleeping Beauty,” remained visible beside the climbing route for nine years until it was moved lower and out of sight in 2007.
29. In 1975, Apollo 14 command module pilot Stu Roosa visited a school in Nepal in the Himalayas with his wife, Joan, to discuss his 1971 flight around the Moon. Students repeatedly asked who he had seen there, and Roosa insisted that no one and nothing lived on the Moon. The couple later learned that some Nepalese believed their ancestors’ spirits resided there, so the children interpreted his answer as a denial of heaven. Some locals even viewed Roosa as a god, leaving Joan wishing the US government had briefed them about the belief before their visit.
30. By 1987, only about 200 people had summited Mount Everest in the Himalayas despite decades of professional climbers and large national expeditions. Commercial climbing began transforming Everest expeditions during the 1990s, bringing far more people to the mountain. In 2013 alone, the Himalayan Database recorded 658 summits, raising the cumulative total to 6,871 ascents by 4,042 different people.
31 Alexandra David-Neel Entered Forbidden Tibet
After studying Buddhism in Sikkim in the Himalayas, French explorer and writer Alexandra David-Neel set out with her adopted son, Lama Yongden, to enter Tibet when it remained closed to foreigners. Disguised as beggars, they completed a three-year journey and entered Lhasa in February 1924, where they spent two months visiting the city and surrounding monasteries. Her roughly 30 books, including My Journey to Lhasa, influenced British philosopher Alan Watts and Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. David-Neel died at age 100 on September 8, 1969, less than two months before her 101st birthday.
32. At 7,570 meters, or 24,840 feet, Gangkhar Puensum in Bhutan’s Himalayas is widely considered the world’s highest unclimbed mountain. After Bhutan opened its mountains to climbers in 1983, four expeditions attempted the summit but failed during 1985 and 1986. Bhutan prohibited climbs above 6,000 meters in 1994 because local customs regard high peaks as sacred homes of protective deities and spirits. The country banned all mountaineering in 2003, leaving Gangkhar Puensum completely off-limits.
33. In 1953, Austrian mountaineer Hermann Buhl completed the first ascent of Nanga Parbat in the western Himalayas, making it the only first ascent of an 8,000-meter peak achieved solo. Buhl left Camp V around 2:00 a.m. without bottled oxygen or a rope and used Pervitin, a methamphetamine-based stimulant, along with Padutin and coca tea. He reached the summit at 7:00 p.m. after a 17-hour climb. Darkness forced him to spend the night standing on a narrow ledge near 7,900 meters, and he returned to camp after 41 hours alone.
34. In 2013, Swiss mountaineer Ueli Steck, Italian mountaineer Simone Moro, and British climber Jonathan Griffith continued up Everest’s Lhotse Face in the Himalayas after the Sherpa rope-fixing team told them not to climb above the crew. As the trio crossed near the ropes, chunks of ice fell and reportedly struck a Sherpa, although the climbers denied causing the fall. Moro then abused lead rope fixer Mingma Tenzing Sherpa with a grave Nepali insult. After both groups retreated to Camp II, a larger group of Sherpas attacked the climbers; a brawl broke out, which forced them to abandon their expedition, but both sides apologized two days later.
35. Most long-distance commercial flights avoid crossing the Tibetan Plateau, where the terrain averages about 14,370 feet and includes parts of the Himalayas. After cabin depressurization, pilots normally descend toward 10,000 feet, where passengers can breathe safely without supplemental oxygen. Much of the plateau rises above that altitude, preventing the usual emergency descent while maintaining safe terrain clearance. Engine failures, severe mountain turbulence, and extreme winter temperatures create additional reasons for airlines to route flights around the region.
36 Hump Airlift Lost 600 Planes
Beginning in April 1942, the US military transported supplies from Assam and Bengal across the eastern Himalayas to Chinese forces in Kunming and Chungking after Japanese advances closed the land route through Burma. Pilots nicknamed the dangerous air corridor “The Hump” because they had to cross the region’s towering mountains and unpredictable weather. During the 42-month operation, an estimated 600 American transport planes crashed, killing at least 1,500 airmen and passengers. Despite those losses, the operation delivered 650,000 tons of war supplies and strengthened the Allied war effort in China.
37. In 1942, a British forest guard discovered hundreds of human skeletons scattered around Roopkund Lake, a frozen lake 5,029 meters above sea level in India’s Uttarakhand Himalayas. The isolated remains inspired theories involving soldiers, merchants, pilgrims, storms, and epidemics. In 2019, researchers analyzed DNA from 38 skeletons and identified 23 people with South Asian ancestry, 14 with eastern Mediterranean ancestry, and one with Southeast Asian ancestry. Radiocarbon dating showed that the groups died during separate events about 1,000 years apart, disproving the theory that one catastrophe killed everyone.
38. In the foothills of the Himalayas, Hmong farmers use whistles to communicate across fields while hunters call to one another through forests. Whistled languages can travel as far as 8 kilometers in open conditions. During a now-rare courtship tradition, boys walk through villages at night whistling poems between houses, and interested girls answer them. Couples can then create private codes by adding nonsense syllables that confuse eavesdroppers and protect their identities.
