This episode was suggested by Matthew G on Facebook, Charlotte on Twitter, and my husband, David. If you'd like to make a suggestion, you can do so on Facebook and Instagram at morbidcuriositypodcast on Twitter, at morbidpodcast, and on our website, www.morbidcuriositypodcast.com. Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so, the mysterious and unsolved. Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called morbid curiosity, and it has crypt hundreds of people throughout the ages.
I am one of those people. My name is Halle, and this is the morbidcuriosity podcast. An archaeological mystery has been circulating in the news and on social media recently, involving a lake surrounded by hundreds of human skeletons. That lake is Rubkund, known in the media as Skeleton Lake.
No one knows how the skeletons ended up there, or why there are so many. The site has never been subjected to a systematic archaeological or anthropological excavation due to its difficult location and the disturbed nature of the site, but a paper published in August of this year has shed some light on this long lost mystery, or perhaps has only highlighted how much is left in shadow. Before we get into this topic, a disclaimer is necessary. I can't speak or read Hindi, so a lot of the articles about Rubkund from both locals and many experts were not available to me, and translation apps just can't get across the minute details I was looking for.
In addition, many of the sources on this topic weren't available to me, as they were either not digital or were behind a steep paywall, so I felt a little limited in my academic sources. I was, however, able to find several great articles written by the researchers of Rubkund, thanks to the National Library of Australia, just not as many as I'd have liked. Therefore, please let me know if I got anything wrong or missed something. Also, please forgive my mispronunciations of names and places.
I did research out to say them, but I still probably won't get them quite right, as I'm not a speaker of Hindi or any of the many other languages of India, my apologies. Without further ado, let's talk about Rubkund. Rubkund has been giving people the chills since the early 1900s, but its mysteries have existed for far longer. The lake is located in the Chamalie district, in the state of Uttarakhand, in northwestern India, tucked into the lower slopes of the Trishomeseef, a group of mountains that are considered holy by the local population.
Rubkund sits just beneath a sheer rocky ridge known as Junar Ghali. The lake and its shore are littered with the shattered skeletal remains of several hundred humans. The exact number of people represented by the skeletons is not known, but estimates fall anywhere from 200 to 800 people. Rubkund, where Rubk means beautiful and Kund means lake or pond in Hindi, gets its name from Hindu mythology, in which a local goddess Nanda Devi made the long journey from her village in Kuransi, up to Hongkund, a lake further up in the mountains, to where Shiva, one of the principal deities of Hinduism, she grew tired and thirsty on her trek, so Shiva created the lake for her to refresh herself.
Rubkund is not an easy location to get to. The lake sits at about 16,700 feet or 5,029 meters above sea level. The only way to get to it is a trek on foot through the Himalaya Mountains. There are no settlements nearby and it takes between two to three days to hike up to it.
The lake is quite small, having a circumference of only 370 feet or 113 meters and is only 6.5 feet or 2 meters deep. It can only be safely approached from one direction, the southwest, as it's truly tucked between several ridges. The way down to it from the ridges is quite steep and can be treacherous even in good weather. The gap that allows access to Rubkund also acts as a wind tunnel, so it's not a particularly sheltered location.
There is a constant danger of falling rocks and rock slides all around it, but particularly on the northeastern bank of the lake, just beneath Junar Gali. The area is also devoid of vegetation, animals and shelter. This part of the mountains is covered with snow for most of the year, but between August and September there's usually a thaw. The lake, however, is often still frozen during that time.
Rubkund is well known to the local people of Uttarakhand as it's on the route of a pilgrimage to honor Nanda Devi, called the Nanda Rajjat. Every 12 years, thousands of people from the area reenact Nanda Devi's journey, traveling through numerous villages to her shrine at Hongkund, carrying with them a four-horned ram that is released once they reach their destination. Some researchers believe the pilgrimage began in the 9th century, when rulers of the region may have claimed kinship with Nanda Devi. Others believe it began in the 14th century.
