The Skeletons at the Lake

December 8, 2020 11:38 AM

In a story bringing together archaeology, anthropology, genomics, history, hailstorms, and religion, Douglas Preston investigates the multiple mass-death events at Roopkund lake in the Himalayas, and the many differing and inconclusive theories about what happened there several centuries ago (The New Yorker)

Note: This story mentions Harvard geneticist David Reich, whose work has been criticised and covered on Metafilter previously (1, 2) and within the story itself.

posted by adrianhon (17 comments total)

Huh!
posted by hypnogogue at 1:02 PM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

In the decades since Sax first visited, the lake had become a popular destination in the trekking community and the site was being ruined. Bones had been stolen; others had been rearranged in fanciful patterns or piled in cairns.

Genuinely do not understand why anyone would steal bones from a site of mysterious mass death. Multiple mysterious mass deaths. Like, sure, probably all these people died of some tragic but fairly banal misfortune like a terrible hailstorm or blizzard or rockslide and exposure or whatever, but surely, surely one's natural human impulse to construct a narrative can construct no good, non-spooky narrative out of this. Plus, it's on a pilgrimage route! Human remains are not souvenirs! That's how you get cursed!

Anyway, interesting that the most compelling mystery here has ended up being how the apparently Mediterranean group of remains ended up there, and not necessarily how they all died. Hopefully some future archaeological expedition can shed more light on the mystery.
posted by yasaman at 1:46 PM on December 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

That article is full of amazing things relevant to a far wider context than the vicinity of Roopkund lake:

In Iberia during this time [2000-2500 years ago] , the local type of Y chromosome was replaced by an entirely different type. Given that the Y chromosome, found only in males, is passed down from father to son, this means that the local male line in Iberia was essentially extinguished. It is likely that the newcomers perpetrated a large-scale killing of local men, boys, and possibly male infants. Any local males remaining must have been subjugated in a way that prevented them from fathering children, or were so strongly disfavored in mate selection over time that their genetic contribution was nullified. The full genetic sequencing, however, indicated that about sixty per cent of the lineage of the local population was passed on, which shows that women were not killed but almost certainly subjected to widespread sexual coercion, and perhaps even mass rape.

We can get a sense of this reign of terror by thinking about what took place when the descendants of those ancient Iberians sailed to the New World, events for which we have ample historical records. The Spanish conquest of the Americas produced human suffering on a grotesque scale—war, mass murder, rape, slavery, genocide, starvation, and pandemic disease. Genetically, as Reich noted, the outcome was very similar: in Central and South America, large amounts of European DNA mixed into the local population, almost all of it coming from European males. The same Y-chromosome turnover is also found in Americans of African descent. On average, a Black person in America has an ancestry that is around eighty per cent African and twenty per cent European. But about eighty per cent of that European ancestry is inherited from white males—genetic testimony to the widespread rape and sexual coercion of female slaves by slaveowners.

In the Iberian study, the predominant Y chromosome seems to have originated with a group called the Yamnaya, who arose about five thousand years ago, in the steppes north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. By adopting the wheel and the horse, they became powerful and fearsome nomads, expanding westward into Europe as well as east- and southward into India. They spoke proto-Indo-European languages, from which most of the languages of Europe and many South Asian languages now spring. Archeologists have long known about the spread of the Yamnaya, but almost nothing in the archeological record showed the brutality of their takeover. “This is an example of the power of ancient DNA to reveal cultural events,” Reich told me.

It also shows how DNA evidence can upset established archeological theories and bring rejected ones back into contention. The idea that Indo-European languages emanated from the Yamnaya homeland was established in 1956, by the Lithuanian-American archeologist Marija Gimbutas. Her view, known as the Kurgan hypothesis—named for the distinctive burial mounds that spread west across Europe—is now the most widely accepted theory about Indo-European linguistic origins. But, where many archeologists envisaged a gradual process of cultural diffusion, Gimbutas saw “continuous waves of expansion or raids.” As her career progressed, her ideas became more controversial. In Europe previously, Gimbutas hypothesized, men and women held relatively equal places in a peaceful, female-centered, goddess-worshipping society—as evidenced by the famous fertility figurines of the time. She believed that the nomads from the Caspian steppes imposed a male-dominated warrior culture of violence, sexual inequality, and social stratification, in which women were subservient to men and a small number of élite males accumulated most of the wealth and power.

The DNA from the Iberian skeletons can’t tell us what kind of culture the Yamnaya replaced, but it does much to corroborate Gimbutas’s sense that the descendants of the Yamnaya caused much greater disruption than other archeologists believed. Even today, the Y chromosomes of almost all men of Western European ancestry have a high percentage of Yamnaya-derived genes, suggesting that violent conquest may have been widespread.

Not very comfortable reading, I must say.
posted by jamjam at 1:51 PM on December 8, 2020 [13 favorites]

The regwall on this seems to be completely dysfunctional in Firefox, but the ol' Wayback Machine workaround still works.
posted by Not A Thing at 6:21 PM on December 8, 2020

Correction: No, it doesn't. How are people even reading this?
posted by Not A Thing at 6:22 PM on December 8, 2020

How are people even reading this?

Based on the paucity of comments: they're not!
posted by Anonymous at 7:33 PM on December 8, 2020

Not a Thing, try this wayback link.
posted by Iris Gambol at 7:41 PM on December 8, 2020

I could read the full article in an incognito window in Chrome. Very interesting stuff.
posted by Lesium at 8:04 PM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

The Indo-European Pale Penis People Invasion Hypothesis is viable again? Oh, joy! Everything old is new again I suppose.

