Thread by @HauntedCosmos_

In the far North of India, where the Himalayas punch their weight from the ground, legend tells of the voyage of an ancient king, Raja Jasdhaval.

The story says that during his reign long ago, he took his pregnant wife, their servants, and some dancers up to a mountain shrine.

As they began their worship, a storm quickly formed and poured massive hailstones down on them, killing the entire party.

This supposedly happened around a small mountain pond tucked in the saddle of a Massif. This is the story of Roopkund Lake.

Sitting at a dizzying 16,470 feet, hardly 50 yards wide and 4 feet deep in the summer when it thaws, Roopkund isn't a mighty body of water.

But whatever it lacks in size it makes up for in strangeness.

In 1942, an Indian park ranger in the area stumbled upon the lake in the summer.

As he peered into the clear water, he began to see bones. Thousands of human bones that would amount to between 300 and 800 people.

In the late 1950's, the finding was announced to the public. Immediately the requests to investigate poured in.

Many of them were given permission. In fact, they still continue to this day, almost 80 years later, because the mystery remains stubborn.

You see, not only are the bones weird (we'll get to that) but simply *getting to the lake* is a wonder in its own right.

It is a 5 days journey from the nearest settlement in rugged and hard terrain, with a final 200m descent that is a nearly sheer cliff face.

When you couple that with just how old these bones are, they questions start asking themselves.

Initially people thought that the bones belonged to Japanese soldiers or Tibetan traders from the Silk Road; but no.

In 2004, some forensic analysis concluded that the hailstorm legend might actually have legs.

There was no weaponry to be found. The group was a mixed bag of men and women from a massive range of different ages. It appeared that the bones were the same age.

It all added up!

Many of the skeletons even had head wounds consistent with blunt force trauma.

It seemed that something very heavy moving very fast had pounded these people into the cold waters.

And the study said that all of this happened in the 9th century AD.

The locals even told of the gods and goddesses being angry with a group of dancing worshippers; of luring them to camp at Roopkund before smiting them with a storm of iron.

The story matched the study and vice-versa. This must be the answer!

But then, 2010 happened. A genome sequence was developed for a small portion (38, in fact) of the bodies represented by the bones.

After a five year study, the findings published in 2019 shocked the world and brought the mystery back to life.

The sample proved that 23 of the bodies could be traced to southern parts of present day India, that 1 was from the distant Southeast Asia, and - shockingly - 14 bodies were from the Mediterranean shores.

But that's not all.

The portion of the sample with Indian are Asian origin were shown to have perished somewhere near the mid 7th century AD; while the Mediterraneans were much younger, dying there in the 17th century AD.

We have now, at least two mysterious and massive events separated by 1,000 years that killed dozens.

And what were people from Greece or Crete doing there at all? We don't know ... no known records exist that would answer that question.

And what about the rest of the bones? This sample was only for 38 of the more than 400 supposed bodies with remains here.

So what is it?

Is it all a coincidence?
Is it a graveyard?
Is it something more sinister?
And why is the trek to Roopkund now banned to the general public?

We don't know. But the mystery remains.
Go solve it, western man.