Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us for now. But Jerry says
Speaker 2: she's going to be coming in sooner or later, and
Speaker 2: this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jerry'll come in, probably in our most intense point
Speaker 1: when we're talking to each other, and you guys won't
Speaker 1: to hear this, but we'll hear, like just full Jerry,
Speaker 1: full volume.
Speaker 2: We'll hear ourselves echoing because Jerry doesn't like headphones, you
Speaker 2: guys recording what's going on. So yeah, when that point comes,
Speaker 2: we'll probably edit it out. Who knows, even if we
Speaker 2: don't want to edit it out, Jerry might.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I saw Jerry yesterday. You know, our daughters go
Speaker 1: to school together now, which the public at large doesn't know,
Speaker 1: which is kind of fun. And sorry pick up for
Speaker 1: the first time this year.
Speaker 2: What kind of pickup does she have?
Speaker 1: Yeah? S ten? Oh really that's a cyber truck, right.
Speaker 2: That's our Jerry cyber truck and visor sunglasses.
Speaker 1: No, not at the pickup, but you know, kid, pick up.
Speaker 2: I got you, I got youa Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fun.
Speaker 2: It could have gone either way, and I went the
Speaker 2: wrong way. Yeah. So, speaking of Jerry Chuck, there's a
Speaker 2: lake high up in the Indian Himalayas. It is extremely remote.
Speaker 2: It's extremely high up, and it's it's part of a
Speaker 2: mountain called Trissol, one of the highest mountains in India.
Speaker 2: And this lake is in a very desolate, very remote area. Essentially,
Speaker 2: if you look at a picture of it. Did you
Speaker 2: see that picture? He Yeah, it's nuts. It's a lake
Speaker 2: that's at the edge of a cliff, at the bottom
Speaker 2: of another cliff, way high above like a ridge. It's
Speaker 2: just looking at that picture, I'm like, I would fall
Speaker 2: off there so hard. I would definitely die there. And
Speaker 2: it turns out that if I did die there, it
Speaker 2: would be part of a long standing tradition.
Speaker 1: That's right. You were speaking of Rupecund Lake RP kun D.
Speaker 1: You mentioned it's high. It's about three times as high
Speaker 1: as Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You mentioned remote, and you mentioned being in good company
Speaker 1: if you died there, because Rupken Lake is well known
Speaker 1: for being the Lake of Bones.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently locally it's called Skeleton Lake.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And like I said, it's remote. The nearest village is
Speaker 2: a village called Wand. It's a group of traditional houses
Speaker 2: I read and it's about it. And the people who
Speaker 2: live there apparently take it upon themselves to help out
Speaker 2: strangers and travelers who are who find themselves in a
Speaker 2: bad way, which is pretty nice. But Wan is only
Speaker 2: nineteen miles down about thirty kilometers in the valley below ROOTCND,
Speaker 2: which I mean nineteen miles. That's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a far peace. But it takes three to five days
Speaker 2: to get from Wand to Lake Rupken because the path
Speaker 2: is just so treacherous up the mountain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is tough to get there. And again that
Speaker 1: three times higher than Denver. The altitude is rough. Root
Speaker 1: Can technically is called a tarn, which is an old
Speaker 1: Norse word for pool. But it's a glacial lake. And
Speaker 1: if you've ever been to a glacial lake like I have,
Speaker 1: and maybe you have. Have you ever been to a
Speaker 1: glacial lake, I haven't, they're beautiful. They're really really clear
Speaker 1: that water. You can most times you see right down
Speaker 1: to the bottom of that lake. You wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: look far in this case, because this is a pretty
Speaker 1: small one, only about ten feet deep at its widest points,
Speaker 1: about one hundred and thirty feet wide, and save August
Speaker 1: and September, that thing is basically frozen solid and all
Speaker 1: of those which is kind of great in a way
Speaker 1: as far as an archaeological site goes, because all of
Speaker 1: the skeletons are really well preserved because they're frozen. You know,
Speaker 1: ten twelfths of the year.
Speaker 2: Ten twelves, Yeah, ten twelfths. You nailed it. Five six yeah,
Speaker 2: exactly two and a half third, eh, boy. So when
Speaker 2: that snow and I smelts, though, those skeletons, like you said,
Speaker 2: are revealed, and it's not like there's a couple of
Speaker 2: skeletons laying around. They've estimated, and these are scientists and
Speaker 2: researchers who studied this area, that there's up to eight
Speaker 2: hundred individual skeletons in this tiny little lake and scattered
Speaker 2: around the shores of the lake. It's a lot, a
Speaker 2: lot of dead people, and no one knows who these
Speaker 2: people are or how they got there. It's a genuine
Speaker 2: historic mystery, one of my favorite historic mysteries of all time.
Speaker 2: It's the mystery of the skeletons at Rupken Lake.
Speaker 1: Where did you hear about this first?
Speaker 2: It was a New Yorker article by Douglas Preston that
Speaker 2: I went back and reread. I'm like, man, this is
Speaker 2: so good. It's called Skeletons at the Lake. And he
Speaker 2: goes off on a bunch of other tangents too, gets
Speaker 2: really into like evolutionary genetics and all that, because that's
Speaker 2: applied to this particular topic, but he discourses on it way,
Speaker 2: way more deeply. It's a really cool article. It's definitely
Speaker 2: worth reading.
