Have you heard about Roopkund Lake? If you like a spooky mystery, and enjoyed our recent ‘Dem Bones’ box, this one’s for you.

The lake is high up in the Indian Himalayas, tucked into a snowy valley. But that’s not the interesting part. The lake is also strewn with hundreds of human skeletons.

Up to 800 individual skeletons have been discovered so far – mostly middle-aged adults in reasonably good health. No babies or children have been found.

Over the years, many theories have tried to explain the reason for so many skeletons. Initially, they were believed to be Japanese soldiers or Tibetan traders on the Silk Road who died due to either an epidemic or exposure to the elements.

But no weapons were found, and there was no evidence of trade goods, making those theories a little hard to accept.

Then, in 2004, scientists did a genetic study on bones from 38 different skeletons and their findings raised more questions than answers.

First, none of the skeletons showed any sign of a pathogen or virus that could explain the mass deaths.

It also turned out that, instead of being one large group of people who died at the same time, the skeletons belonged to three distinct groups, which ended up at the lake over a period of 1000 years.

There was a South Asian group, which makes sense based on the location of the lake. They appear to have died at different times over the course of 300 years.

There were also individuals of Mediterranean origin, who died at the lake 900 years later, all at the same time.

Why were skeletons belonging to people from 19^th Century Greece found at this lake on one of the highest mountains in India? How did they die? And why were hundreds of other bodies at the lake centuries before that?

Some more recent theories suggest that people were travelling through the mountains on a pilgrimage. 

But that doesn’t explain why several distinct groups of people died at Roopkund, over several separate incidents spanning more than 1,000 years.

And let’s face it, that genetic study only looked at 38 individuals – how many other mysteries might arise if we looked at more bones?