In his book “Necropolis of Gonur” (Kapon Pub. 2007) Sariniadi, a member of the Russian Science Academy, portrayed the Zoroastrian roots of the necropolis: “Funeral rites are believed to be the most conservative and traditional ones. It is common knowledge that the first world religion, Zoroastrianism, could appear only on the foundation of ‘Iranian paganism.’ The funeral rites of the Gonur necropolis demonstrate the origin of funeral traditions that later in a reformed way were included in Zoroastrianism. Linguists long ago have come to the conclusion that Zoroastrianism was based on a complex system of funeral rites, the centralidea of which was to save sacred Nature (first of all the earth) from profanation by decomposed corpses. The funeral customs revealed at the Gonur necropolis fully correspond to the known Zoroastrian rites. There, the ‘unclean’ dead body was moved away from the living ones, then it was ‘cleaned’ to avoid ‘profanation’ and to restore the state of ‘ritual cleanness.’ (pg. 160).