Speaker 1: Awesome. So this has been one of the great natural
Speaker 1: mysteries since nineteen forty two, when a gentleman named H. K. Madwall,
Speaker 1: who was a forest official from India, was sent there
Speaker 1: to gather some Himalayan flowers for research and study. And
Speaker 1: he was like, oh my god, look at the bones,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, oh my god, as you as you
Speaker 1: would say, and reported over you know, the course of
Speaker 1: a few years, because again you can only you know,
Speaker 1: these things only fall out for a couple of months
Speaker 1: over the year. So any kind of study over the years,
Speaker 1: and as you'll see, there's been a lot since the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties once scientists got involved, because they kind of
Speaker 1: kept it a secret, or at least kept it quiet
Speaker 1: in India for a little while. And eventually when they
Speaker 1: announced it in the nineteen fifties, of course science got
Speaker 1: on board. But they've got a pretty narrow window to
Speaker 1: go and like actually collect and study this stuff. Like
Speaker 1: I mentioned between August and September generally, and it seems
Speaker 1: like nineteen fifty six, a couple of weeks in September
Speaker 1: there was when a lot of that initial collection took place. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were three different expeditions that arrived at the
Speaker 2: lake in a two week period in nineteen September nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty six, and I saw that. I guess some of
Speaker 2: them were unsuccessful, but at least one gathered some artifacts
Speaker 2: and some remains and took them back to the Anthropological
Speaker 2: Survey of India in Kolcutta, Kolkata which used to be
Speaker 2: called Calcutta.
Speaker 1: What did they find?
Speaker 2: They found dozens of leather slippers, okay, the remains of
Speaker 2: parasols made of bamboo and birch, found a lot of rings,
Speaker 2: found the remnants of some musical instruments. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: really importantly crucially as we'll find bengals like those bracelets
Speaker 2: that your grandmother who really loves gin wars that clink
Speaker 2: around all the time.
Speaker 1: Not Susanna Hoffs.
Speaker 2: Uh is she from Oh no, from the Bengals, that's right, nice? Yeah, No,
Speaker 2: or Jane.
Speaker 1: Wheeland. No, she was from Widows right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's who I'm thinking. Sorry Bengals.
Speaker 1: She's a fun following Instagram by the way.
Speaker 2: Okay, good to know that.
Speaker 1: Great. So immediately, of course, science is like, all right,
Speaker 1: we got to figure this out. This is a great mystery.
Speaker 1: We got all these bones here, we don't know who
Speaker 1: these people are. So some theories emerged, and we're going
Speaker 1: to go over the one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 1: seven theories and then bust them apart right after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The first of which is perhaps these were soldiers from
Speaker 1: India who may have been trying to get into Tibet
Speaker 1: or fleet Tibet over the centuries. They kind of narrowed
Speaker 1: it down to one campaign between May and June of
Speaker 1: eighteen forty one, which was repelled, and they say this
Speaker 1: may have been it, Like they were trying to get
Speaker 1: into Tibet. They were repelled, They got the heck out
Speaker 1: of there, and then they perished, like a storm called
Speaker 1: them or something, and they died here by this lake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because here's the thing, you have to account for
Speaker 2: a big group of people who all died simultaneously. It
Speaker 2: seems around this lake, right, So like a big tree
Speaker 2: of soldiers would certainly fit that bill, and then another
Speaker 2: kind of soldiers. So when this was discovered by H. K.
Speaker 2: Madwall in nineteen forty two, World War two was in
Speaker 2: full swing and as far as I know, the India
Speaker 2: was still administered by the British government. So the people
Speaker 2: running the show in India, the Brits running the show
Speaker 2: in India, were really concerned about a land invasion of
Speaker 2: India by the Japanese in particular, so they worried that
Speaker 2: what they had stumbled upon was a a non successful
Speaker 2: Japanese invasion of India, which I think is one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why they kept it choiet for years.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that makes perfect sense, actually sure, because I
Speaker 1: wondered about that. Another theory that popped up was maybe
Speaker 1: these were just traders. They were Tibetans on the Silk Road,
Speaker 1: maybe another trade route that we don't know about yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they were just villagers who lived nearby and
Speaker 1: died of an epidemic and they you know, if you
Speaker 1: die of some nasty plague or disease ease. You don't
Speaker 1: bear everybody right there where you're living. You kind of
Speaker 1: take them away a bit, and maybe that's what that was.
Speaker 2: Right. Another theory is, well, there's a bunch of different spots,
Speaker 2: sacred spots around India where you would ritually take your
Speaker 2: own life, either at self sacrifice or as an act
Speaker 2: of devotion to one of the Hindu gods. And they're like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe Ruken Lake is one of these lesser known spots
Speaker 2: for ritual suicide, and that's what happened to all these people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a pretty good one.
Speaker 2: What else, there's another one that is pretty low hanging fruit,
Speaker 2: but it makes a lot of sense. Somebody spoke up
Speaker 2: and said, guys, what if it's just a cemetery. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that would explain all the dead people, don't you think.
Speaker 1: And everyone was like, oh God, Phil Jesus every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get us every time. Phil, you can really
Speaker 2: see through the clutter.
Speaker 1: You know what Phil's nickname is, what low hanging fruit Phil?
Speaker 2: That's a great name.
