Nok (civilization)

Nok civilization

Extraordinary civilization Nok appears with the Nigeria 1.000 years before J.C and dies out mysteriously at the end of the first millenium. It is supposed that its disappearance is due to an epidemic or a famine devastator. It appears today to have been a very advanced civilization as well on the plan of its social organization as of its refinement at one time when the remainder of the southernmost Africa enters the Neolithic era (the Stone Age when hunters and farmers could help themselves only of tools lithic). One, on the occasion, spoke about an immediate descent with the old Egypt, which would explain part of the maturity of this civilization, considered as oldest producing of terra cotta of sub-Saharan Africa.

The parts of art which time preserved us, through sumptuous terra cotta, express the technological advance of potters controlling the cooking and ceramics as well as the great quality of the sculptors and artists. The subjects of their representations are mainly dignitaries, animals, reliquaries, preserved for the majority of the parts, in the form of scattered fragments. This is why art Nok is mainly known today only through heads of characters as well male as female whose hairstyles particularly detailed and are refined. The reason of these fragments of statues in is that the discovery of these terra cotta is generally done by digging alluvial mud, in grounds resulting from the erosion of water. The terra cotta statues were there hidden, rolled, polished, broken. Rare are thus preserved works of big size intact, which explains the current value of it on the market of black art.

Spouted out of mists of time

It is at the time of searchs for mining layers on the Plateau of Jos in 1929 that the culture of the Nok people is redécouverte. The first parts left ground but fall down in the lapse of memory.

In 1932, a group of 11 statues in perfect state was discovered close to the town of Sokoto. Since this date, statues coming from the town of Katsina were updated.

Later still, in 1943, near the village of Nok, in the center of Nigeria, are extracted by chance a new series from clay figurines, at the time of the exploitation of a tin mine. The history is known to us better by it and deserves to be told: a workman had found a head which it had carried at his place to make a scarecrow of it, role which it fills perfectly during a year in a field of Igname S. It however drew the attention of the director of the mine which bought it. He carried it in the town of Jos and showed it with the training civil administrator, Bernard Fagg, Archéologue of formation, which included/understood its importance immediately. He then asked all the minors to inform him their discoveries, which made it possible to join together more than 150 parts. Thereafter, Bernard and Angela Fagg directed systematic excavations which appeared all the more profitable as the lucky finds, dispersed on a very vast zone, largely exceeded the initial site.

To 1977, the number of objects out of terra cotta discovered during work of mining extraction amounted with 153 units, coming as a majority from secondary deposits (the statuettes had been carted by the risings towards the valleys) located in the beds from the rivers desiccated from savanna from the center and north from Nigeria, in the south-west of the plate of Jos.

Thereafter, of new discoveries took place in a zone increasingly wider, currently covering a surface of 480 out of 320 km ², including the average valley of the Niger and the lower valley of Bénue.

Memory of Africa

The first history of Africa was written out of terra cotta. It is out of ground that the oldest found figures are modelled. Their great age, up to 3.000 years for oldest (dating by tests of Thermoluminescence to the support) is explained initially by the lack of material available. Metals woke up the cupidity of the founders who transformed them and remelted. Wood was the prey of the termites. The terra cotta, considering its minimal value, was seldom employed again.

It had in addition the advantage of being able to be worked with naked hands, without tools. For cooking, one had since millenia experience of the utility pottery. Certain works were dried with the sun, others, were cooked in ashes of an opened hearth, with 300° C approximately, others, finally, at higher temperatures, giving more durable walls. The craftsmen who worked in the neighborhoods of Nok used for their modelled figurines the same matter as for their utility potteries: a Clay with coarse grains. And certain statues can reach 1,20 meter, which in the open air supposes an excellent control of the techniques of modelling like cooking. As much of statues are hollow, the sculptor took care to maintain on all the part an equal thickness and hollowed out the parts which could have exploded with fire.

This technical skill, just like the stylistic control noted in these works, carries to believe that art Nok could be the result of an already long artistic tradition. Nowhere one does not detect gropings or research. The characteristics of this style are already precise. The eye draws initially the attention by its importance. it forms sometimes an arc of circle, sometimes a triangle above which the eyebrow counterbalances the curve of the higher eyelid.

Trans-Saharan trade

The area of sub-Saharan Africa which interests us at the time was divided into 2 great mediums: savanna where small communities of farmers lived the septentrional fertile zone favourable with agriculture and the breeding; the tropical forest which covered the essence of the southernmost zone where lived along the coastal regions of the populations of hunters-gatherers.

2.500 years ago, from the populations of septentrional Africa, pushed by the dryness are thus descended towards the south with women, children, cattle, weapons and luggage until the Gulf of Guinea and the south of the continent. They introduced a novel mode of life because these tribes cultivated cereals, leguminous plants and raised bovines, sheep, goats. The men knew the Métallurgie iron, each group having a clean ceramics style. It was the beginning of the iron age in Africa and the Nok culture is the first community attested to work iron in West Africa. The merchants probably started to cross the Sahara in the current of the 1st millenium before J. - C., with carriages drawn by horses. The populations of Western Africa exchanged gold, slaves, ivory and products animalist against salt, fabrics, ceramics, glass, fruits and horses. Impressed by this animal, the Nok artists modelled besides strange statuettes appearing of the riders, of the dignitaries with horse, parts which are today of a great scarcity and a great value on the market of Article.

External bonds

Nok on “memory of Africa”

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