According to Zoroastrian tradition, the dead are disposed of on what are called Towers of Silence. The body is placed on top of the tower, from where scavengers pick off the flesh and other stuff while the sun bleaches the bones. After the corpse is reduced to plain bones, they are pushed off the top into the center of the Tower, which is empty. I guess the Tower is like a doughnut of sorts, with a shaft or well-like thing in the middle.
My question is: how environmentally-friendly, cost-friendly, practical, and useful is this method?
Sounds like the ultimate in recycling. Morbid to me, but I’m not Zoroastrian and never grew up in that culture. If they try doing it to anyone in my family, we’d have a problem. But I put it on my list of concerns right next to Jews not eating pork.
Actually, one level below. Jews not eating pork gives me the benefit of more bacon and sausage available.
One question though. At what point are the remains pushed in the “pit”? It can’t be nothing but bone as they would fall apart. To get the whole thing in there would have to be some sort of organic material left to hold it all together for the final plunge.
I read about this years ago and it is so interesting.
One of the problems of this method, which is rather morbidly cool in a bizarre way, is that the scavengers ( Vultures and such) have a tendancy to pick up a peice of something to eat and fly off with it. And it occasionally lands on some unsuspecting person’s balcony.
And their has been a problem with the vultures/birds of prey, dying off from some disease ( can’t remember if it is bird or human) and the scavenger numbers have been reduced causing a backlog of bodies.
In light of all the airborne diseases and whatnot, I think this compost pile of human remains is probably just a petri dish experiment of doom waiting to happen. Especially in the sub-tropical conditions of India.
I like the idea, provided it doesn’t smell up the neighborhood.
The one mentioned in 1001 Arabian Nights always appealed to me: piling the dead in caves. Somehow seems a lot more practical than taking up usable land.
I seem to remember some members of the Parsi community in Bombay talking about altering the Tower of Silence method… the reason was that the vultures seemed to be dying out - or at least showing up in lesser numbers. They were concerned about desease picked up from humans. I’ll speak to some of my Parsi friends - if there’s anything to report back, I will…
It’s in one of Sinbad’s voyages, for anyone interested. He was thrown down to die and had to kill and eat the food of every new person thrown down until he could escape.
I don’t think it will appear in the Disney version.