Speaker 1: And then finally, after everyone you know, kicked Phil out
Speaker 1: of the office and told him to go get everyone coffee,
Speaker 1: they said, feels kind of onto something, but Also, what
Speaker 1: if it's not like a cemetery per se, but it
Speaker 1: was just people. It's now a cemetary because they were
Speaker 1: victims of a landslide or something and that's just where
Speaker 1: they are now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's possible. So the problem is is that none
Speaker 2: of these theories really fully fit the evidence that they
Speaker 2: found at the lake so far. Right now, soldiers, whether
Speaker 2: they're Japanese, Indian or any kind, they don't make any
Speaker 2: sense because none of the artifacts recovered at the lake
Speaker 2: were weapons. They found a single spearhead made of iron,
Speaker 2: but of all the artifacts they found, that was the
Speaker 2: only thing that could remotely be used as a weapon
Speaker 2: at the lake. So if there's a bunch of soldiers
Speaker 2: there that died suddenly, their weapons wouldn't have evaporated over time,
Speaker 2: you'd find something. And then similarly, the Japanese soldiers in particular,
Speaker 2: that theory held zero water because there had been an
Speaker 2: earlier unofficial sighting by a British climber named TG Long
Speaker 2: stuff if you can believe that, yeah, he saw them
Speaker 2: first in nineteen oh seven as far as Europeans go,
Speaker 2: and so they couldn't possibly have been there because of
Speaker 2: World War Two.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of the old joke from Rodney Dangerfield
Speaker 1: and Back to School, when'd you come over and help
Speaker 1: me straighten out my longfellow?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Man, what a great movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't seen that a long time.
Speaker 2: I saw that in the theaters.
Speaker 1: Did you really?
Speaker 2: I totally did.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would have been allowed to.
Speaker 1: Is that rated R? That probably wasn't rated R? Was it?
Speaker 2: I could see it rated R? My mom took me
Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1: No, that's sweet. Yeah, I love it the Triple Lindy,
Speaker 1: Thanks mom. Yeah. Oh.
Speaker 2: There's one other thing that kind of rules out an
Speaker 2: idea because of the lack of weapons. One of the
Speaker 2: other theories is that this is a group of victims
Speaker 2: of some sort of attack. Somebody raised the idea of
Speaker 2: the Thuggies, you remember them, the secret guilt of bandits
Speaker 2: in India that may or may not have existed, like Jerry,
Speaker 2: but they're like, no, somebody would have dropped their weapons
Speaker 2: way more than just one iron spear. Yeah, had these
Speaker 2: people been victims of murder? So the soldiers, the violence
Speaker 2: at the hands of other humans, that just doesn't really
Speaker 2: hold up.
Speaker 1: Doesn't hold up. Silk Road trader first of all, was
Speaker 1: not along the Silk Road. That was pretty easy to
Speaker 1: rule out, big one. But then there were you know,
Speaker 1: of course they earlier had said, yeah, but maybe it's
Speaker 1: something like the Silk Road, just a trade route we
Speaker 1: didn't know about. They looked and looked, they couldn't find
Speaker 1: any traces of a trade route where they were. And
Speaker 1: also it was again so rural, so high up there,
Speaker 1: they just don't think that was a likely candidate to
Speaker 1: be any kind of normal route.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the trader's theory was proposed by the other philm
Speaker 2: fact Phil, because anytime he open his mouth, everybody'd take
Speaker 2: the fact Phil. Come on, yeah, can we get away
Speaker 2: with fact these days?
Speaker 1: I think so things have.
Speaker 2: Gotten way more risque. All the kids sing about being
Speaker 2: high all the time, that's true.
Speaker 1: What else, man, Well, the epidemic one sounded pretty good
Speaker 1: to me. But they actually can examine those bones forensically
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of tell whether that's true or not.
Speaker 1: Pretty death definitively. So they did that, they were like, no,
Speaker 1: everyone here seemed like they were doing pretty well. No
Speaker 1: signs of disease. So that also kind of rules out
Speaker 1: the cemetery and burial ground along with the fact that
Speaker 1: there were no there were no babies there, there were
Speaker 1: no children's remains found. If it was a cemetery, you'd
Speaker 1: probably find some of that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I saw both a lot of people very
Speaker 2: confidently say that there were babies and children found. Oh really, Yes.
Speaker 2: I also saw that other people said there are no
Speaker 2: babies or children found. So that's not definitive. I'm not
Speaker 2: one hundred percent certain. But just the fact that these
Speaker 2: people their age range was like eighteen to thirty five,
Speaker 2: and there weren't any very old people at least found
Speaker 2: among the remains, you suggest that it wasn't a cemetery too.
Speaker 2: So the idea is like none of these initial theories
Speaker 2: panned out. They all got shot down boom boom boop,
Speaker 2: one after the other. But we're still left with this
Speaker 2: huge question, a cliffhanger question. If you ask me, what
Speaker 2: is the reason that these skeletons ended up as many
Speaker 2: as eight hundred dead people at this tiny little lake
Speaker 2: sixteen five hundred feet more than five thousand meters in
Speaker 2: the Indian Himalayans.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break or you just setting me
Speaker 1: up for something.
