Friday, May 31, 2013

Killed by Hail

In 1942, British soldiers discovered the skeletons of 200 people in a frozen lake in northern India. At the time, it was believed that the skeletons were Japanese soldiers. The skeletons actually date from about 850 A.D. And scientists now think that they were killed by hail stones.

A 2004 expedition to the site concluded the group was killed by cricket ball-sized hailstones during a sudden storm.
 
This, they decided, was the only way to explain why the skulls and shoulder bones of the dead had all been hit by rounded objects directly from above. 
As there was nowhere to shelter in the valley, the group was at the mercy of the storm.

Their bodies lay in the lake, which regularly freezes, for the next 1,200 years until their wartime discovery.

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