Enigmatic Nok Culture: A Sub-Saharan Archaeological Puzzle

A. Sutherland – AncientPages.com – Some 2,500 years ago, a mysterious Nok Culture emerged in Nigeria. It was discovered in 1928, due to tin mining that was happening in the area.

This society ‘without writing’ – known for their extremely advanced social system – were the earliest producers of life-sized terracotta figures in the Sub-Sahara and iron in smelting furnaces.

The Nok Culture Created Bizarre Terracotta Statues

Mysterious Nok people had many talented sculptors. They left behind bizarre terracotta statues along with broken pots, other storage vessels, a clay lizard and fragments of clay faces with triangular eyes, immense nostrils.

A terracotta head – evidence of the oldest known figurative sculpture south of the Sahara – was unearthed of the first time in 1943, during tin mining in the vicinity of the village of Nok near the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria.  Later, similar heads, figures, animals, and pottery shards have been found in a number of Nigerian sites.

A lack of extensive archaeological study significantly limited our understanding of Nok terracottas. One of the earliest African centers of ironworking and terracotta figure production, the Nok culture remains an enigma.

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