The hundreds of human skeletons scattered around Roopkund Lake at 5,029 metres in the Indian Himalayas were long assumed to be the remains of a single 9th-century pilgrimage group killed by a sudden hailstorm, in an explanation that a 2019 peer-reviewed ancient DNA study has substantially overturned, by demonstrating that the skeletons came from at least three different populations and died across more than one thousand years.

Roopkund Lake sits at 5,029 metres above sea level in the Chamoli District of Uttarakhand, India, between the peaks of Trishul and Nanda Ghunti. The lake is small, rarely more than 40 metres across, only approximately three metres deep, and frozen solid for most of the year. It is surrounded by rock-strewn glaciers and exposed [...] The post The hundreds of human skeletons scattered around Roopkund Lake at 5,029 metres in the Indian Himalayas were long assumed to be the remains of a single 9th-c