🏺 TIL: The Nok culture of central Nigeria was making iron tools centuries before Rome became an empire.
Flourishing from roughly 1500 BC to 200 AD, the Nok were among the earliest iron-smelting societies in sub-Saharan Africa. They also created near life-size terracotta sculptures - the oldest known figurative sculpture south of the Sahara, depicting men, women, musicians, and dignitaries with elaborate hairstyles and ceremonial jewelry.
The Nok are one of very few civilizations that jumped straight from stone tools to iron, skipping the Bronze Age entirely. Pearl millet was their staple crop, consumed in ritual feasting contexts at burial sites.
We don't know what language they spoke, what they called themselves, or why their culture disappeared around 200 AD. The name 'Nok' comes from the village where the first terracotta was found by tin miners in 1928.
Read more:
metmuseum.org/essays/nok-terra…
archaeology.org/issues/online/…
worldhistory.org/Nok_Culture/
Nok Culture
The Nok culture, named after the settlement of the same name, flourished in southern West Africa (modern Nigeria) during the Iron Age from the 5th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. Famous for the distinctive...Mark Cartwright (https://www.worldhistory.org#organization)
