In 1942, a British forest guard in Roopkund situated in Uttarakhand, India made a frightening discovery. At 16,000 feet above sea level, there was a frozen lake which was full of skeletons. During that summer, the ice melting unveiled more of skeletal remains that were floating in the water and were lying casually around the edges of the lake.
It was pretty evident that the bones were quite old indeed. and it was assumed at that time that these are the remnants of Japanese soldiers who had died of exposure while sneaking through India. But, in a further study in the 1950s, they found that these skeletons were in fact much older than that.
Many hypotheses were put forward including a landslide, an epidemic, and a ritual suicide. For so many decades, no one has been able to solve the mystery of Skeleton Lake and they don’t know what killed hundreds of people.
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One more theory related to ancient soldiers was taken in action. In this, a caravan of merchants a royal wedding party, maybe they died of a disease may be they all froze to death this mystery goes unsolved for decades.
There were some songs and stories that were told that let some possible explanation of how these people came to be there and what killed them.
In 2005 as a part of a national geographic expedition, they begin examining the skeletons and they found some interesting things.
It’s a mixed group: There are children, there are women and there are older people. They think they may have been other way to a festival celebrating Nanda Devi. All of these skeletons suffer from similar wounds, blown off their heads and shoulders with a blunt object.
This area of India, because it’s in the Mountains and 16,000 feet above sea level over a glacial pass the weather is out of control here. The area is also known for extreme hail storms and that is what killed all of these peoples.
The songs and folklore were about the goddess Nanda Devi becoming angry at a traveling partying an act of rage. She cast stones as hard as iron striking all of these people dead and all of the scientific evidence and forensic evidence backs this up. They were killed when a freak hailstorm started dropping.
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So, while it has taken until 2005 to definitely prove with science that the hundreds of people were killed in Roopkund was due to a hailstorm.