Speaker 2: Let's take a break, all right, we'll be right back, So, Chuck,
Speaker 2: I don't remember what episode it was in, but we've
Speaker 2: talked about geoarchaeological mythological study. There was another another term
Speaker 2: for it that was less clumsy, but essentially it's taking
Speaker 2: local legends, especially very old local legends, especially among indigenous people,
Speaker 2: and assuming that there's some kernel of truth that you know,
Speaker 2: the earth opening up and swallowing everybody in a village
Speaker 2: might have been some huge earthquake that you know, a
Speaker 2: fault line opened at some point, and then they use
Speaker 2: that and try to figure out what specific event this
Speaker 2: mythology's talking about. Well, it just so happens that there's
Speaker 2: a local legend among the people who live around the
Speaker 2: Rupcn Lake area that hundreds and hundreds of years ago
Speaker 2: there was a traveling group of people who were struck
Speaker 2: down because the goddess Nanda Devi was very unhappy with
Speaker 2: the way that they were celebrating her or showing their
Speaker 2: devotion to her on a long standing pilgrimage to honor
Speaker 2: Nanda Debi.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a pilgrimage that would be undertaken
Speaker 1: every dozen years again to honor that god you spoke of,
Speaker 1: Nanda Devi who was we should say, in this case
Speaker 1: a manifestation as a mountain from the goddess Parvadi, very
Speaker 1: big goddess and the Hindu pantheon, and the goddess of
Speaker 1: like a good goddess, goddess of like great things, love, marriage, devotion, beauty,
Speaker 1: like all the goodness and kind of levy things.
Speaker 2: That's funny. I noticed you left out fertility and children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not the goodness. So Pavardi again can embody
Speaker 1: a lot of different forms. In this case, it was
Speaker 1: a mountain. And so this pilgrimage would take place every
Speaker 1: twelve years. And Rupkend is on that route, one of
Speaker 1: nineteen stops and the last stop on the way to
Speaker 1: the final destination, which is what is it a mountain
Speaker 1: called ham Kund.
Speaker 2: Well, it's another glacial lake on the other side of
Speaker 2: that really treacherous cliff that's above Rupken.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is the final lake before the penultimate lake,
Speaker 1: before the final lake.
Speaker 2: Right, And so this pilgrimage like this exists. There's one
Speaker 2: coming up in twenty twenty six where people who just
Speaker 2: haven't undertaken it before travel this incredibly dangerous. They consider
Speaker 2: it's the most dangerous pilgrimage in the Hindu religion, and
Speaker 2: a lot of them, sure, a lot of them do
Speaker 2: it barefoot over the course of about three weeks. And
Speaker 2: when they get to Rupken, the second last stop, and
Speaker 2: they continue on up this very treacherous, scary ridge barefoot
Speaker 2: at sixteen thousand feet in elevation, they go down another
Speaker 2: thousand feet to hom Kund, where they release a ram
Speaker 2: that they've carried with them, and then the ram is
Speaker 2: believed to carry Nanda Devi onward to the home of
Speaker 2: Lord Shiva, her consort, who lives just higher up in
Speaker 2: the mountain. And then everybody turns around and goes back
Speaker 2: down the mountain the way they came. So we know
Speaker 2: this pilgrimage actually does exist. It's called the Nanda Devi
Speaker 2: raj Yatra. And this local legend says that hundreds of
Speaker 2: years ago a king and a queen king yes Sadwal
Speaker 2: and Queen Balampa, who were rulers of Kanaj, which is
Speaker 2: still around, they undertook this pilgrimage, but they weren't taking
Speaker 2: it seriously enough and bad things happen to them.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, earlier when I mentioned sounds like a party
Speaker 1: with the parasols and the musical instruments stuff. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what the theory holds is that they brought along some
Speaker 1: singers and dancers on this pilgrimage. They were having a
Speaker 1: good time, and Non de Debi was not too fond
Speaker 1: of this approach, did not like this atmosphere, and so
Speaker 1: rained hell upon them via giant hailstones and killed everybody.
Speaker 1: And that is what that large traveling party was was
Speaker 1: people that were killed by a hailstorm as a sort
Speaker 1: of revenge from a god who didn't appreciate how this pilgrimage,
Speaker 1: the lack of solemnity for this pilgrimage.
Speaker 2: Right, So this is a local legend. It's been around
Speaker 2: for a very long time. And when the team of
Speaker 2: archaeologists who conducted a study in two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: I think this was the first actual, like big study
Speaker 2: done on what the heck was going on at Rupken Lake.
Speaker 2: When they looked into this local lore, they're like, actually,
Speaker 2: a lot of the evidence supports this legend. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: they started kind of really digging into a little more
Speaker 2: and they found that the age range I think I said,
Speaker 2: of the people involved were between eighteen and thirty five.
Speaker 2: So there weren't any kids, at least from what the
Speaker 2: sample they took was, and there weren't any old people,
Speaker 2: so you could say, all right, well this is possibly
Speaker 2: a royal entourage. It would account for it. The thing
Speaker 2: that really kind of gives that away is there it
Speaker 2: was evenly split pretty much between male and female, so
Speaker 2: we know it wasn't some sort of military party because
Speaker 2: number one, weapons are missing, and number two you would
Speaker 2: expect it to be almost exclusively male. And then the
Speaker 2: skulls that they sampled bore signs of trauma, like massive
Speaker 2: trauma to the skulls that were unhealed, which would strongly
Speaker 2: support the idea that this person was killed by a
Speaker 2: hailstone and died basically instantly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was one part of the skull. There were
Speaker 1: some other skulls or I guess, some other findings on
Speaker 1: those skulls that showed indentations in the same place along
Speaker 1: the forehead. And if you have a you know, an assistant,
Speaker 1: a local porter, that's like carrying a bunch of heavy stuff.