39. In July 1997, British mountaineer Alan Hinkes was attempting Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas when flour from a burnt chapati, a type of flatbread, entered his nose. He sneezed so violently that he prolapsed a spinal disc, leaving him immobilized and in severe pain for 10 days before a helicopter carried him to a hospital for treatment. The incident earned Hinkes the nickname “Chapati Man.” He returned the following year and successfully summited Nanga Parbat.
40. In October 1965, the CIA and India’s Intelligence Bureau sent a team up Nanda Devi in the Garhwal Himalayas to install a surveillance station powered by seven plutonium-238 capsules. The device would intercept telemetry from Chinese missile tests at Lop Nur, but a blizzard forced expedition leader Manmohan Singh Kohli to anchor it in a crevice and retreat. When another team returned in May 1966, the generator had vanished, and three recovery attempts failed to find it. Its disappearance fueled fears that radioactive material could contaminate the Ganges headwaters, prompting an Indian scientific committee to recommend regular monitoring of the area’s air, water, and soil in 1978.
41 Hillary Declined His Summit Photo
On May 29, 1953, Nepalese-Indian Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary became the first confirmed climbers to reach Mount Everest’s summit in the Himalayas. Hillary took Tenzing’s famous summit photograph, but Tenzing wrote that Hillary declined his offer to photograph him in return, leaving no summit portrait of Hillary. British expedition leader John Hunt called the ascent a team achievement and said they had reached the top together. In his 1955 autobiography, however, Tenzing revealed that Hillary stepped onto the summit first and he followed.
42. In Bhutan, a country in the Himalayas, marijuana plants historically served as pig food because many residents did not recognize cannabis as a recreational drug. After the country introduced television in 1999, people reportedly learned that the same plant could also produce psychoactive effects.
43. Approximately 241,000 years from now, Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth-highest mountain, could overtake Everest as the tallest mountain on Earth. The 8,126-meter (26,660-foot) peak in the Himalayas is rising about 7 millimeters (0.27 inches) per year. However, this projection only holds if erosion rates remain unchanged.
44. On May 22, 2019, around 200 climbers crowded Mount Everest’s summit route in the Himalayas after favorable weather drew numerous expeditions upward at once. Climbers waited for hours in freezing conditions above 8,000 meters (26,200 feet), a region known as the Death Zone. Local media linked the delays to at least three deaths.
45. Kangchenjunga was considered the world’s tallest mountain until calculations based on an 1849 survey revealed that Everest stood higher. On May 25, 1955, British mountaineers Joe Brown and George Band made the first ascent of the sacred peak in the Himalayas but stopped just below its true summit. They honored a promise to Tashi Namgyal, the Chogyal of Sikkim, that the mountaintop would remain untouched, establishing a tradition that later climbers have generally continued.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Nobukazu Kuriki Died Attempting Everest
Japanese mountaineer Nobukazu Kuriki made eight failed attempts to climb Mount Everest in the Himalayas, advertising his approach as solo and without bottled oxygen. The mountaineering community disputed that description because Sherpas supported him and reports claimed he sometimes used oxygen. During his fourth attempt in 2012, Kuriki spent two days in a snow hole below -20°C and lost nine fingers to frostbite. In May 2018, he abandoned his eighth attempt because of illness and died while descending from Camp Three at age 35.
47. According to one Tibetan legend, an outsider named Nyatri Tsenpo wandered through the Himalayas before becoming Tibet’s first king. Buddhist accounts described his great strength, webbed hands, and, in one version, eyelids that closed from the bottom. Believing these abnormalities signaled divinity, the Tibetans enthroned him and carried him on their necks and shoulders, earning him a name that means “Neck-Enthroned King.” Tradition dates his reign to 127 BC, the first year of the Tibetan calendar.
48. On May 22, 2010, an American boy named Jordan Romero became the youngest person to summit Mount Everest in the Himalayas at 13 years, 10 months, and 10 days old. Three years later, in 2013, Japanese mountaineer Yuichiro Miura reached the same summit at 80 years and 224 days old. Their records place nearly 67 years between Everest’s youngest and oldest summiters.
49. The Himalayan jumping spider, Euophrys omnisuperstes, has been reported at elevations up to 6,700 meters (22,000 feet) on Mount Everest, making it a candidate for Earth’s highest permanent resident. In 1924, a naturalist named Richard Hingston observed spiders living among rocks at that height, roughly 1,200 meters (4,000 feet) above the Himalayas’ highest plant growth. However, the specimens were immature and poorly preserved, so researchers only assume they belonged to this species. Confirmed populations survive on Everest and Makalu by hunting springtails and flies supported partly by windblown organic debris.
50. Since at least the 19th century, isolated farming communities in the Himalayas have created small artificial glaciers to supply their crops with water. Teams carried baskets of natural glacier ice from valleys at 2,000 to 3,000 meters to shaded slopes at 4,000 to 5,000 meters, where they placed it inside small caves with water, salt, sawdust, wheat husks, and charcoal. Snow and avalanches gradually enlarged the ice during winter and spring. The artificial glaciers then released meltwater for irrigation during drier months.
