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MYS418: There’s a lake in the Indian Himalayas, more than 3 miles above sea level, that holds between 300 and 800 human skeletons.

Roopkund sits in the high peaks of Uttarakhand, in the sacred territory of Nanda Devi. Once a year, thousands of pilgrims walk the ancient Nanda Devi Raj Jat route, a 280 km trek through the mountains that passes directly by the lake. According to local legend, the skeletons are the remains of a royal court that defiled the goddess’s sacred ground. She sent a hailstorm. Nobody survived.

Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli work through every theory: divine wrath, a Japanese army from World War II, an ancient military force, epidemic disease, catastrophic hailstorm (an 1888 storm in Moradabad killed 246 people with hailstones the size of cricket balls), and the findings of a sweeping 2019 DNA study that changed what researchers thought they knew about the site.

The physical evidence doesn’t fit a single clean answer. The DNA results are stranger than the legend. And what archaeologists and geneticists have found raises questions that still don’t have resolutions.

Can an oral tradition preserve a real historical event across centuries? And what does it mean when ancient accounts of divine judgment turn out to have something real behind them?

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Links for this episode:

• Wikipedia article on Roopkund
• Grokipedia: Roopkund
• “Ancient DNA from the skeletons of Roopkund Lake reveals Mediterranean migrants in India” (Harney et al., Nature Communications, August 2019)
• BBC: “The mystery of India’s ‘lake of skeletons'”
• National Geographic: “DNA study deepens mystery of lake full of skeletons”
• Max Planck Institute: “Biomolecular analyses of Roopkund skeletons show Mediterranean migrants in Indian Himalayas”
• The New Yorker: “The Skeletons at the Lake” (Douglas Preston)
• Pew Research on Indian beliefs about God
• Vatican II document Nostra Aetate

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Chapters:

• 0:00 – MYS418
• 0:12 – Intro
• 2:26 – Roopkund
• 5:39 – Cultural Significance: Nanda Devi
• 9:00 – Discovery of the Skeletons
• 12:09 – The Wrath of Nanda Devi
• 15:33 – 1940s British rediscovery
• 16:38 – Skeleton Lake today
• 18:57 – Thank you to Patrons
• 19:28 – Sponsor: The Secret of the Goldfish
• 20:22 – Sponsor: The Grady Group
• 20:39 – Theories
• 21:34 – Reason Perspective: Divine wrath?
• 23:02 – Japanese soldiers?
• 25:35 – Ancient army?
• 28:30 – Epidemic?
• 32:02 – Catastrophic hailstorm?
• 36:40 – 2019 DNA study
• 41:29 – Multi-event theory
• 44:28 – Weaknesses and open questions
• 47:39 – Oral tradition and mythic memory
• 49:07 – Faith Perspective
• 59:13 – Bottom Line
• 1:00:37 – Further Resources
• 1:01:22 – Mysterious Feedback: #407 The Library of Alexandria
• 1:05:47 – Your mysterious feedback
• 1:06:28 – Thank you to Oasis Studio 7
• 1:06:34 – Jimmy’s YouTube channel
• 1:07:01 – Next Time: Zombie Marriage, Holy Roman Emperors, Jesus’s DNA, and More Weird Questions
• 1:08:00 – Get your Mysterious merch
• 1:08:16 – Show notes
• 1:08:23 – Become a Patron
• 1:08:31 – Sponsor: Rosary Army and School of Mary
• 1:08:54 – Sponsor: The Lord Is A Warrior
• 1:09:42 – Outro

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