Speaker 1: A lot of times they'll carry things on their backs
Speaker 1: but have a strap attached to that thing that goes
Speaker 1: around their forehead. And if you been doing that for
Speaker 1: long enough, like they would have been, then they might
Speaker 1: have these you know, indentations in the same place. So
Speaker 1: everything is sort of lining up here. They also carbon
Speaker 1: dated the bones between eight hundred and nine hundred CE,
Speaker 1: which would have fit the timeline. So phil is getting
Speaker 1: pretty excited at this point.
Speaker 2: That's right. There was another, really there's another piece of
Speaker 2: really solid, circumstantial evidence that supported the legend. Remember they
Speaker 2: found a bunch of Bengals and the remains of parasols. Well,
Speaker 2: even still today, Nanda Devi devotas who follows the Nanda
Speaker 2: Devi Rojja Yatra, the pilgrimage, I know it's work. They
Speaker 2: travel with brightly adorned parasols, and they wear bengals as
Speaker 2: part of their devotion to Nanda Devi. And they again
Speaker 2: they found a lot of parasols, a lot of bengals.
Speaker 2: So it also really strongly suggests that this was a
Speaker 2: group of pilgrims who were struck down around the time
Speaker 2: that this local legend says this king and Queen's party
Speaker 2: was struck down on their pilgrimage.
Speaker 1: All right, so you got all this evidence, it all
Speaker 1: seems to fit. There was an analysis in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four that I think you said that was one
Speaker 1: of the first like big studies. And an archaeologist named
Speaker 1: Tom Higghem from Oxford University said, Anna, what I think
Speaker 1: this is what happened to you guys. It all fits,
Speaker 1: And we do like to follow the lead of the
Speaker 1: local folklore because that can often yield, you know, clues
Speaker 1: or hents to a direction, and we think their directions right.
Speaker 1: We think hailstorms happen around here in the Himalayas. It's
Speaker 1: very likely that this is probably what happened. Like nearby
Speaker 1: there have been hailstorms that have killed hundreds of people
Speaker 1: and thousands of livestock with dreamely large hail, so we think,
Speaker 1: and those were people who could have like sheltered. Even so,
Speaker 1: they were like, all right, I think this is it, guys,
Speaker 1: let's shut down the science department.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The incident you're talking about happened in eighteen eighty
Speaker 2: eight killed two hundred and thirty people, and so you
Speaker 2: can imagine if these people could run for shelter and
Speaker 2: two hundred and thirty of them still died, a group
Speaker 2: of hundreds of people on a pilgrimage who had no
Speaker 2: shelter would have stood zero chance to like giant hailstones
Speaker 2: that would rain down upon them. So the theory is
Speaker 2: that these people were killed in a single mass death event.
Speaker 2: They were unlucky enough to get caught out in a sudden,
Speaker 2: unexpected hailstorm, and the people in the royal party, the
Speaker 2: royal entourage, and their porters were all killed. The thing
Speaker 2: that they weren't quite clear on is whether they were
Speaker 2: all killed at the lake or higher up on the
Speaker 2: ridge that leads to home Kund. And then eventually their
Speaker 2: bodies were deposited by rock slides down to the lake.
Speaker 2: Not one hundred percent clear on that, but it didn't matter.
Speaker 2: They felt like they had solved the mystery finally of
Speaker 2: what all these skeletons were doing at Rupkend.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take our second break here and
Speaker 1: we'll come back, because the story's not over, you guys,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about what happened right after this.
Speaker 1: Still all right, So that theory is hanging out there
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, hangs out for about ten years.
Speaker 1: Everyone's feeling pretty good about it. The book is not closed,
Speaker 1: but the book is, you know, it's almost closed, sure,
Speaker 1: And then in twenty fourteen. I guess it was Phil
Speaker 1: Maybe we should take another look at these samples. Everybody fruitfill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like things have come a long way in the ten
Speaker 1: years in science, so maybe we could glean something. So
Speaker 1: a five year study kicked off in twenty fourteen involving
Speaker 1: sixteen labs around the world, and they sampled bones from
Speaker 1: thirty eight of those individuals, sent them to all these
Speaker 1: labs and got some really really interesting results in that
Speaker 1: out of the thirty eight, twenty three belong these are
Speaker 1: all different people. Twenty three belonged to the gene pool
Speaker 1: that you would expect to find in that area, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of South Asian ancestry. Fourteen of them had
Speaker 1: zero South Asian DNA, appeared to come from the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: And then there was this one lone person from a
Speaker 1: third genetic group, maybe Han Chinese, some sort of East
Speaker 1: Asian ancestry, And they're like, who's this guy out of Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, why are these people not all the
Speaker 1: same people?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Because we can go ahead and throw that theory out
Speaker 1: the window, the first theory, because they would have all
Speaker 1: been from the same ancestry, So like, why are they
Speaker 1: from three different groups? And why is there that one
Speaker 1: weirdo just hanging out there by himself.
Speaker 2: But also so you could reasonably see a Han Chinese
Speaker 2: person eventually making their way over to India via Tibet.
