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(Newser)
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The official name is Roopkund Lake, but the inhospitable site of the Indian Himalayas is better known as "Skeleton Lake" for good reason. Scientists estimate that the remains of "several hundred" people are scattered on its banks, says a study Nature Communications. New research sought to determine once and for all who these people were – but the discoveries only added to the mystery. New York Times. It turns out that they came from different parts of the world and died at different times. The researchers studied 38 parts of the skeleton and their distribution is as follows: 23 came from South Asia and date back to around 800; the other 15 died more recently, perhaps around 1800, and curiously, all but one apparently came from the east of the Mediterranean. The last came from Southeast Asia.
"It may be even more of a mystery than before," says Harvard geneticist David Reich, one of the co-authors Atlantic. "It was incredible, because the type of ancestry that we find in about a third of individuals is so unusual for this part of the world," he adds, referring to those in the Mediterranean. One researcher thinks that skeletons are those of travelers lost or stuck in bad weather; Reich states that they were deposited there during landslides over the years; another one-third think these two theories are false and that bodies were deliberately brought to the lake by locals who used it as a graveyard. At Atlas Obscura, another scientist notes that the DNA results came from only 38 people; with hundreds of bones, more regions and historical periods may still appear. (The Himalayas has recently claimed more modern victims.)
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