By Tim Binnall
A curious and rather sizeable sculpture of a face was recently unearthed on a farm in North Carolina and experts are stumped as to its nature. The puzzling find was reportedly made when a worker was plowing a field on the property of a man named Tom Giddens and struck a rock in the ground. Focused on the task at hand, the farmhand deposited the obstruction nearby and continued on with his work.
When Giddens stopped by and spotted the stone, which measures two feet long and one-and-a-half feet wide, he turned it over and was stunned to see that it was a sculpture of a face. To his credit, rather than place the curious discovery on his mantle as a conversation starter when visitors come to his home, the bewildered farmer contacted the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology to report the find.
"It really is mysterious," assistant state archaeologist Mary Beth Fitts told a local TV station, conceding that "we don't know what time period it’s from. It could be a piece of folk art or it could've been made a long time ago." Aside from the size of the sculpture and where it was found, the only other clue appears to be that it was made of sandstone. In an effort to get to the bottom of the mystery, the department shared a 3D rendering of the piece on their Facebook page and asked if any of their followers had insight into its origins.