Zoroastrian rock settlement reportedly found in Madagascar

January 9, 2025

The carved rock niches and stone walls of the mysterious Teniky archaeological site in Madagascar have long puzzled scientists. An early theory held that shipwrecked Portuguese sailors were the original architects in the 1500s.

But a new study suggests that Zoroastrian exiles from Persia constructed the site centuries earlier, perhaps hoping to create a remote paradise on this almost mythical island.

The niches are completely unlike anything else found on Madagascar or in East Africa. But they are remarkably similar to burial niches at Zoroastrian archaeological sites in Iran.

“We tentatively interpret the niches at Teniky as belonging to a former necropolis, where dead corpses were exposed or where the dried bones were stored,” says geologist Guido Schreurs of Switzerland’s University of Bern who lead the study published in Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa.

Satellite photographs show the remote archaeological site, also called Tenika, is much larger than suspected, and recent expeditions there have discovered more carved niches, ritual locations and stone terraces hidden in the surrounding landscape.