Madagascar archaeologists have found a strange ruin in the island’s south which could indicate the place was used by a mixed Zoroastrian community at 1,000 years ago when opening up ancient Indian ocean trade routes.
Uncovering the Teniky Site
The Teniky site is located in Isalo National Park, Madagascar, and although it was considered an enigma for more than a century at the site that before long is disclosing its privileged catacombs. First discovered in the 1940s by French naturalists, the immense stone terraces, rock cut chambers and hundreds of carved stone niches give you something to rest your eyes on.
Prof Dr Schreurs and his team have even excavated part of the nativ quarry itself, as its history – like its archaeological potential – is fascinating. Its excavations have yielded a trove of artefacts, including ceramics from Southeast Asia and China that suggest the place was tied into an Indian Ocean trading network in the 10th to 12th centuries.
Because of the form, unlike other potential harbours in Madagascar or along with coastlines at East Africa, it is proposed that a structure hosted Parsi-like. The likelihood that the site could go back to more ancient Zoroastrian funerals in this period is slightly supported by rock cut niches surrounding the grave areas, such as those used for burial during one of two parallel parts of Zoroastrian religious ceremonies.
Connections with Zoroastrians
The researchers suspect the area may have been home to a Zoroastrian community due to architectural features at the Teniky site, along with other findings.
Followers of the ancient Iranian religion, Zoroastrianism, are known for their practice of constructing raised structures called ‘dakhmas’ to deposit corpses to be consumed by scavenger birds – a practice that is still in use currently. Those bones were then scooped up and put into more of the rounded vaults, called astodans.
The similarity of the rock-cut niches and chambers in Teniky site to that of Zoroastrian burial arrangement suggests a relation. In fact, the location of the site in proximity to Indian Ocean trade routes is compatible with historical accounts that document extensive Zoroastrian merchant and maritime activities during Antonine to early Islamic times—Sassanid period.
Whilst the researchers stress their interpretation is unofficial, evidence they have thus far collected suggests the Teniky site may have been built by Zoroastrian people who arrived in Madagascar long ago.
Conclusion
Teniky represents a portal to Madagascar’s long-overlooked prehistory, providing us a glimpse into one moment of her tale and peering into the multitude conversations she must have had with the Indian Ocean world. The history of Madagascar further complicates the conventional story of XYZ as an island unto itself, untouched by outside cultures, and therefore also means that the importance of the site is at best only partially grounded in an indigenous Zoroastrian tradition.
Further research of the Two Leaves site at Teniky will no doubt solve this mystery, and it adds yet another chapter to the long history of Madagascar.
