NewStats: 3,264,419 , 8,183,683 topics. Date: Wednesday, 11 June 2025 at 02:16 AM 5d226r

[img]http://1.bp..com/-xfCEPCABjQ8/WMuxa9h4bMI/AAAAAAAADQA/GsjUajlBEHcC_TzXy01QCD8-q9x6JM6tgCK4B/s640/Nok-Sculpture.-Photo-by-Ji-Elle.-Source-African-art-in-the-Pavillon-des-Sessions-Louvre-Paris.jpg[/img]
When British Archaeologist Bernard Fagg received a terracotta head that had served as a scarecrow for a local clerk in the Jos area, he knew he was up to something. The head resembled sculpture that he had earlier seen- one discovered fifteen years before by a worker at a mine near the village of Nok in the Jos Plateau area. But Fagg had no idea that the piece, like the one which it resembled, was the product of a hitherto unknown culture that dominated the area thousands of years ago.

The scarecrow head was found in 1943. At that time, Fagg was an istrative officer with the British colonial government in Nigeria. His training in archaeology and his love for exploration led him to investigate the terracotta find. He travelled throughout the vicinity of the Jos Plateau in his search for more clues to the origin of the piece and found that the local people had been happening upon similar material for years.

Over time, he collected a significant trove of terracotta, including some from excavations done in the area by his own men. The discoveries were analyzed and dated, and they yielded results which at the time was considered stunning- some of them were at least 2,500 years old. It soon dawned on Fagg and his collaborators that they had discovered the works of a lost civilization, one of the oldest in sub-Saharan Africa.

Area of Nok Culture by NordNordWest via Wikimedia Commons.

Why Nok Matters
Not much is known about the history of West Africa before the rise of the ancient Ghana kingdom in the middle ages. Prior to the discovery of the Nok culture, Historians did not speak of the region as being the centre for any significant activity worthy of being recorded in history books. It was, along with most of sub-Saharan Africa, the backwater of the ancient world, probably populated by hunter-gatherers and nomads- far removed from the exciting events unfolding in such places as Egypt, Babylon, Greece, or Rome. Nok has contributed to a revision of this way of looking at history.
The society that produced the quality of terracotta art found in the Nok sites was, for its age, quite advanced. From around 1000BC-200AD, a 30,000 mile stretch of northern Nigeria was the setting for a boom in art and culture made possible by skilled craftsmen and an organized societal setup. Their terracotta works, in particular, have caught the world’s attention, with their detailed renditions of the human form. Numerous pieces with cylindrical heads, semi-circular eyes, pierced mouth and ears, flared nostrils, body markings, and adornments have been unearthed. They represent the oldest known example of terracotta sculpture in Africa, south of the Sahara.


The unearthing of a piece of Nok art in 2012. Copyright, Peter Breunig


Nok art unearthed in 2012. Copyright, Peter Breunig via pasthorizonspr.com

An aspect of the Nok culture that isn’t talked about that much outside scholarly circles is its iron smelting. The people who inhabited the area at the time of the culture’s flourishing are known to have produced iron. Evidence of this has been found in remains of furnaces dating back as far as 500BC (iron arrowheads, bracelets, and knives have been found as well). This makes Nok one of the oldest iron smelting civilizations in Africa.
For a thousand years, Nok thrived. It must have had a fairly well organized societal structure; it required great skill to smelt iron and create terracotta, and skilled workmen may have been in charge of them. Such groups were probably formed into guilds. Because the clay type used by the sculptors throughout the area occupied by the Nok people appears to have come from a single source, experts have suggested that there may have been some form of rule or (authority) governing its manufacture of terracotta.


Popular female Nok head. Photo credit, unknown.