Speaker 2: The biggest mystery was what the heck a group of
Speaker 2: people from the Mediterranean were doing all the way up
Speaker 2: in the Indian Himalayas at some point did not fit? No,
Speaker 2: it didn't. And so these results were quite astounding, as
Speaker 2: you can imagine. But you said, I think sixteen different
Speaker 2: labs were conducting different kinds of tests, and the other
Speaker 2: labs tests came in and supported what they had found
Speaker 2: about the genetic makeup the ancestry of those groups. One
Speaker 2: of the things that they found was that the diets
Speaker 2: among the different groups were different, and they actually matched
Speaker 2: the ancestry that the genetic testing had revealed. So like
Speaker 2: the people from the mediterrane and showed that they were
Speaker 2: raised on wheat and barley and rice, which fits a
Speaker 2: Mediterranean diet, the people of South Asian ancestry showed that
Speaker 2: they had eaten a lot of millet, which fits their
Speaker 2: ancestry as well. So it was clear that these these
Speaker 2: were like these findings were true. Like this wasn't just
Speaker 2: some weird random anomaly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, but it's it's like the mystery is
Speaker 1: just deepened at this point. Yeah, they tried to find
Speaker 1: as far as how the Mediterranean people got there. They
Speaker 1: looked at other folklore and literature that was like, can
Speaker 1: we find anything in here where they're writing about either
Speaker 1: someone from the Mediterranean or a group that was just
Speaker 1: different and exotic, and like maybe it could have been Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: They basically struck out on that front. So the mystery
Speaker 1: is deeper at this point until we get to our
Speaker 1: I guess, greatest reveal when the study revealed that the
Speaker 1: skeletons not only were different people from different ancestry, but
Speaker 1: within those groups even they came from different eras. Yep.
Speaker 2: So remember I said that, like they were originally trying
Speaker 2: to account for a single mass death event that accounted
Speaker 2: for all of the dead people that the assumption was
Speaker 2: they'd all died at once. So not only were these
Speaker 2: mystery people from the Mediterranean part of this group, the
Speaker 2: groups of people that they studied had died a thousand
Speaker 2: years apart as a matter of fact, so they had
Speaker 2: separated them into three groups based on their genetic ancestry.
Speaker 2: Rupe and A were the members with South Asian ancestry.
Speaker 2: The people who you'd expect to be there Roup can
Speaker 2: be were the Mediterranean people. And they looked at their
Speaker 2: genetic profile and they get this. They said that the
Speaker 2: closest genetic profile around are people who live on Crete,
Speaker 2: which is an island south of Greece in the middle
Speaker 2: of the Mediterranean. They didn't they said it. We're not
Speaker 2: saying that these people were from Crete, but that's the
Speaker 2: closest profile we can find to the people who are
Speaker 2: dead up on Rupken Lake. Right. Yeah, those people died
Speaker 2: in the eighteenth century, is the best guess they have
Speaker 2: based on the carbon dating. The people from Rupken A
Speaker 2: they died between the seventh and the tenth centuries, and
Speaker 2: the people in that group didn't even seem to die
Speaker 2: at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's right. But the Group A that perished sometime between
Speaker 1: the seventh and tenth centuries does support if you go
Speaker 1: back to that original local legend of King Yazda Waal
Speaker 1: and Queen Balampa play love seeing Queen Bolampam. That's a
Speaker 1: good one. It does fit with that timeline. But within
Speaker 1: that group, like you said, they seem to have from
Speaker 1: in two separate eras, separated by a couple of hundred years,
Speaker 1: So it may not have been one, you know, I
Speaker 1: guess it could have been just a smaller royal group.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't rule out, and all evidence still supports
Speaker 2: that some group from rupkend a group could have been
Speaker 2: that royal entourage that was part of the local legend.
Speaker 2: But because there was one group that died between six
Speaker 2: seventy five and seven sixty nine and another group from
Speaker 2: rupkind A that died between eight ninety four and nine
Speaker 2: eighty five. See, they like they don't know who is who,
Speaker 2: Like they haven't been able to suss that out and
Speaker 2: maybe never will. But this mystery just keeps getting more
Speaker 2: and more bizarre. You have a group of mystery people
Speaker 2: who shouldn't be there. You have the fact that different
Speaker 2: separate mass death events happened at least three times over
Speaker 2: the course of one thousand years, and it's just getting
Speaker 2: weirder and weirder. So the scientists who are conducting this
Speaker 2: massive survey or study that actually ran I think from
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen, they started sending each other
Speaker 2: samples of the samples they had to make sure that,
Speaker 2: like the people who had tested for what kind of
Speaker 2: diet were working from the same bones that the people
Speaker 2: had tested what the genetic profile was of of these people,
Speaker 2: and it all came back the same, Like there was
Speaker 2: no mix up with the bone powder that was sent
Speaker 2: to the different labs. They were all working from the
Speaker 2: same samples and so these findings were correct. It just
Speaker 2: deepened this mystery and it completely upended what had, like
Speaker 2: you said, previously been thought of as a solved mystery generally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love the idea of the one Randoh Chinese
Speaker 1: person because it's sort of jibs with you know, with
Speaker 1: just history, how there could be one person that ends
Speaker 1: up with another group of people from another place and
Speaker 1: like kind of stays with them. Have you watched the
Speaker 1: new show Go series?
Speaker 2: No, but didn't it just rack up at the Emmys?
Speaker 1: It did, And I previously I don't know why it
Speaker 1: didn't like get on my radar too much, But after
Speaker 1: the Emmys, I was kind of like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: maybe I should check this out because I love feudal
Speaker 1: Japan and all of that stuff is just like just
Speaker 1: the aesthetic of it and the story, like it's just
Speaker 1: a part of history that I think is super cool.
