A PodCast about Unexplainable

Vox has a very cool podcast called "Unexplainable". The preview episode I listened to talks about 2 items. 

The first (I listened to) dove into two topics. The first was "Skeleton Lake". It is all about Roopkund lake 16,000+ feet up in the Himalayas. It is normally ice covered, but occasionally thaws in the summer.

The lake is "famous" as it is super high, super cold and they have found a bunch of dead bodies up there, where no one lives at all. As in hundreds. Found in 1942, no one knew who they were. There is an old story of a pilgramage which I will copy from wikipedia.

Local legend says that the King of Kanauj, Raja Jasdhaval, with his pregnant wife, Rani Balampa, their servants, a dance troupe and others went on a pilgrimage to Nanda Devi shrine, and the group faced a storm with large hailstones, from which the entire party perished near Roopkund Lake.^[9][10]

Legends say they were killed by the god Nanda Devi, because they made their pilgrimage not in penance, but with harems, dancing girls and entertainment. Nanda Devi rained destruction on them. The dead bodies do have huge skull crushing head wounds. And it seems there are freak hailstorms up there that might cause head trauma. So there is truth in the legend.

Now, when carbon dating was first discovered in the late 1950s, they dated them back over 1,000 years. So the "story" may have a kernel of truth.

Then in 2019, they did more work and found the weirdest thang! There are essentially 2 groups. The DNA-Indians from over 1,000 years ago. AND a group of about 100 people who were genetically Greek or from Crete who died in the lat 1700s. Which makes no sense. And, in fact, caused everyone to reevaluate, regather bones, check for compromised artifacts - but now. The Greeks seemd real.

They have some tests now to see what they ate (the podcast explains how, but just believe me) and these people seemed to have eaten a very Mediterranean diet, which is very different from an Indian diet.

So, how did these Greeks (and 1 Cambodian) get to this lake? Where they taking the spiritual pilgrimage to the Indian Goddess Nanda Devi (as the Indians probably were)? It is fascinating.

The second topic was about how ancient DNA testing has completely upended how we think of the mankind evolutionary tree. I'll write more on that later.