Wonders of nature!!! Truly ...God is great. Have you ever heard of a mysterious statue where no one knows the source of its creation ? Truly, this is unfathomable.
Nigeria is a beautiful country with good people and its blessed with various traditional sculpture but that of esie stone statue is unique and mysterious.
The stone statues of Esie was discovered under a palm tree in the groove by a hunter named Baragbon in Esie Kwara State, Nigeria. He discovered over 1,5OO stone images of people.
The statues weigh between 0.55 and 104 kilogrammes, and they stand between 14 and 20 centimetres in height. Some are male while others are female. Some are seated on stools even as others are on their knees. Some of them are garlanded with beads. Others are either playing some musical instruments, holding assorted weapons of war, including arrows and machetes. There are those posing as if in deep meditation.
These images were not carved. The communities believe that it was the handiwork of God. They are really the work of God. Efforts have been made by many people to put together the parts of some of the images that got broken. The whitemen also tried but it was impossible. I mean the hands, the legs and some other parts of the images broke off long ago, but nobody could fix them together. If they were carved by human beings, there is no way the materials used in carving them would not have been known for putting together of the broken parts.
Another interesting thing about the Esie statues is the different facial marks belonging to different peoples in other parts of Africa, signifying that the mysterious carvers must have had a contact with the various peoples long before the statues were made. That, along with the hairstyles on the statues, suggested some link between the Esie statues’ carvers and people from places like Benin, Nupe, Ghana, Egypt and Sudan, among others.
A museum has been created at the site for tourist attraction... It is a remarkable tourist centre.
References: Sun news publishing.,2009.