A view of Abi Srinjamo Bao from below.
| Photo Credit: Devers 2015
Who were the people who left their dead in a cave 4,000 m above a Ladakhi village — and why does almost nobody alive carry their particular mix of ancestries?
A study published in Science Advances on Friday has reported genome-wide data from ten individuals recovered from Old Lady Spider Cave, or Abi Srinjamo Bao, in Kargil district. Radiocarbon dating placed them at roughly 1,500 years before the present.
Their ancestry splits almost exactly down the middle: one half best proxied by present-day North Indians while the others are genetically closer to ancient Tibetans. Chromosome segments shortened by 50 generations of recombination dated that union to about 2,800 years ago — a century before the rise of the Tibetan Empire.
Published – July 25, 2026 08:45 am IST
