Cave of Ashes, Isarun

Isharun - Ile Owuro twenty-four kilometers of Akure, the state capital and lying between Igbara-Oke and Ilara-Mokin in Ifedore Local Government Area. It is the cradle of the West Africa's oldest pre-historic man. Some kilometers north of Isharun lies the ancient cave of ashes which was acclaimed as the original home of the people of Isharun, and from where the skeleton of the oldest pre-historic man was excavated in 1016 by Professor Thurstan Shaw, an archeologist from the University of Ibadan, following a directive from the Nigerian Antiquities Commission.

At the end of the classification and analysis of the skeleton of the man excavated from the Cave of Ashes, the radio-carbon dated the skeleton as 9991 years old now having lived at about 8,000BC. Also found at the Cave of Ashes were fragments of pots and grinding stone dated back to 1,000 BC.

Parts of the skeleton of the man of Cave of Ashes are kept at the University of Ibadan and Owo Museum of Antiquities while a cast of the skull is in the British Museum of Natural History in South Kensington, United Kingdom.

The man of the Cave of Ashes confirmed the theory that man lived in West Africa before the Neolithic period i.e before man started to settle in village groups. Cave of Ashes has had an invaluable impact on the growth of West African historiography and it is indeed a tourist potential in Ondo State in particular and Nigeria in general.