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registry Malta and Ecuador. In
1:33
1942, a park ranger working
1:35
for the government of India was out
1:37
hiking high up in the Himalayan mountains,
1:40
up near the border with Tibet. He
1:42
was tracking rare animals supposedly, and he
1:44
might have been actually looking
1:47
for unauthorized incursions into India, because
1:49
this was during World War II,
1:52
and India was really worried
1:54
about invasion, as
1:57
everyone was. And
2:00
he came across this beautiful
2:03
glacial lake, like a jewel in
2:06
the mountains, way high up
2:08
at 16,000 feet. And
2:11
he went down to investigate and
2:14
made this terrifying
2:17
discovery. And
2:23
he was absolutely astonished to find that there
2:25
were human remains everywhere,
2:28
bones and skulls and
2:30
also flesh preserved. I
2:32
mean, this was at 16,000 feet, way,
2:35
way above the tree line, a
2:37
week from any kind of human habitation.
2:41
And here were hundreds, literally hundreds
2:43
of dead people. And
2:46
of course, he was really freaked out by
2:48
this and immediately reported it to the Indian
2:50
government. And the Indian government was
2:52
freaked out because this was during World War II
2:55
and immediately assumed it were the remains
2:58
of an invasion of Japanese
3:00
from the north. We've been caught
3:02
in bad weather and died because these
3:04
bodies, a lot of them were fairly well
3:06
preserved. So
3:09
the Indian government sent soldiers up
3:11
to investigate this mysterious lake.
3:15
They were turned back by bad weather a number
3:17
of times, but they finally made it
3:19
to the lake's edge. And
3:21
they quickly realized these were not Japanese soldiers,
3:23
that these bodies were very old. And
3:27
the only reason they were well preserved was
3:29
because of the cold and the altitude. An
3:32
effort in the mystery of Nubrind Lake began.
3:44
I'm Dylan Thuras, and this is
3:46
Atlas Obscura, a celebration of
3:48
the world's strange, incredible and
3:50
wondrous places. And today,
3:52
author Doug Preston brings us back into
3:54
the world of his latest book, The
3:56
Lost Tomb. It's a
3:58
collection of strange, mysteries,
4:00
weird science, and unidentified skeletons.
4:03
Sometimes all of the above.
4:06
Like in this story today. This
4:09
time we're headed up into the
4:11
Himalayas to Rupkhand. It's this
4:14
remote lake that is also
4:16
this collection of hundreds and hundreds of
4:18
human skeletons. They have
4:20
puzzled scientists and researchers for
4:22
years. Who were these people?
4:25
How did they die? And
4:27
how did they get here? Last
4:39
time, you know, we were
4:41
talking on the show. We
4:43
were talking about Dyatlov Pass and
4:45
this other kind of mystery of
4:47
these skiers who disappeared in the
4:49
Ural Mountains. And a
4:52
lot of your stories involve
4:54
skeletons. Skeletons make appearances in
4:56
many of the chapters
4:58
of The Lost Tomb. What
5:01
is it about skeletons that got
5:03
you? Why are they such a theme through
5:05
some of these stories? Well,
5:07
it may date back to morbid interest
5:11
in it when I was a child. But actually, it's
5:14
physical anthropology or
5:16
biological anthropology is a subject
5:18
that fascinates me. You
5:20
have a skeleton of a human being and
5:23
now with our tremendously
5:26
advanced technologies, we
5:28
can look at that skeleton. We
5:30
can tell where the
5:32
person was born, what
5:35
food they ate, and
5:37
how they might have died, what diseases
5:40
they had. Were they murdered
5:43
or did they die a natural death? Were
5:46
they cannibalized? These
5:48
are all questions that now skeletons
5:50
can tell us. And
5:53
these tools can help unravel mysteries. Sometimes
5:56
they can also just create more
5:58
and more mysteries. anthropologists
8:00
and others look into this, they
8:03
came across a fascinating story.
8:08
I was gonna say a myth, but it's not a
8:10
myth. This is real. Many,
8:13
many centuries ago, some
8:15
relatives of Nanda Devi, now this is
8:17
sort of a Hindu story, visited
8:21
her in her mountain kingdom, and
8:24
were very disrespectful to her. So
8:27
Nanda Devi in anger cursed
8:29
them and caused
8:31
their milk to turn sour and
8:33
maggots to infest their rice. And
8:36
so to try to appease
8:38
the goddess, this king came
8:41
back to her and said, we would like to
8:43
do a pilgrimage to you, to
8:46
honor you so that you'll
8:48
lift the curse on our kingdom. And
8:50
she said, fine. So
8:53
this king organized this great pilgrimage
8:55
to her through these mountains. But
9:00
he didn't do it in the right way. He
9:02
brought along a bunch of courtesans
9:05
and musicians so to entertain him during
9:07
the pilgrimage. And this
9:10
displeased Nanda Devi. And
9:12
so at a certain point on
9:14
the pilgrimage when they were traversing the
9:16
path of death above Rupkine
9:19
Lake, she attacked
9:21
them in a fury with a tremendous
9:24
storm of hail and
9:26
wind and ice and snow
9:29
and killed them all and
9:31
threw their bodies into Rupkine Lake as
9:34
a warning to those who
9:36
took the pilgrimage thought to indulge
9:38
themselves in earthly pleasures during
9:40
the pilgrimage. So that
9:42
was the myth. Well, it
9:45
turns out that is with many stories
9:47
like this that there's a huge kernel
9:49
of truth to this. In
9:52
2004, National Geographic did a documentary
9:54
on a team of anthropologists and
9:57
archeologists investigating the site. The
10:00
group included William Sachs, the guy who almost
10:02
died on his first trip to Rupkund. It
10:06
also included an Indian bioanthropologist
10:08
named Veena Mushrif Tripathi. She
10:11
will come back into the story a little later. So
10:15
they're looking at these skeletons, and they're
10:17
looking for telltale signs. First, what
10:20
killed them? They find some interesting sort
10:22
of evidence of what might
10:24
have been the cause of death. Yes,
10:27
fascinating evidence. They
10:29
carbon dated the flesh,
10:33
and they found that these were
10:35
very old remains, probably dating from
10:38
around 900 AD. Now, this
10:40
was when carbon dating was not quite as accurate
10:43
then as it is today. But
10:45
the most important thing they found was
10:47
on the skulls of
10:49
a number of the victims that they brought back, they
10:52
found right on the top of the skulls, round
10:56
fractures all about the same size,
10:59
right on top of the skulls, that
11:01
were severe enough that it would have caused
11:03
death. Now, these
11:05
were fractures that were not likely
11:08
to have been caused by a weapon, because when
11:10
you hit someone with a weapon, you're
11:12
hitting them on the side of the head, or the
11:15
back of the head. But you don't hit them directly
11:18
on the top of the head, usually.