As far as the group of Cretan-related bodies goes maybe they were Orthodox missionaries. Priests, monks, and nuns would explain the lack of both children and obvious wealth. With what seems like a a dig-season of at most a couple of weeks there might be enough information in ten or twenty years to make an informed guess.

[note: I use Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, and Disconnect on Firefox and never seem to have problems with the New Yorker paywall. I did recently subscribe but that was long after I realized I had the work around. You may also want to selectively clear out your cookies using, "about:preferences#privacy," in the address bar.]
posted by Ignorantsavage at 8:49 PM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

The Indo-European Pale Penis People Invasion Hypothesis is viable again?


I've read the article, but have no further background in the matter... can you elaborate what that hypothesis is, and why you seem to consider it ridiculously outdated? Genuinely interested.
posted by uncle harold at 9:36 PM on December 8, 2020

The article mentions part of it. Marija Gimbutas originated the Kurgan hypothesis which was not a huge issue. But it segued with Margaret Murray's Witch-cult hypothesis and Second-wave feminism in such a way that there was an awful lot of ardent belief in the idea that Old Europe (i.e. pre-Proto-Indo-European Europe) was a peaceful, equitable matriarchy until the pale penis people came with their violence and their patriarchy. They destroyed the matriarchal Goddess-worshippers' civilization and drove the Mother Goddess cult underground. The people referred to as the Yamnaya in the article would have been part of the destroyers.

Gimbutas' later books The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974), The Language of the Goddess (1989), The Civilization of the Goddess (1991) are fascinating reading in the same way that conspiracy theories can make fascinating reading. Her interpretations and conclusions are well outside of what the material findings could justify. It did however fuel a number of individuals who did advocate for a, "return," to matriarchal rule. Some of them were strident about it and that could make discussion difficult. To critique the matriarchal hypothesis was seen by some as an act of patriarchal oppression. Patriarchal oppression is not something that I question, but trying to argue beyond the reach of the evidence for an ideological purpose always seems to result in bad things from my perspective. It also alienated a lot of professionals and I believe helped to make the idea unpalatable because of the associations that it had formed.

Over the last couple of decades the movement to a gradual acculturation hypothesis of some sort had been the major trend. But Indo-European Studies is just going to have to take awhile to accommodate going back to viable invasion theories.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 12:02 AM on December 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

Ignorantsavage, thank you for the cogent summary, and your phrase "The Indo-European Pale Penis People Invasion Hypothesis" made me laugh SO MUCH.

On a related question, I actually asked about the Gimbutas hypothesis on Ask Metafilter here a few years ago. After it has been so thoroughly and allegedly "discredited," apparently... it has some basis in fact!? Wow! I'm... not sure how to feel about that.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 3:47 AM on December 9, 2020

Ignorantsavage, the links in your first paragraph seem munged somehow..
posted by runcifex at 4:08 AM on December 9, 2020

Thanks for the background info, Ignorantsavage!
posted by uncle harold at 6:01 AM on December 9, 2020

"strident," lol 5evah.

More on Dr. Gimbutas, "an archaeologist by profession and a mythologist by vocation." Speaking of mythology, her colleague and admirer Joseph Campbell provided the foreword to the '89 edition of The Language of the Goddess. The Marija Gimbutas Collection (finding aid) and the Joseph Campbell Collection (finding aid) at the OPUS Archives.

Virtual exhibit, opening next month: January 23, 2021 marks the centennial of Lithuanian-American archeologist, author, and UCLA Professor Emeritus Marija Gimbutas’ birthdate, an occasion UNESCO has designated among its milestone anniversary commemorations for the year, posthumously recognizing eminent personalities who have “helped shape the civilization we share by contributing to the mutual enrichment of cultures for universal understanding and peace.” In celebration of this honor, OPUS presents the year-long exhibit, Marija Gimbutas: Archeomythology of a Goddess, featuring a variety of items from OPUS’ collection illuminating the resilient and inspired life and equally distinguished and controversial work of the self-designated “archeomythologist” (1921-1994).

Wikipedia entry; 1994 obituary at The Independent.

2017 Marija Gimbutas Memorial Lecture, presented by "Colin Renfrew, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Formerly Disney Professor of Archaeology and Director of the McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge" -- and notable Gimbutas colleague and critic, fond of pitting his Anatolian hypothesis against her Kurgan hypothesis.
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:59 PM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

In fairness I did not originate the phrase. The first time I heard it was years ago. It was one of several people in the reconstructionist pagan community in the 1990's. The alliteration really makes it stick.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 11:24 PM on December 9, 2020

Following on the 2500 BCE Iberia derail, from this Harvard Medical School article (Stephanie Dutch, 2019-03-14) it seems that there is some reason for skepticism of the violent-invasion hypothesis:

What could have instigated such a dramatic turnover is not yet clear.

“It would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that Iberian men were killed or forcibly displaced," said [postdoctoral fellow Iñigo] Olalde, "as the archaeological record gives no clear evidence of a burst of violence in this period."

One alternative possibility is that local Iberian women preferred the central European newcomers in a context of “strong social stratification,” said [co-senior author Carles] Lalueza-Fox.

Something is definitely missing from the picture here, but it doesn't seem clear yet what that might be.
posted by Not A Thing at 7:14 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]