These people were probably slaves. Transported over the himalayas to the Tibetan Plateau and eastwards.
In the 7th and 10th centuries they might have been sent from India to the Tibetan Empire, but in later centuries they might have been purchased in places like Lhasa and then sent to india, explaining the different ethnicity of the bodies, their varying ages and locations of final rest.
13
Hindus cremate their dead and the fact that these were not cremated should be revealing. Probably there is a more sinister explanation for these bones. The Thugee cult was widely prevalent in northern India during the time periods mentioned. It is possible that this is simply a site associated with that cult. The nearby Nanda Devi temple attracts a large number of pilgrims every 12 years who would be an easy prey for the Thugs.
6
It's possible the site was once a charnel ground favored by a local tribe for spiritual reasons -- maybe the residence of a local deity, which is common in the Himalayas.
The tribe may have practiced "sky burials", which are still practiced by many Buddhist Tibetans. Corpses are laid out on a favored hillside, either butchered by an undertaker or intact, as a generosity offering to the local animals.
Buddhism reached Tibet around the mid-8th Century, so if the lake is in the Indian Himalayas, the timeframe is applicable.
The presence of people from different ancestries could imply migrating settlers, or a period visitations from other regions. Everyone would be "buried" the same way.
7
Alexandar the Great invaded - well tried anyways - the Hindu Kush and left behind soldiers who intermarried with local tribes. This could be the source of the Mediterranean DNA.
31
That would be obvious from the DNA. These people don’t appear to have had just a little Eastern Med ancestry.
2
@mt, the Macedonians who stayed on would show a mixture of South Asian and Mediterranean genetics. However, this wasn't the case as reported in the Nature paper. Thus, they were relatively recent migrants to India who had lived inland and not by the Mediterranean sea (based on diet) at the time of Ottoman control. Many Armenians fleeing the Turkish genocide in the early 20th century ended up sheltering in India. Might these have been Greek refugees from an even earlier genocide? Could they have been Greek slaves/Janissaries, perhaps provided to the Mughals by the Turks, who tried to escape with their families but unfortunately perished? Such a mystery!
12
Why is it so strange that people with Eastern Mediterranean DNA would show up in the Himalayas? The Greeks got around - remember Alexander the Great, the Seleucid Empire and the Byzantine Empire? And the area containing the lake bordered on or was part of Alexander's empire and its successors. Many modern humans from the Eastern Mediterranean to Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and China have some Greek DNA.
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@William LeGro, some Greek DNA is the operative term here. These were all "Greek" DNA and didn't have any Indian DNA, which they would if they had come from ancient migrations/invasions who stayed on and intermarried over the centuries.
8
It's refreshing when scientists say "We have no idea!", rather than offering unsupported speculation.
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Do scientists really offer unsupported speculation? Where?
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@Frank O It sounds like you think scientist as a whole are either dishonest or unprofessional. But perhaps it is the scientist job to offer possible explanations and theories that can be later tested.
15
I'm having a little trouble with the timeline -- "years ago", centuries, "years later". Why not stick with one format?
Also, isn't this a contradiction -- The Mediterranean individuals arrived between 1600-1900 or so, not that long ago, then that is qualified with "current distribution may not apply to ancient populations". I wouldn't call three to four hundred years ago "ancient".
23
People who got lost, hit a dead end, the glacial cirque lake; then hit with a summer storm (hail is generally a summer weather phenomenon).
There are different groups of people from different places. What would they all do? Travel in a group. Is the pass that ends in the cirque a possible wrong direction from some trail? Might the approach look like a shortcut? Travelers in small and large groups have probably often traveled up there, saw no way forward, turned around. Occasionally a storm trapped a group. Carbon dating of all the skeletons will give the count of the years people were at the lake and were caught in a storm intense enough they couldn't get out.
8
Just speculating: maybe the elderly individuals were practising vanaprastha (retreat to the forest) the Stage 3 in the Hindu life cycle after fulfilling their duties as householders (Stage 2). After vanaprastha comes sannyasa (renunciation, Stage 4). So maybe these persons were on their vanaprastha / sannyasa stages, and retreated to the Himalayas and died, and their bodies were placed in the lake by companions. Many traditional stories have accounts of famous characters who retreated to the Himalayas and died or transited to the next world, so maybe these persons were trying to literally follow their footsteps.
19
My guess would be that they were ritual burials performed for some unknown (and perhaps now unknowable) religious reason.
8
I would bet you are right. Maybe human sacrifices as well. People were crazier/more superstitious back in the day ...
1
From analyzing the photo I conclude this to be a giant Venus Flytrap type mechanism to trap humans. Best stay away.
39
There is an excellent article by Nature Magazine where the scientific analysis was presented in detail. Perhaps, the readers should read that: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11357-9
Also, this has links to all the datasets if someone wishes to perform his/her own analysis.
29
Thank you. The Nature article is great.
4
@Observer
I too totally enjoyed the article in Nature magazine. Thank you for posting the link.
3
Beautiful and haunting sculptures.
Can anyone provide the dimensions of the pieces?
1
@Rita
There aren't sculptures, the bones are human remains.
19