P
ete Athans adjusted his climbing harness to
hold himself in place. He had just scrambled up a 6-meter rock face. Now he was dangling before a wall of stone. He was face-to-face with something interesting. With gloved hands, he gently chipped away
at the rubble in front of him. Something was sticking out of the rock. It was a human skull. As he worked, dirt spilled from the eye cavities. At last, the skull was free. Athans held it in his
hand. He was almost certainly the first person to touch this skull in 1,500 years. Carefully, he placed it in a padded bag and lowered it by rope to three scientists waiting below. Athans is a mountaineer and the leader of a
team of archaeologists. Te team had come to this remote part of Nepal, in South Asia, to try to solve one of the world’s great archaeological mysteries.
A Curious Find Te archeologists immediately unwrapped the skull to examine it. Tey determined that the skull had belonged to a young man. Two large teeth would give clues to his diet and health. One scientist noticed three healed fractures,
or breaks, on the skull and one on the right jaw. “Signs of violence,” she said. “Or maybe he was kicked by a horse?” But more intriguing than the skull itself was
where it was found. Te rock Athans scaled sat directly below a soaring cliff. Toward the top of the cliff were several small caves. Tese caves had been dug into the rock by people long ago.
12 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER
Cliff Caves of the Dead Erosion had caused the cliff ’s face to collapse. Tis leſt the entire cave exposed, creating a cutaway view. It had also revealed the skull. Now the same question was on everyone’s mind. What else was up there? In this dusty, windy place, there are many
caves. Each cave was made by humans. Some caves sit by themselves. Each one is a single, open mouth on a vast cliff face. Others are in groups, sometimes stacked eight or nine stories high. Some caves were dug directly into cliffs.
Others were tunneled from above. Tere may be as many as 10,000 caves in this area. Many are thousands of years old. No one knows who dug them. Or why. Or
even how people climbed into them. Did they use ropes? Had they carved steps in the cliff face? Nearly all evidence is gone. Seven hundred years ago, this place was
bustling. It was on an important trade route between the salt deposits of Tibet in the north and cities in the south. Salt was then one of the world’s most valuable commodities. Caravans of horses and other animals moved across the region’s rugged trails, carting loads of salt. Later, cheaper salt became available from India. Soon the region was all but forgotten. Te area wasn’t rediscovered until the mid-1990s. A team of archaeologists began peeking into some of the more accessible caves. Tey found skeletons that were at least 2,000 years old. Each was highly decorated. Tey
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