People have been practicing various funeral rites for thousands of years, using nature to transform the remains. In Tibet, birds of prey play an important role in the tradition of “heavenly funeral” – the bodies of the deceased are raised to the mountains, where they are absorbed by birds. In other regions, the Zoroastrians erected the “troops of silence” – special designs in which the remains left for a tear to be divorced by the feathered scaders.
This tradition is considered cleansing the body: according to ideas, without such a rite, the corpse can be desecrated by demons or evil spirits. To avoid this, the dead were brought to the “dahms” (towers of silence), where they were exposed to elements and birds of prey.
At first glance, the process may seem long, but the studies in Texas on the anthropological base showed that the vultures are able to almost completely clear the remains in five hours. For comparison, this takes up to five years in the coffin. Thus, heavenly funerals and dakhma are deprived of many environmental problems of modern burials.
Modern funeral practices, such as burial in tombs, led to the occupation of about half a million Hectars of the Earth in the United States, and the production of coffins requires about 2 million hectares of forest annually. In addition, on each burial using embalming the soil, up to 800,000 gallons of embalming liquid, which over time pollutes the earth.
A few decades ago, one could meet the active “tower of silence” in different countries. According to the Guardian , this rite has at least 3,000 years. For Orthodox Zoroastrians, the idea of burial in the ground was so unacceptable that it was considered a punishment for sinners, as it prevented the soul from going up to heaven.
Today, Zoroastrian communities (their representatives are known as Parss) still exist, but the number of dahms has decreased, since this rite is prohibited in some countries. Even where it is resolved, the problem is aggravated due to the reduction of the vulture population.
“Due to the growth of the cities of Dahma, which was previously on the outskirts of Karachi, is now surrounded by dense residential quarters, and the vultures have not appeared here for 25 years,” notes Encyclopedia Iranik . Under the scorching sun, the bodies quickly dry out, but the skin remains untouched, filling the dahma, whose pit does not cope with so many remains.
This rite can shock the inhabitants of the West, where the traditional burial is considered the norm, but for the planet it is more profitable: the flesh feeds birds, helping the soul go to another world. In a world where the population exceeded 8 billion, it may be worth paying attention to more environmentally friendly practices, such as composting.