Russian legends tell of a breed of homonids who were excellent herders, tough as (the yet to be invented) nails and most importantly made a sport of fighting Griffins for caches of gold.

It now appears that we have biological proof of these legendary wild men.

Siberia’s Denisova cave held the pinky bone of an unknown early human species, a genetics team reported in March. The Naturejournal study, led by Johannes Krause of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, offered no answer for what happened to this “archaic” human species, more than one million years old and living near their human and Neanderthal cousins as recently as 30,000 years ago.

But at least one scholar has an intriguing answer: “The discovery of material evidence of a distinct hominin (human) lineage in Central Asia as recently as 30,000 years ago does not come as a surprise to those who have looked at the historical and anecdotal evidence of ‘wild people’ inhabiting the region,” wrote folklorist Michael Heaney of the United Kingdom’s Bodleian Library Oxford, in a letter to The Times of London.

So it’s just a matter of finding some Griffin bones. But now that we have a pinky bone of a wild man, we just have to look for the foot he buried in the winged lion’s butt.

[USA Today]

If Skeleton Lake is a spooky name, the story behind it is downright terrifying.

The short prologue, a British officer in 1942 happened upon roughly 300 skeletons surrounding a lake in Roopkund, India. But how could this many people seemingly all die at around the same time?

All the bodies had died in a similar way, from blows to the head. However, the short deep cracks in the skulls appeared to be the result not of weapons but of something rounded. The bodies also only had wounds on their heads, and shoulders as if the blows had all come from directly above…

Among Himalayan women there is an ancient and traditional folk song. The lyrics describe a goddess “so enraged at outsiders who defiled her mountain sanctuary that she rained death upon them by flinging hailstones “hard as iron.”

After much research and consideration the 2004 expedition came to the same conclusion. All 300 people died from a sudden and severe hailstorm. Trapped in the valley with nowhere to hide or seek shelter, the cricket ball sized hailstones “hard as iron” came by the thousands and killed the travelers in a sudden and bizarre death. The bodies would lay there for some 1200 years before the astonishing tale of what happened to them would be revealed to the world.

Insane.

[Atlas Obscura]