Iran: Yazd Tower of Silence aka Zoroastrian Dakhmeh

Yazd is known as the center of Zoroastrianism, a religious belief system that mostly predated Islam and Christianity. The Tower of Silence is not actually a tower but a round wall surrounding a flat area on top of a hill. This was used for excarnation – literally laying out the dead bodies to be slowly picked off by carrion consuming predator birds. Zoroostrians considered a dead body to be unclean, and therefore excarnation was a cleansing process