Whenever it started, this pilgrimage is the longest most difficult pilgrimage in the world, spanning 174 miles or 280 kilometers over mountainous terrain and is often traveled barefoot. The lake and its mysterious occupants were first officially documented by the Forest Service in 1942. A forest ranger, Hari Kishan Madwal, was in the area searching for wildflower samples when he came upon the lake and was shocked to find several hundred corpses around its banks. He described the scene during a radio broadcast for all India radio kakata in 1956, saying the place was littered with bodies, sung with flesh that appeared inflated and rubbery.
Hollow-eyed faces grinned at him, and the porters he brought with him fled upon seeing the place. Besides the bodies, he also noticed leather shoes, wooden utensils, parasols, and other items partially buried in the rubble around the lake. Most of the bodies were located on the northeastern shore, right across the water from the entrance to the bowl of the lake. Madwal reported the grim discovery to the deputy commissioner of Garwal, who in turn referred the issue to the commissioner of Kumauan, both regions of Uttarkand.
The commissioner of Kumauan thought the bodies might belong to the fleeing army of General Jorroir Singh, the so-called Napoleon of India, whose army suffered heavy casualties crossing the mountains in 1841 after failing to invade Tibet. But no further probe into the lake and the skeletons was done due to the fact that there were other issues at hand. The world was embroiled in the Second World War, and India, being controlled by the British at this time, had declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939. The British Raj sent over two and a half million soldiers to fight under British command, as well as billions of pounds to help finance the war.
India's strategic location, large production of armaments and vast armed forces, played a decisive role in halting the progress of Imperial Japan. And because of India's heavy involvement in the war, the issue of the mysterious skeletons had to wait. After the war was over in 1945, attention turned back to Rubkund. Because of the war, it was suggested that the bodies could be those of a Japanese force that had attempted to infiltrate northern India, but had frozen to death in the process.
However, when the bodies were more closely examined, it was immediately obvious that the bones and artifacts were neither Japanese, nor recent enough for that scenario to be possible. In 1955, the deputy force minister of Uttar Pradesh, a nearby state of northern India, made a press announcement about the bodies, again suggesting that they belonged to the soldiers of General Jorwar Singh. This announcement raised controversy as well as interest in the tiny glacial lake. How many bodies were there?
Why hadn't this been documented before? How had they died? In an attempt to answer these questions, an expedition was organized by the Forest Department of Uttar Pradesh, along with two Indian newspapers, the Ruder and the Statesmen. Mr.
Madwell was sent back to Rubkund with two journalists, but when they arrived, the mystery deepened. The hundreds of bodies seemed to have disappeared. There were small bits of scattered bone everywhere, however, and the expedition collected a few of them, including two skulls, a mandible or jawbone, the bones of one leg, the bones of one forearm which still had flesh attached, and several cultural artifacts. The skeletal elements were given to Professor Majumdar, head of the anthropology department at Lucknow University in Uttar Pradesh.
Unfortunately, due to the small amount of skeletal material, Dr. Majumdar wasn't able to say much about the bodies. It was suggested that the bodies had likely been dismembered, scattered, and covered over by rock slides. This process could have been sped up by a warmer than usual summer, causing them to defrost and decay.
Even though Dr. Majumdar wasn't able to say much due to the small number of skeletal elements he was given, bones are generally a rich source of information. Skulls and pelvic bones can give information about sex, age, and health. Long bones, such as those of the legs and arms, can tell us about stature and possible life occupation.
With modern technology like DNA testing, radiocarbon dating, and other chemical analyses, lots of information can be gleaned from just as skeletal remains. Radiocarbon dating did exist at this time, but as the process is incredibly expensive and requires specialized processing of skeletal material, it was not attempted on the root-cooked bones at this time. In 1956, a more concentrated effort to investigate the mystery began. Three expeditions made their way to the lake during September.
One group was the government department of anthropology, now known as the Anthropological Survey of India, or ANSI. Another was the department of anthropology from Lucno University, and finally, Swami Pranavanand, an experienced climber and fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. All three groups collected skeletal remains as well as artifacts and did some excellent research, which I'll go over after the break, along with the results of those studies. As he made several trips to Rubikind, Pranavanand took note of a song sung by the women of the area.
The song described the tragic fate of a king of Kanauj, a capital in the region from the 3rd century BCE, to the 13th century CE, who attempted the Nanda Rajat, bringing an entourage with him that included his wife, some musicians, and several dancers. There are several different versions of this tale, so I'll tell the most consistent one. After a certain point in the pilgrimage, women and musical instruments must be left behind, but the king brought both his wife and the dancing troop past that point. Nanda Devi was furious with the king for disrespecting her and sent a storm of hailstones as hard as iron as punishment.
The group tried to shelter from a hail at Rubikind, but were eventually killed by it. It wasn't until 50 years later that another scientific expedition to Rubikind occurred. In November of 2002, one of the researchers for Anci are, as Nagi presented a paper called, Rubikind Human Remains, The Unresolved Mystery. This paper caught the attention of the western media, who approached Nagi about assisting in the creation of a documentary for National Geographic.
Nagi declined, but Dr. William Sax, a cultural anthropologist well-versed in the worship of Nanda Devi, from Heidelberg University in Germany, agreed. Forensic scientist Rakesh Vett and MP Bisht, a geologist, both from Garwal University, and Decken College paleopathologist, Trauma Juglikar, also signed on to the project. Geneticists, Niraj Rai, and Manvendra Singh agreed to run the DNA analysis for the study in their brand new facility that specialized in ancient DNA testing, the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology, or CCMB, at Hyderabad, India.
In September 2003, the National Geographic Expedition Team set out for Rubikind and retrieved around 30 human skeletal samples. They also took tissue samples from an individual they found, whose skeleton appeared to be broken in half, but whose mummified skin had held his remains together. They also recovered some cultural material, including a copper ring, broken glass bangles, an iron spearhead, parts of a leather parasol, and several leather shoes. This program aired on November 9, 2004, as part of the Riddles of the Dead series.
In the summer of 2005, another study was done, in which 20 long bones were collected from different depths and locations around Rubikind and re-chemically analyzed using mass spectrometry, an analytical technique that measures the ratio of ions or molecules with electrical charges in a substance. This technique can reveal the presence of stable isotopes, which hold information about the date of death, what a person ate during their life and where they lived most of their life. The most recent study on the skeletal material from Rubikind was published this year, 2019, in August. The paper was the result of a 10-year effort by an international group of archaeologists, anthropologists, and geneticists.
The mitochondrial DNA from 72 individuals was sequenced, as well as the entire genome from 38 individuals. The results sparked some excitement, and also overturned most of the previous theories about the lake. All of these studies asked similar questions. Who were these people?
Why were they in Himalayas? What killed them? And when did they die? I'm going to tell you all about what was revealed by these studies, but first, let's pause for a word from our sponsors.
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And now back to the podcast. Rupkun is a hard site to study. Unlike a cemetery where the bodies are interred in neat rows and left alone, Rupkun is a highly disturbed site, as it's been subjected to landslides, fluctuating temperatures, and people trekking through it for hundreds of years. Not a single skeleton has been recovered intact.
The bones are splintered, separated, and crushed. It's also a hard location to excavate. It takes a long time to get there. It's high elevation.
It's cold, windy, icy, and the lake is only defrosted for two months out of the year. However, this environment is good for preservation, which is why researchers are so interested in using modern technology to collect evidence about what might have happened there to create such a huge accumulation of skeletons. The 1956 Anzi Expedition recovered many skeletal elements, some with cartilage still attached. Of the remains collected, around 75% were estimated to be male, with the other 25% being female.
They were mostly adults, but some juveniles, meaning 18 or younger, were also present. The average stature for males was around 5'6.5 inches, while females averaged at 5'2", with 62% of them being quite tall when compared to modern local populations. Anzi noted that there appeared to be two different groups of people when focusing on stature. One group was taller and more robust, while the other was shorter and more gracile.