11:20
That's weird. So
11:23
their conclusion was that
11:26
these people were caught
11:28
in a massive hailstorm,
11:32
and that they were killed by
11:34
giant hailstones. These
11:37
people who were on the
11:39
path of death, probably Pilgrim, Samantha
11:41
Davy, were caught in
11:43
a giant hailstorm. There's no shelter, there are
11:45
no trees, there are no rocks they can
11:47
hide under, and they were literally pummeled to
11:50
death by giant hailstones. And
11:52
there it is. There's the origin
11:54
of the myth. Right. You might think,
11:56
okay, what a crazy story. End of
11:58
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16:00
is not in teeth. Now,
16:02
everyone thinks, oh, it's in the teeth. That's
16:04
a very good place. But it
16:06
turns out that the cochlea of the
16:08
inner ear is even better. It's like
16:10
a little treasure chest, it's the hardest
16:12
bone in the body. It's a little
16:14
tiny, you know, sort of completely enclosed
16:16
area of the inner ear, which
16:19
has DNA. He gets,
16:22
you know, these skulls from
16:24
Roman burials, from England, from,
16:26
you know, India, from Africa,
16:29
wherever they come from, they
16:31
work out the cochlea, they
16:33
bring it into this lab, and
16:36
this lab is extreme, it has to be as
16:38
clean lab as you can find. Any
16:42
contamination, even one molecule of
16:45
human DNA from one of
16:47
the researchers can poison the
16:49
entire lab. So
16:52
to go into this laboratory, you have
16:54
to dress up in this clean room
16:56
suit. Everything has to be dressed up.
16:59
You have to go through an airlock. It's
17:01
absolutely crazy. And when they're
17:04
not in the lab, they turn
17:06
on these ferocious ultraviolet lights
17:09
that literally bathe the lab
17:11
in this extremely dangerous ultraviolet
17:13
radiation, which breaks up any
17:16
human DNA or any DNA that might
17:18
be lying around on a surface. So
17:20
you go into these labs, you're dressed up
17:22
like the Michelin man. So
17:27
I put on this suit, and I went into
17:29
the lab, and here's this woman under a hood
17:32
with a little cochlea that looks like a
17:34
tiny nub in a bone, and
17:37
she's drilling it out to get the DNA.
17:40
And it's the cochlea of a Roman soldier from
17:43
around zero
17:45
AD. Using all these
17:47
dental tools. Nearing, nearing, nearing, nearing, nearing
17:50
it up. Very cool. Okay, so they
17:52
do this. They do this same thing with
17:55
these skeletons from
17:57
Roopkin. What happened when they looked
17:59
into? now.
30:00
Well, not true. You know, there's still
30:02
beautiful mistoos out there. Douglas
30:11
Preston's latest nonfiction collection is
30:14
called The Lost Tomb. It is just
30:16
an amazing book full of
30:18
strange, mysterious skeletons, unexplained deaths.
30:21
At some point, he may
30:23
have solved and slash gotten
30:25
involved in the mystery of
30:27
a very famous Italian serial
30:30
killer. Anyway, go buy
30:32
The Lost Tomb. It's really, really
30:34
good. Our
31:03
podcast is a co-production of Atlas
31:05
Obscura and Stitcher Studios. This
31:08
episode was produced by Amanda
31:10
McGowan, Julia Russo. The production
31:12
team includes Doug Baldinger, Chris
31:15
Naka, Camille Stanley, Manolo Morales,
31:17
Baudelaire, Gabby Gladney, Johanna Mayer.
31:19
Our technical director is Casey
31:22
Holford. This episode was mixed
31:24
by Luce Fleming. If
31:26
you want to learn more, be sure
31:28
to visit atlasobscura.com. There's a link in
31:30
our episode description. And our theme
31:32
in end credit music is by Sam Tyndall.
31:35
I'm Dylan Thurris, wishing you all the wonder
31:37
in the world. I will
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see you next time. I
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