Speaker 1: So I started watching it. I'm like four episodes in
Speaker 1: and it's awesome, and you know, the whole notion here
Speaker 1: is there's this British guy that ends up in Japan,
Speaker 1: like maybe the first British guy in Japan, and is
Speaker 1: sort of in a way taken in by these people.
Speaker 1: So it's those things happen in history where you would
Speaker 1: get this just kind of single person all of a
Speaker 1: sudden ends up on another side of the world because
Speaker 1: they discovered some new route with their ship and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden they're like, all right, well, I guess
Speaker 1: i'd live here now.
Speaker 2: Is the British guy played by Matt Damon again? Did
Speaker 2: he reprise?
Speaker 1: But that was a different movie. No, nor was it
Speaker 1: Richard Chamberlain who.
Speaker 2: Okay, so is this also based on James Clavel's Showgun.
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, it's the original story from that. But
Speaker 1: it's really really good. If you're into that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: I think you would like it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll check it out. We should also say that
Speaker 2: the lone Han Chinese person made up Group C. They
Speaker 2: have their own.
Speaker 1: Group, yeah, group of one like Phil.
Speaker 2: Well, there's two pills, but ones liked and the others disliked.
Speaker 2: Actually they're both kind of dislike, but one's really disliked.
Speaker 1: Over he's definitely his own group.
Speaker 2: So this whole thing, like this mystery is not solved,
Speaker 2: This is still ongoing. What we've described and spoken about
Speaker 2: is the state of the current understanding or the state
Speaker 2: of the current questions about what's going on up at
Speaker 2: Rupken Lake or what went on. And so it leads
Speaker 2: to the question like, are we ever going to be
Speaker 2: able to solve this? And the answer to that is
Speaker 2: there's a good possibility we will because if you think back,
Speaker 2: this twenty fourteen to nineteen study was working with the
Speaker 2: bone powder from just thirty eight individuals. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 2: as many as eight hundred individuals up there, So this
Speaker 2: is a really small sample. So as we start like
Speaker 2: analyzing more and more of the skeletons, who knows what
Speaker 2: weird data we're going to get back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. One of the problems with research at
Speaker 1: this spot, well there's a few, but one of them is,
Speaker 1: you know, it became, of course a popular hiking trick
Speaker 1: for like commercial hiking trips, and over the decades, climbers
Speaker 1: would go in there, and you know, if you look
Speaker 1: up this lake and you'll definitely see bones that are
Speaker 1: arranged and like cairns and like you know, clearly put
Speaker 1: together by the hand of a person much much later.
Speaker 1: And so they're they're rearranging things, taking things of them,
Speaker 1: like like taking bones and looting artifacts and things like that.
Speaker 1: But what happens when you when you rearrange stuff like that,
Speaker 1: like a like a numbskull, it takes away the context.
Speaker 1: Who knows if the original like we don't even know
Speaker 1: what the original context would have been or if that
Speaker 1: even would have yielded anything, but we know it's not
Speaker 1: going to yield anything now because there's bones arranged, you know,
Speaker 1: like arm wrestling each other and playing football and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like over the top, one of them's wearing legal
Speaker 2: warmers on his armbone. Yeah, so yeah, without context a second,
Speaker 2: without context, that means traditional archaeology is sidelined. Right. They
Speaker 2: can't help out at this point. I mean they can
Speaker 2: to an extent, but like where they really swoop in
Speaker 2: and start interpreting things correctly is with context, and without context,
Speaker 2: their hands are tied largely. But luckily, as we've seen,
Speaker 2: there's molecular biology, there's evolutionary there's a lot of other
Speaker 2: tools in the toolbox which is constantly expanding that we
Speaker 2: can use to analyze stuff and make pretty good guesses from,
Speaker 2: you know, the bones themselves, not necessarily just how they
Speaker 2: were arranged, because like you said, there may have never
Speaker 2: been any kind of real context. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: rock slides in the area. There was one as recent
Speaker 2: as two thousand and five that revealed a new body
Speaker 2: that hadn't been found before. So it's possible that these things,
Speaker 2: these bodies were moved down the mountain over the course
Speaker 2: of a thousand years, maybe even longer. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: possible that we wouldn't have had any context anyway, and
Speaker 2: it's not just a bunch of jerky mountain climbers who
Speaker 2: were messing with the bones in the ten years that
Speaker 2: you could hike past Rupkin Lake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my money is on that first theory for some
Speaker 1: of them that entourage because that definitely explains a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff, the parasols and the bengals and the
Speaker 1: the musical instruments and stuff. And then I think that
Speaker 1: rock slide thing definitely plays a part because a lot
Speaker 1: of bones could have just you know, collected down there
Speaker 1: over the centuries. I don't know, like this, this one
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to me like there's going to be a
Speaker 1: single definitive explanation, but a combination of explanations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I mean, and there's so many ways to
Speaker 2: die up there, like not just has sailstones or rock slides,
Speaker 2: but also just plain old blizzards. Getting lost in a
Speaker 2: blizzard and soccumbing to the elements is really easy up there.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just a lot of ways to die.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, it could be group after group, a
Speaker 2: lot of them on these this pilgrimage that just died
Speaker 2: over the years in this one particular spot. It's just
Speaker 2: that dangerous. But that still leaves the mystery of what
Speaker 2: a group of Mediterraneans, possibly from Cree, we're doing on
Speaker 2: a very i mean outside of Hindu a pretty obscure pilgrimage,
Speaker 2: Like I certainly hadn't heard of it before, and I
Speaker 2: got my finger on the pulse pilgrimages around the world
Speaker 2: and I hadn't heard of it. So how did these
Speaker 2: people from the Mediterranean in the eighteenth century end up
Speaker 2: on this pilgrimage that may be a mystery forever, especially
Speaker 2: because there's no legends or folklores associated with it. But
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the questions are going to
Speaker 2: be unlocked because luckily, since the lake itself has frozen
Speaker 2: over ten months of the year, a lot of the
Speaker 2: bodies or skeletons or remains are preserved at the bottom
Speaker 2: of this lake because even when it's like the lake's melted,
Speaker 2: it's really cold and you don't want to go in it.
