Photos by Narges Tankberis, ISNA

Payvand.com - Village of Makhounik has been nicknamed as the Lilliput of Iran and the land of tiny people. This is due to short height and stature of the inhabitants of this village. 

Lilliput and Blefuscu are two fictional island nations that appear in the first part of the 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The two islands are neighbors in the South Indian Ocean, separated by a channel eight hundred yards wide. Both are inhabited by tiny people who are "not six inches high", i.e., about one-twelfth the height of ordinary human beings.

Makhounik is located about 142 kilometers from the city of Birjand in Iran's South Khorasan province. The village is only 1/2 hour away from Afghanistan border.

The houses in Makhounik have a special geometrical shape. Also, the customs of the inhabitants, which seem to belong to the distant past, have remained intact to this day. This includes judicial, inheritance and agricultural practices and the kind of games they play at the village.

The residents of Makhounik have Afghan origins who seem to have migrated to this village about three or four centuries ago.

Consanguineous marriage among the village people and nutritional habits have been contributing factors to keeping the residents short. However, in recent years, with nutritional changes and using iron supplements, improvements are being seen in the new generation.

Up until 50 years ago, Makhounik's residents didn't drink tea. They also didn't hunt and didn't eat meat at all; they still don't smoke. This is all because they viewed these things as sin. Arrival of TV in the village was seen as entry of Satan to the village, and till few years ago the residents called TV Satan. For this reason they never allowed children to sit in front of TV fearing spells would be put on them.

... Payvand News - 11/30/09 ... --