Anzi theorized that the more gracile group were local, as their height was more consistent with the average modern height in the region. The cultural material that Anzi retrieved included leather chapels, or shoes, tall sticks, pieces of glass bangles, T-shaped resting sticks, which are commonly used by porters to rest their heavy loads momentarily. Wooden pieces of dandru, or musical instruments, some pachards, and a large wooden cypress beam, about 12 feet long and 1 foot thick, which was likely part of a doley, a system used to carry an image of a god or goddess, or bear a person of high birth. Two of the wooden objects were dated using radiocarbon dating, a method of determining the date something organic died, using a radioactive isotope of carbon known as carbon-14.
Carbon-14 breaks down at a set rate over time, and this predictable rate of decay makes it possible to tell the age of a substance based on how much carbon-14 is left in it. One of the wooden items was dated to around 470 years old, plus or minus 120 years, while the other was estimated to be around 500 years old, plus or minus 60 years, making the combined date range approximately between 500 and and 590 years old. To test whether the bones belonged to local people or foreigners, onseated an anthropomorphic and blood group survey of modern populations in the districts of Uttar Pradesh. They found similarities in the average height of the smaller bones and the local people of the area, which suggests the dead were local.
Some of the remains that onsey retrieved from Rupkund are now housed at the onsey museum in Debradun. Look now university also analyzed the skeletal remains they retrieved and carbon dated them. Statcher was estimated using femurs or thigh bones and came to an average of 5 foot 9 inches, much taller than those collected by onsey. However, when they used other long bones to estimate height, the average height matched what onsey had found, and also showed two groups represented, one taller and one shorter.
Their radiocarbon date however was older, around 650 years old, plus or minus 150 years, which expanded the date range of the Rupkund skeletons to between 500 and 800 years old. Look now also noted that some of the bones were mineralized and some were not, suggesting that the bones didn't all accumulate around the lake at the same time. The Looknow expedition also found a coin from the reign of Sultan Firo's Shah Tugluk between 1351 and 1388 CE, leading them to believe the bodies were perhaps those of soldiers from his army. When DNA was tested to estimate ancestry, the result suggested the skeletons likely originated in western India.
Swami Pranavanand published an article about visiting Rupkund in 1962 in illustrated weekly of India. He suggested the skeletons belonged to the king Akana Uj and his entourage, just as the local song had said. It's not known if he did any analysis on the bones he collected over his multiple trips to the site. The 2003 National Geographic expedition estimated that around 300 to 700 bones were present at the site and based on a similar radiocarbon date for all 30 of their samples being in the 9th century, they theorized that all the skeletons were deposited during a single event.
Using the presence of an uncommon cranial trait called wormyan bones, in which extra bones form within the sutures of the skull, the team suggested that many of the people around the lake had been related. They also agreed with previous studies that there were two groups, a taller and a shorter. Their DNA tests also indicated that the people were likely local to India. They also noted injuries to skulls and shoulder areas of several skeletons called compression fractures that suggested an impact of a hard round object about the size of a cricket ball, which is about 9 inches or 22.5 centimeters in circumference.
The damage wasn't massive enough to be from an avalanche, so they theorized it could have been due to large hailstones, such as those mentioned in the song about Nanda Tevi's Revenge. The National Geographic documentary they published claimed the mystery was solved and that the deaths occurred due to a hailstorm, and the song was a legendary version of a real event. However, the mystery was not solved. This was just another theory about what could have happened.
Testing only 30 skeletal elements does not come close to discovering what could be true of the rest of the hundreds of skeletons at Rookund. Even if there were only 100 bodies, testing 30 of them wouldn't tell you much about the majority of the individuals, so the fact that a small percentage of fragments came from the 9th century and seemed to be related doesn't actually solve anything. It just sheds a little more light onto part of the mystery. Also, the damage to the skeletons could have come from numerous sources, hail being just one theory.
They could have been hit with a gutter, an ancient Indian mace. All we can say for sure is that it was a round object. The 2005 study of the 20 skeletal samples used mass spectrometry stable isotope analysis to reveal that the majority of these samples ate a terrestrial diet during life. This means their diet did not include fish or marine plants, which suggests they came from a landlocked area.