Speaker 2: And so all it's going to take is somebody to
Speaker 2: take a really comprehensive study of the remains in the lake,
Speaker 2: and again, who knows what weird stuff it's going to yield.
Speaker 2: It's one to keep an eye on. And I just
Speaker 2: I love this mystery. To me, it being answered is
Speaker 2: preferable to it remaining a mystery, which is kind of
Speaker 2: like the opposite of how a lot of unsolved mysteries
Speaker 2: are actually historic mysteries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Another good thing on the hope of
Speaker 1: finding something out about this is they did the government
Speaker 1: and did shut down that route to hikers and commercial hiking,
Speaker 1: So like that's it's not gonna be disturbed by those
Speaker 1: knuckleheads anymore.
Speaker 2: No, And I'm guessing because it's a solemn occasion and
Speaker 2: the pilgrims are taking, you know, their pilgrimage. Seriously, they're
Speaker 2: probably not much messing with the skeletons that rupkend among
Speaker 2: the pilgrims themselves, So I would think it's now that
Speaker 2: you've done away with the commercial climbers, it's probably fairly
Speaker 2: safe now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agreed.
Speaker 2: Okay, you got anything else about Rupken Lake and the
Speaker 2: mystery of the skeletons. There nothing else I don't either.
Speaker 2: Hopefully you guys enjoyed this as much as I have.
Speaker 2: And since I said that, of course it's time for
Speaker 2: listener mail.
Speaker 1: This is just a very sweet appreciative emails. A little long,
Speaker 1: but it's a good episode for this one. Sure, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: For the sake of brevity, I'll jump straight in. My
Speaker 1: name is Samantha. I'm from Saskatchewan in Canada, and today's
Speaker 1: my thirtieth birthday. Earlier this year, I made a list
Speaker 1: of individuals who, through their work, have greatly impacted my
Speaker 1: worldview and my goal was to write to the top
Speaker 1: thirty people who have influenced my mindset, and you guys
Speaker 1: are on that list. My spouse and I actually only
Speaker 1: only religiously consume your content for about a month out
Speaker 1: of the entire year. During our road trips, you're the
Speaker 1: voices in our car and have been for years now.
Speaker 1: You've explained the Grand Canyon as we drive through Las Vegas, house,
Speaker 1: tsunamis work so you wind down the West Coast, and
Speaker 1: how dopamine works as we drive to Cedar Point Amusement Park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an odd thing. I've almost come to associate your
Speaker 1: voices with my favorite weeks of the year that I
Speaker 1: look forward to, and I simply want to say thanks
Speaker 1: for contributing to those memories in an indirect way.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: One comment I made, and you're about to love this part, Josh,
Speaker 1: because get you look pretty good in.
Speaker 2: This new oh Okay.
Speaker 1: Set up to one comment I made in my spouse
Speaker 1: during our most recent road trip to BC this summer
Speaker 1: was how you to speak to each other the complete
Speaker 1: respect and appreciation for each other's personal moments. I can
Speaker 1: it for the life and you remember the exact details.
Speaker 1: But Chuck made some mention in one of the episodes
Speaker 1: about being able to relate to a difficult family environment
Speaker 1: when growing up and the feedback given by Josh was
Speaker 1: in two parts, first to thank him for sharing that
Speaker 1: and to apologize that he went through that as a kid,
Speaker 1: and then to go on to provide commentary and move
Speaker 1: the episode forward. That was one of the many examples
Speaker 1: of you both being stellar, wholesome human beings, and I
Speaker 1: hope the people in your life tell you this often.
Speaker 1: If your audience can see this trait during the episodes,
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine how much more compassionate and empathetic you
Speaker 1: are in everyday life. Well we maybe more so on
Speaker 1: the show. We're not that great. To leave one final sentiment, though, Guys,
Speaker 1: if you ever have days where you grapple with your purpose,
Speaker 1: question whether what you're doing has made an impact, or
Speaker 1: feel the desired to know that what you do carries meaning,
Speaker 1: please know that you have done that for at least
Speaker 1: one person. For that, I cannot thank you enough. Samantha
Speaker 1: Kitzel Kitzel with a Z.
Speaker 2: Oh really even better, Samantha, thank you so much for that.
Speaker 2: We can't tell you how much we appreciate you for
Speaker 2: writing that to us. That means a lot, especially the
Speaker 2: part about me.
Speaker 1: And happy happy birthday, and also hello to your spouse,
Speaker 1: and we look forward to the next road trip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, be safe on your travels, have fun and yes,
Speaker 2: happy birthday. And if you want to be like Samantha
Speaker 2: and get in touch with this, you can do that.
Speaker 2: You can send it via email to stuff Podcasts at
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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