?This area with 8 to 12 thousand histories that houses are built in the heart of mountains; its significance lies in the fact that the whole village is that unlike other villages with the same architecture, this village is still alive and inhabited. In 2015, It was registered on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.
Maymand is a self-contained, semi-arid area at the end of a valley at the southern extremity of Iran’s central mountains. The villagers are semi-nomadic agro-pastoralist. They raise their animals on mountain pastures, living in temporary settlements in spring and autumn. During the winter months, they live lower down the valley in cave dwellings carved out the soft rock (kamar), an unusual form of housing in a dry, desert environment. There are two theories regarding the origin of this village. Some believe it was made around 700-800 B.C. by a group of Arian tribe or Median who had religious purposes in mind. Worshipers of Mithra believed in the sanctity of sun and mountain and began to make their houses in the rocks. Some others believe that the village dates back to the second or third century A.D. when a group of nomadic tribes decides to use the mountain and build a village.