Nok’s Legacy
Nok seems to have vanished as mysteriously as it appeared. Causes proposed range from over-exploitation of natural resources to the destruction of vegetation for charcoal. Whatever the reason, its disappearance left what still looks like a gaping hole in the history of Nigeria’s early peoples.
It is possible that Nok influenced the art of later civilizations further south. Some historians point to similarities between Nok terracotta and the Ife bronze heads as evidence of this. However, the line of continuity from Nok to Ife is, as yet, still only faintly drawn.
Historians and archaeologists might not agree on every detail regarding the history of Nok. But they all speak with certainty about the fact that there remains a lot to be discovered about the Nok culture and what its people have left behind.
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SOURCE: http://www.takemetonaija.com/2017/03/get-to-know-nok-culture-nigerias-oldest.html#more

It was all bliss before the civil war

Those days at CKC Onitsha in fine Arts classes.
Used to hate those sculptures.
pls check below

dingbang:
It was all bliss before the civil war

Let's hope we don't see any thing like it again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTssIC4ndtk

booked

Crap,

We are talking innovation and technology... What place is Nigeria here?


Fûck all haters.

modelsms10:
Those days at CKC Onitsha in fine Arts classes.

Used to hate those sculptures.

pls check below

Up CKC

This land is not for sale at any price, beware of fraudsters

Lugard sha

A lot of persons don't understand this today. But in the past, say 100 years ago, the White Man saw Africans as barbaric people that had made no innovations whatsoever. Discoveries like the Nok cultural artifacts helped to clear their subjective and racist views.
But sadly Africans still don't realise the worth of any of their heritage, neither is the contemporary generation of Africans ready to leave any legacy for the future.
God save the Black man!

Nok,the Egyptians of Nigerian tribes

dingbang:
It was all bliss before the civil war

before the colonisation not civil war

keep on hating

dingbang:
It was all bliss before the civil war

The war ravaged only d east!

this is Benin, the origin of witch craft, no offense plz I'm only saying the truth

This was before Osman dan fodio and Arab culture

I have always maintain that prior to the invasion of the African soil, civilization of the black race was light years above that of the white. But they came, invaded us, raped our common good and threw us into the dark.

What will the white man do with these sculpture?

He would put them in a museum and be looking at them for ages.
Well, these are not the trending things for us down here in these times.

Kukuma being your dollars or we give you Lala snakes in abundance.

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode][/font]

Mouthgag:
Crap,

We are talking innovation and technology... What place is Nigeria here?


Fûck all haters.

Sometimes in life, in order to move forward, you have to know where you are coming from.

More of this post OP, enough of Gossip about celebrity secret lives and the palaver of pastor Sule. Perhaps,this will rejuvenate the love we have for the nation. I I did it in my 100 level under Nigerian people and culture. It's quite educative wish I can like it a million times

Talk2Bella:


before the colonisation not civil war

before the colonization .. Isn't it still before d civil war?

Haba.. We are saying the same thing na..

tonio2wo:


The war ravaged only d east!

so what are you implying? Did I mention about the effect of the war?

Nice piece however it doesn't talk about the Nok script.

I thought I would get more info on that.

Amazing to think those guys could write and read.

Great African

Excellent topic OP. However that map is quite misleading. While Samun Dukiya, Taruga and Jos are the main sites of discovery, what is today known as Nok culture extends from the Northern edges of Ogbomosho, Makurdi and Ilorin to beyond Sokoto and Katsina into the southern part of the Republic of Niger. Unfortunately, 90% of the Nok sites have been looted by Europeans (in wicked collusion with stupid Nigerians) leaving nothing but the shell of a once great civilization

1,500 years before the mythical Jesus, these ancient Nigerians were making iron tools. So basically they had perfected the technology of smelting iron ore; removing impurities; and regulating the amount of carbon in the alloy. This is no small feat. I wonder how many metal-work industries we have in this country today - I guess one could say our ancestors were technologically more advanced than we are today. And don't quote me to talk about your iphone, laptop and plasma tv. Don't come and be bragging about Asian/American products. Shame on all of you.

p

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