Some of the individuals also ate much more meat than others, but all of the samples seemed to have eaten well and were not suffering from malnourishment. In 2018, a more in-depth skeletal assessment was published by Alka Bartwel-Pant, using 27 skulls and skull fragments to estimate sex, age, and pathology. The study found a wide range of ages, and both males and females were represented. Pant also noted a more pronounced presence of vitamin deficiency in their sample, and documented in detail several anti and perimorum compression fractures in the crania, confirming earlier reports.
However, Pant stated that the fractures may not have been big enough to kill a person immediately. It's more likely they caused bleeding and swelling in the skull, which then caused a loss of consciousness, leading to the person freezing to death. Older, healed fractures and cut marks were also present, suggesting that while the people were not likely soldiers who would have had many healed injuries, they didn't live a sedentary or peaceful life. The study published this year in August by Harney and others completed a skeletal DNA, radiocarbon, and stable isotope analysis.
The skeletal analysis confirmed previous reports of the people being mostly healthy, but some skulls did show signs of malnutrition. Their sample also included several compression fractures to the skull from rounded objects. These appeared to be perimorum, meaning at or around the time of death. They also noted two sets of individuals, one robust and tall, and the other more gracile and shorter.
Unlike previous studies, Harney and all did several DNA tests, looking for proof that people were related to one another, using genes to determine sex and health, and estimating ancestry. They found that none of the individuals in their sample were related. The sample was made up of 13 males and 15 females, none of which had detectable pathogens. This doesn't mean they didn't have any, just that they weren't present, either due to the cold or the person dying of a disease that doesn't leave a trace.
The mitochondrial DNA from 72 individuals was extracted from long bones and sequenced, revealing that while most of the samples had ancestry similar to people in present-day Indian populations, some had ancestry more typical of populations from West Eurasia. The entire genome from 37 individuals was sequenced, and it was found that 23 were of Indian ancestry, but for many different parts of India. 14 individuals were of an ancestry more typical of people from the Mediterranean, Crete specifically, but that had lived more recently near Rupkund, and one individual had ancestry more typical of people from Southeast Asia, specifically around the area of Vietnam. The revelation of Greek heritage surprised many, but Greek kingdoms did exist in this area of India around 180 BCE.
The Indo-Greeks, as they're called, descended from Greek populations that were established after Alexander the Great invaded India. The radiocarbon dates for the group with Indian ancestry labeled Group A by the study, indicated they died between the 7th and 10th century CE, which corresponds with the 9th century date of previous studies. The results also suggested that this group did not die all at once, confirming the 1956 Look Now observations. The radiocarbon date for the group with Mediterranean ancestry called the B Group, and the individual with the Southeast Asian ancestry, called the C Group, was quite a surprise, as it indicated that they had died much more recently, between the 17th to 20th century.
Also, the B and C groups appeared to have died during the same event. With more recent dates like these, it must be noted that radiocarbon dating is not as accurate, as the level of carbon in the atmosphere has changed over the last 5,000 years or so, thanks to human industrialization, calibration or adjustments for this higher level of carbon must be made. Even with calibration, however, the dates from beyond the 1800s are often inaccurate. With this new information, several older theories on who the dead of Rupkund are and why they were at the lake have lost support, and several new theories have been proposed.
The previous theories about an army are now unlikely, as no weapons, armor or injuries typical of soldiers were present, and women and children were. Also, the remains seem to have come from many different time periods, making single event cause of death scenarios such as the King Okanuaj and his entourage dying in a hailstorm, improbable. This evidence of multiple events also conflicts with another theory proposed by Swami Pranavanand that an epidemic killed the people and their families performed water burials at Rupkund. Also, no evidence of disease has yet been found.
That's not to say a fast-acting disease that leaves no trace on the skeleton couldn't have caused their deaths, but it's hard to say one way or the other without evidence. Water burials, however, are not unheard of in India. In the past, it was believed that the bodies of on-red girls should not be traditionally cremated but placed in water, so their souls would be reborn into the same family. Water burial is currently banned in India, but the practice still occurs occasionally among families who cannot afford cremations.
In fact, in 2015, around 100 bodies were found in the Holy River Ganges, the water level was unusually low, and it's thought that the bodies of all those given water burials for the last few years had rose to the surface all at once. This water burial idea is part of the theory that Rupkund is a high-mountain cemetery. Rupkund may be the spot where several people died while on the pilgrimage, and then the local people kept adding their own dead to it. Dr.
