Roopkund Skeletons Died Millennia Apart

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.

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