Unravel The Mysteries of the Nok Kingdom Of Nigeria
The mysteries of the Nok Kingdom in West Africa has baffled researchers for decades. In the town of Jos in central Nigeria, where he had spent the preceding few years collecting and classifying historic objects discovered on a rough plateau, British archaeologist Bernard Fagg welcomed a visitor in 1943.
The guest was carrying a terracotta head that, according to him, was sitting atop a scarecrow in a nearby field of yams. Fagg grew curious. The object resembled a monkey head made of clay that he had seen a few years before, and none of them matched any known artifacts from an ancient African civilization.
Fagg searched central Nigeria for related relics, he learned that locals had been discovering terracottas in unusual locations for years, including under a hockey field, sitting on top of a rocky hill, and sticking out of piles of gravel released by power hoses in tin mine. He amassed about 200 terracottas. He started up shop in a whitewashed hamlet that is still visible outside the settlement of Nok. The items were dated to around 500 B.C. by soil examination from the locations where they were discovered.
Fagg used the then-new method of radiocarbon dating to determine the dates of plant material found embedded in the terracotta, the results ranged from 440 B.C. to A.D. 200. He later used a technique called thermoluminescence, which determines when baked clay was burned, to date the scarecrow head—now known as the Jemaa Head after the village where it was discovered—to approximately 500 B.C. Fagg and his associates had reportedly uncovered a previously undiscovered culture that he named Nok by a mix of “good fortune, hard effort, and novel dating strategies.”
He discovered 13 of these furnaces, and because terracotta figurines were so closely associated with the furnaces—both inside and outside of them—he theorized that they were religious artifacts used to facilitate forging and melting. Nok has the earliest dates for iron smelting in sub-Saharan Africa up to that point because to carbon dating of the charcoal inside the furnaces, which indicated dates as far back as 280 B.C. He may have discovered evidence of a substantial, settled population, given the large number of smelters and the quantity of terracottas.
Fagg quickly identified several of the main indicators of an advanced civilisation, including sophisticated art, structured religion, metal smelting, and a sizeable enough population to support these practices. But he was aware that such a civilization did not exist in a vacuum.
Scholars are now returning to the scrubby, hilly. Discovering that the Nok survived for longer. They lived from at least 900 B.C. until roughly 200 A.D., making them possibly the first advanced civilization in West Africa. Their clay figurines are now among the most recognizable ancient African artifacts.
Archaeologists move a teaspoon of earth on the Niger for every ton they move on the Nile, according to anthropologist George Murdock’s 1959 observation. The increasing demand for African artifacts among collectors in the US and Europe has fueled a nearly 40-year-long campaign of theft at Nok sites, which has hampered scholarship.
“Nobody kept up with Bernard Fagg’s work. The Nok was victimized bRather than scientific research, foreign art traders and illegal digging were the Nok’s victims. from Frankfurt’s Johann Wolfgang Goethe University stated.
In central Nigeria, approximately two hours’ drive north of the nation’s capital, Abuja, Breunig and his colleague Nicole Rupp are leading a team of German and Nigerian academics, students, and even past looters as they excavate sites over an area of around 150 square miles. The Nok world, which covered more than 30,000 square miles, an area the size of Portugal, is only a microcosm of the study region.
Rupp and her team are working at the crest of a black granite mountain that dominates the savannah. They quickly start to find pieces of red terracotta sculpture, grinding stones, and pottery shards similar to those that Fagg first found. The excavators have collected enough relics in an hour to fill three large Ziploc bags.
A terracotta arm that was severed from a larger statue is one of them. Realistic modeling and its rough, gritty appearance immediately distinguish it as being uniquely Nok. Frank Willett stated that the Nok established Africa’s earliest sculptural tradition outside of Egypt in his seminal overview of African art. Like their contemporaries, the soldier builders of Xian, China, the Nok were adept at terracotta’s practically infinite potential for sculpture.
They used it to make figures that represented disease, conflict, love, and music. For instance, Rupp and Breunig’s team discovered a sculpture of a man and woman bowing before one another and wrapping their arms around one another in a passionate embrace, as well as numerous prisoners who had ropes around their necks and waists. Breunig and Rupp discovered 1,700 pieces of terracotta in about 450 square yards at one location, which suggests a sizable population.
Carbon dating on charcoal that Breunig obtained from a Nok iron smelter at the place known as Intini revealed a time period between 519 and 410 B.C., proving that iron technology existed earlier than previous researchers, including Fagg, had thought. However, these smelters might not be the oldest in sub-Saharan Africa.
However, critics point out that the wood used for dating could have been centuries old, a problem that dogs carbon dating, especially in very arid places like Niger where the wood desiccates and lasts longer. French archaeologists have discovered evidence of iron-smelting in the Termit Hills of Niger from as early as 1400 B.C. Breunig admits that the issue might also affect the Intini furnace’s dates. However, he has a crucial piece of evidence:
Nok pottery, which was discovered inside the furnace next to the charcoal, indicates that they were likely added there at the same time. Breunig’s research has allowed him to pinpoint a period of time when iron and stone tools coexisted. Iron tools are frequently discovered around Nok stone axes, indicating that they were used in the same communities, possibly even the same homes.
Breunig’s findings further support the consensus among archaeologists that ancient West Africans switched from stone to iron without going through a copper period. Few other regions of the world seem to have made that leap.
The debate over whether iron technology originated in West Africa or was brought across the Sahara is now raging among academics. Those who oppose autonomous development are accused of disparaging the technological advances made in Africa, while those who support it are accused of lacking concrete evidence.
The legacy left by Nok to the following cultures is even more perplexing. Art historians have long viewed Nok as an isolated event and a magnificent artifact that is incompatible with the timeline of African art over the following two millennia. Art historians are investigating more precisely what Nok might have contributed to later civilizations in southern Nigeria that possessed sophisticated metalworking abilities and a legacy of naturalistic portraiture.
Where did Nok culture originate from, and where did it go? It was a question that Bernard Fagg struggled with. He recognized that there was no indication that the inhabitants of Ife had ever seen Nok terracottas while writing about the “striking similarities of style and subject matter” between Nok and Ife.