Kathleen Morrison of the University of Pennsylvania stated that when archaeologists find a large collection of dead, it's most likely a cemetery or graveyard. It's hard to say, however, as Rupkund has no cultural context, it's out in the mountains all alone, without villages, temples, or other structures nearby to give any hint towards its usage throughout history. As often happens when a large group of skeletons are discovered in a strange location, ritual sacrifice has been proposed as the reason for the Rupkund dead. This theory is inspired by another location in Uttarakhand, Kedunath, which contains a temple of the Biderva.
Pilgrims of the Biderva used to climb the ridge nearby, Biderov Jump, and fling themselves to their deaths as a self-sacrifice, hoping to gain salvation after death. This practice was banned by the British in 1931. It's true there are temple inscriptions of extreme worshipers of Nandadevi between the 8th and 10th century, ritually sacrificing themselves, but even then it was uncommon. The sacrifice of buffalo and other animals to Nandadevi is much more prevalent.
The pilgrimage route is nearby, but if hundreds of pilgrims had ritually killed themselves at Rupkund, some sort of written description or or a legend about it would have surfaced by now, and it hasn't. The theory about the King of Kannuage and his entourage dying while on their pilgrimage is unlikely. However, the idea that Rupkund is the result of the deaths of pilgrims is plausible. The pilgrimage route traverses Duneargali, which is very dangerous even in good weather.
Duneargali sits just above the northeast shore of Rupkund, where most of the skeletons are located. It's possible many pilgrims from many different Nandadejats fell to their deaths while journeying over the hundreds of years that the pilgrimage has taken place. A year with particularly bad weather could explain instances when many bodies were deposited at once. The Nandadejat was actually put on hold in the 1700s due to several falling deaths from the slopes of Duneargali down into Rupkund.
It only resumed in the late 1800s. This seems to support the theory that the lake is a conglomeration of hundreds of years of accidental deaths during the pilgrimage. This theory is also supported by the most recent study. Pilgrims could account for the A group.
The C group individual could have been Hindu, which was practiced in Southeast Asia during this time and seeking to participate in the largest Hindu pilgrimage in the world. Why the B group was there is more puzzling. A community of Indo-Greeks existing in the 17th to 20th century is unlikely. The descendants of the original Indo-Greek communities of the 2nd century would have more Indian ancestry by this point due to further mixing or would show signs of inbreeding if they kept to their own community in terms of reproduction.
But the B group shows neither of these suggesting they are a group of unrelated men and women born in the Eastern Mediterranean during the period of the Ottoman Empire. It's not likely they were on the pilgrimage as Hinduism was uncommon in the Mediterranean at this time. Why they were at Rupkund is a mystery. The next step for the researchers of Rupkund is to search for historical documentation of a missing group of people from the Mediterranean, last seen in the Himalayas or reports of other events occurring in the area that could have caused such a vast deposition of human remains over a span of several hundred years.
More recently, concern has risen around the regularly depleted number of Rupkund skeletons. The district magistrate of Channalie has reported that tourists, trekkers and curious researchers have been taking souvenirs and research specimens by the mule load. As the site is very remote, it's hard to stop the theft without posting a permanent guard station or other protections near the lake. In 2007, the district magistrate asked for the area to be protected by the government and in 2009 it was decided that the site should be made into an eco-tourist spot which would grant it protections as well as make it a criminal offence to remove the skeletons from the area.
This developed into the area being made off limits to trekkers entirely in 2018. The last pilgrimage was in 2014 and there has been no word of limiting pilgrims from travelling the Nanda Devi Raj Jadrut. Despite all the information that has been revealed about Rupkund, we still don't have the answers to the questions of who the people in the lake are and what happened to them. Such a disturbingly high accumulation of bodies cannot be natural, but so far no explanation has sufficiently removed the shroud of mystery surrounding them and that is why Rupkund sparks our curiosity.
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My name is Halley and until next time, thanks for listening.