ATDDTA (8) Towers of Silence (209:26)

[Keith]

While I can find no references to hanging corpses on telegraph poles  
or placing them atop adobe brick towers (perhaps an allusion to the  
towered Mormon temples http://tinyurl.com/2ture6 ) in turn-of-the- 
century Utah, the Persian "Towers of Silence" serve the stated purpose:

"Zoroastrians consider a dead body - in addition to cut hair and nail- 
parings - to be nasu, unclean. According to tradition, the purpose of  
exposure is to preclude the pollution of earth or fire (see Zam and  
Atar respectively). Corpses are therefore placed atop a tower and so  
exposed to the sun and to birds of prey. Bodies are arranged in three  
rings: men around the outside, women in the second circle, and  
children in the innermost ring. The ritual precinct may only be  
entered by a special class of pallbearers. Once the bones have been  
bleached by the sun and wind, which can take as long as a year, they  
are collected in an ossuary pit at the center of the tower and/or are  
eventually washed out to sea."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence