Does the ghost of a conflict lie at the bottom of a Tibetan lake?

Chinese researchers say sediment samples may show signs of a battle with the British army in the area more than a century ago

‘Unusual’ spikes in the presence of certain metals may point the use of modern weapons but more study needed, they say

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Signs of conflict on the Tibetan Plateau more than a century ago could lie lake sediment samples, Chinese researchers say. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 10:00am, 2 Aug 2020Updated: 10:50pm, 2 Aug 2020

Wang Xiaoping was not looking for signs of a bloody conflict when she and her colleagues examined sediment samples from a lake in southern Tibet.

Qiangyong lake is formed by glacier meltwater and the researchers were looking at the sediment to see how rapidly the glacier was shrinking because of global warming.

But two spikes in the presence of metals in two sample sections dating to the 1880s and 1900s caught their attention.

The sediments indicated that various metals, including chromium, nickel and zinc, had been released into the atmosphere at the time, fell on the glacier and eventually ended up on the bottom of the lake.

“This is quite unusual,” said Wang, a researcher with the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Levels of the metals in the other parts of the samples were consistently low and the researchers were unable to find similar increases in the same periods in cores taken in other parts of the world.

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