Roopkund (Skeleton Lake) is a glacial lake in Uttarakhand state of India famous due to more than five hundred human skeletons found at the edge of the lake. The location is uninhabited and is located in Himalaya at an altitude of about 5,029 metres (16,499 feet).
What happens when ice melts in the Roopkund lake?
When
ice melts in the glacial tarn of Roopkund, located 5,000 metres above
sea level in Chamoli district, Uttaranchal, hundreds of corpses can be
seen floating. Thus gets exposed a mystery that dates back to more than
60 years and has begun to be understood only recently.
In 1942, a forest guard chanced upon hundreds of skeletons at this tarn.
The
remains have intrigued anthropologists, scientists, historians and
the local people ever since. Who were these people? What were they
doing in the inhospitable regions of the Garhwal Himalaya?
Many
speculated, initially, that the remains were those of Japanese
soldiers who had sneaked into the area, and had then perished to the
ravages of the inhospitable terrain.
Those
were World War II times and even the slightest mention of a Japanese
invasion was bound to throw the area’s British administrators into the
tizzy.
The
matter was investigated and the speculation was put to rest: the
corpses were said to date back to at least a century. But nobody knew
when exactly. Some British explorers to Roopkund, and many scholars
attribute the bones 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 ad. 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.
Local
folklore has it that in medieval times, king Jasdhawal of Kanauj
wanted to celebrate the birth of an heir by undertaking a pilgrimage to
the Nanda-Devi mountains in the Garhwal Himalaya. However, he
disregarded the rules of pilgrimage by boisterous singing and dancing.
The entourage earned the wrath of the local deity, Latu. They were
caught in a terrible hailstorm and were thrown into the Roopkund lake.
 |
| Mt. Trishul |
Folklore is not all myth
Now
the first forensic investigation of the frozen corpses has concurred
with the hailstorm theory. Scientists commissioned by the National
Geographic television channel to examine the corpses believe that they
died from sharp blows to their skulls. “We retrieved a number of skulls
which showed short, deep cracks,” said Subhash Walimbe, a physical
anthropologist at the Deccan college, Pune. Walimbe was a member of the
team that visited the site.
“The
cracks were caused not by a landslide or an avalanche but by blunt,
round objects about the size of cricket balls,” he surmised. According
to Walimbe, “The only plausible explanation for so many people
sustaining such similar injuries at the same time is something that
fell from the sky. The injuries were all to the top of the skull and
not to other bones in the body, so they must have come from above. Our
view is that death was caused by extremely large hailstones”.
Another
member of the team, Wolfgang Sax, an anthropologist at Heidelberg
University in Germany, cited a traditional song among Himalayan women
that describes a goddess so enraged at outsiders who defiled her
mountain sanctuary that she rained death upon them by flinging
hailstones “hard as iron”.
“We
were amazed by what we found,” said Pramod Joglekar, a
bio-archaeologist at Deccan College, Pune. “In addition to skeletons,
we discovered bodies with the flesh intact, perfectly preserved in the
icy ground. We could see their hair and nails as well as pieces of
clothing,” he said. The scientists found glass bangles, indicating the
presence of women.
The
team also found a ring, spear, leather shoes and bamboo staves. This
has led them to hypothesize that the corpses were those of pilgrims.
The scientists estimate that as many as 600 bodies may still be buried
in snow and ice by the lake.
Pilgrims perish
The
samples were sent to the Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit of Oxford
University, uk where the date of death was established at about 850 ad.
The team has yet to resolve the identity of the victims, though.
Meanwhile,
scientists at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad
have also undertaken tests on skeletal remains. Lalji Singh, the
director of the centre, said that his institute had conducted studies
on the dna of 31 samples of bone and muscle taken out from the remains.
“Three samples have unique mutations in the mitochondrial DNA which
are not found anywhere in the world but only in a particular group of
people from Maharashtra,” he said. Singh, however, refused to mention
the ethnic group. He said analysis of two other samples matched with
some people living in Garhwal even as further studies on all the 31
samples were still on to find out more accurate facts.
D K Bhattacharya
of the National Geographic team agrees: “Only a few have the
characteristics of the Mongoloid hill people of the Himalaya,” noted
this scholar from the University of Delhi. It’s quite possible that the
pilgrims employed these local people as porters. After all, Roopkund
is almost 35 km away from the nearest human settlement and it’s
virtually impossible for outsiders to venture into the area without
taking the help of local people.
Need protection
It is quite unfortunate that the local administration has made no
organised attempt to protect this site. Skeletal remains and other
articles of those who perished ages back are reported to have been
diminishing fast from here. Lack of administrative will and a general
indifference has denied this destination its due place on the
international tourist map. In the ceaseless efforts to win over nature
sometime we emerge as victorious though losing the battle is also an
integral part of the game. The Roopkund remains an indicator of the
latter.
Roopkund's skeletons were featured in a National Geographic documentary "Riddles Of The Dead: Skeleton Lake
Posts
