Oh look, the TinEye add on in Firefox brought me to this site.

And this is the translated version (thanks to the Google Translate add on)

The Zoroastrian Towers of Silence November 2, 2010 - 11:35 pm

NOTICE: This article contains images of corpses. If you are a sensitive and impressionable, avoid reading the rest of this entry .

The Towers of Silence (also known as dakhma or dokhma) are funerary monuments of the Zoroastrian religion. They are used for the decomposition of bodies by the action of sun and rain, in addition to its predation on account of vultures.

Its structure is circular and has a terrace for the exhibition of bodies and a central ossuary, located on a lower level. The terrace is divided into three concentric circles: the exterior to house men, intermediate for women, and indoor children. It includes a radial gutter allow the evacuation of body fluids and rain to the central ossuary. The Zoroastrian Towers of SilenceThis religion considers the human body as an impurity, which has entered the evil spirit Ahriman, whose purpose is the destruction of the order divine. To prevent contamination of the deceased's body one of the Seven Creations, the Zoroastrian code of laws established a strict protocol to get rid of the remains of the safest manner possible.

As part of this protocol, the body must be exposed to some of these towers. Once this is devoured by vultures and bleached by the sun, the remains were deposited in the charnel house that, with the help of lime, to disintegrate completely. The Zoroastrian Towers of SilenceHere is the aerial view of an ancient tower on the outskirts of Yazd , Iran. Re currently on disuse. For health reasons, in the seventies of last century was banned in that country practicing Zoroastrian funeral rites. The Zoroastrian Towers of SilenceIn Malabar Hill in Bombay, India, are still in use some of these towers. The picture below dates from around 1880. Note the row of vultures perched on the edge of the tower. These other, which show the interior of a tower, are of late 90. To then already considered a serious problem the disappearance of the vultures to cause of development urbanistic of Bombay. The absence of scavengers has increased enormously the process of decomposition of bodies, to the extent that the Zoroastrians have been forced to use, without much success, artificial alternatives such as solar concentrators.