Among the many sandstone hills and boulders of Madagascar’s Isalo Nationwide Park, the curious archaeological website of Teniky has puzzled researchers for many years.
These rock-cut niches, as soon as believed to be a makeshift shelter for shipwrecked Portuguese sailors, have now been reinterpreted as a type of Persian Plymouth Rock, based by non secular settlers seeking to apply their faith in peace.
Daring theories require sturdy proof, and a devoted Swiss staff working on the Teniky website has turned up at the very least sufficient to dismantle the shipwrecked sailors idea.
Zoroastrianism was the religion of the early Persian Empire. Established by the Historical Iranian prophet Zarathustra, it’s a dualistic theology that acknowledges each the inventive and harmful forces within the universe and holds hearth as a sacred image. With worshippers in Iran, Azerbaijan, and India, it survives as one of many oldest formalized faiths.
Guido Schreurs, an archaeologist at Switzerland’s College of Bern, has visited the positioning a number of occasions, and was the primary to suggest that the enigmatic rock-cut niches bear an uncanny similarity to these utilized in Classical Persia as burial coffers for the lifeless, in keeping with the Zoroastrian custom.
For starters, the niches are utterly not like something present in Malagasy or East African antiquity, and additional, the earliest carbon-dated natural stays on the Teniky website point out habitation as early as ten centuries in the past, lengthy earlier than the Portuguese established the path to India.
The scope of the positioning can also be considerably better than one would anticipate misplaced sailors requiring short-term shelter would construct. The full space of the positioning’s architectural options and masonry is about 300,000 sq. ft, and consists of synthetic terraces, rock-cut niches within the steep cliffs, and a rock shelter delimited by partitions consisting of carved sandstone blocks.
Complicating the matter additional, pottery shards discovered at Teniky have their origin in Southeast Asia and China suggesting that whoever inhabited Teniky would have had contact with the maritime commerce routes that linked Africa and West Asia to the Orient.
However Teniky sits about as removed from the ocean because it’s potential to be on the island.
There’s no proof of agriculture, and no human stays. It’s no surprise the title of the analysis paper printed by Schreuer primarily based on his years of labor is “Enigmatic structure at an archaeological website in southern Madagascar.”
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Schreuer, in keeping with Nationwide Geographic, by no means purchased the Portuguese speculation. His analysis tentatively proposes that Teniky was really inhabited by a colony of Zoroastrians who departed Iran within the centuries following its conversion to Islam.
By the tenth century when Teniky was based, the geographical understanding of Eurasia and Africa all through the Arab world was unparalleled, and it included data of Madagascar—recognized then because the semi-mythical island of Wakwak.
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In Zoroastrianism, it’s believed that burying the lifeless is a defilement of the Earth. As an alternative, the citizenry would place their deceased in open-air niches lower into the partitions of a spiritual compound generally known as a necropolis.
Schreuer reveals how practically equivalent the stone slicing is between Persian necropoli within the Fars Province of Iran and the rock-cut niches of Teniky. The issue is that no bones have been discovered at Teniky, although Schreurer suggests it could possibly be as a result of they had been taken by Malagasy folks for presumably non secular functions.
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Then, there’s the query of why the positioning was deserted. Sections of the sandstone partitions are in-built a approach that means a defensive stance. Had been the settlers there underneath assault?
“However towards whom?” Schreuer asks. Happily for us, Schreuer and his 16-strong staff are making ready for one more analysis journey to Teniky in 2025, when perhaps a few of these intriguing questions will likely be answered.
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