The Skeleton Lake of Roopkund, India

Roopkund is a glacial lake located at an altitude of about 5,029 metres in Uttarakhand, a state in India. When the ice melts, hundreds of human skeletons are seen below the surface or floating in the waters. The lake was first discovered in 1942 by a game reserve ranger, although there are reports about these bones from late 19th century. Initially it was speculated that the remains were those of Japanese soldiers who had sneaked into the area, and then perished to the ravages of the inhospitable terrain. This being the time of World War II, the British immediately sent a team of investigators to determine if they had stumbled upon some secret enemy move. However, upon investigation it was discovered that the corpses couldn’t belong to Japanese soldiers, as they weren’t fresh. Photo credit Some British explorers to Roopkund, and many scholars suggested that the bones belonged to General Zorawar Singh of Kashmir, and his men, who are said to have lost their way and perished in the high Himalayas, on their return journey after the Battle of Tibet in 1841. But radio-carbon tests on the corpses in the 1960s belied this theory. The tests vaguely indicated that the skeletons could date back to anytime between the 12th and 15th centuries. This led many historians to link the corpses to an unsuccessful attack by Mohammad Tughlak on the Garhwal Himalaya. Still others believed that the remains were of those of victims of an unknown epidemic. Some anthropologists also put forward a theory of ritual suicide. It was only in 2004 when a team of European and Indian scientists converged on the area at the behest of the National Geographic Channel, the horrifying truth of the mystery started coming to light. DNA testing placed the dead into two distinct physical categories - one of short stature and the other significantly taller. Their findings also revealed that the bodies belonged to a much earlier time than previously thought.