Prehistoric Nigeria: The Nok

Summary

Summary of "Prehistoric Nigeria: The Nok" - The Ancients Podcast

Episode Information:

• Title: Prehistoric Nigeria: The Nok
• Host: Tristan Hughes
• Guest: Dr. Kevin MacDonald, Professor of African Archaeology at University College London
• Release Date: March 30, 2025

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Introduction to the Nok Culture

In this episode, Tristan Hughes delves into the enigmatic Nok culture, an ancient civilization from central Nigeria renowned for its extraordinary terracotta figurines. The Nok culture flourished in the region around the Jos Plateau, near present-day Abuja, with its origins dating back to approximately 1500 BC, extending into the first century AD (03:34).

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Archaeological Discovery and History

The Nok culture was first identified in 1928 during open-cast tin mining operations on the Jos Plateau. Archaeologists uncovered remarkable terracotta statuettes, marking the initial discovery of this sophisticated civilization. Over the past century, particularly through the German-Nigerian archaeological programs from 2006 to 2017, over one hundred settlement sites associated with the Nok have been identified, significantly expanding our understanding of their society (05:31; 06:31).

Notable Quote:

Tristan Hughes (03:31): "Rarely does the Nok get the attention it deserves."

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Settlement and Environment

The Nok inhabited small villages, typically measuring 100 by 100 meters, scattered across a greener central Nigeria compared to the arid landscape seen today. Their agriculture primarily focused on millet and cowpeas, indicating advanced farming techniques adapted to semi-arid conditions. The cultivation of millet, in particular, was surprising given the region's rainfall patterns, suggesting significant agricultural innovation (09:52; 10:16).

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Terracotta Figurines: Artistry and Production

Nok terracotta figurines are celebrated for their individuality and sophistication. These statuettes depict both anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms, showcasing detailed hairstyles, facial features, and unique adornments that suggest individual personalities. Sizes vary, typically ranging from 40 to 60 centimeters, with some approaching or exceeding a meter in height.

Production Techniques:

• Clay Diversity: While pottery was locally produced using varied clay sources, terracotta figurines were made from standardized clays, indicating centralized production across the Nok landscape (16:26).
• Construction: Nok figurines were coil-built, a technique similar to pottery making, and were often hollow inside, making them both intricate and fragile (22:54; 23:35).

Fragmentary Nature: Most Nok figurines found in archaeological contexts are fragmented, likely due to deliberate disposal practices rather than accidental breakage. This aligns with mortuary traditions where objects associated with the deceased were broken and buried to prevent spiritual powers from persisting post-mortem (37:07; 40:05).

Notable Quote:

Dr. Kevin MacDonald (40:05): "Smiths are almost like sorcerers."

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Trade and Economic Exchange

The Nok engaged in extensive trade networks, notably exporting carnelian, a vibrant red semi-opaque stone used for jewelry and adornments. Potential sources of Nok's carnelian include the Saharan highlands and the Eastern Desert of Egypt, indicating long-distance trade connections. In exchange, the Nok might have exported ivory and precious woods, although direct archaeological evidence for these exports remains limited (25:27; 31:28).

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Social Structure and Specialization

The production of terracottas and iron tools suggests a degree of social specialization within Nok society. Dr. MacDonald posits that specialized craftspeople, possibly linked to blacksmithing lineages, were responsible for creating these artworks. This specialization reflects the societal importance and possibly mystical significance of these objects (43:10).

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Iron Metallurgy and Technological Advancements

Iron smelting in the Nok culture began around 800 BC, marking one of Africa's earliest known iron traditions. The Nok developed low, bellows-driven furnaces, facilitating the production of both functional tools (like axes and adzes) and personal adornments (such as rings and necklaces). The debate continues over whether iron metallurgy was indigenous or adopted from external sources, with current evidence leaning towards an indigenous origin based on technological advancements and localized production (46:52).

Notable Quote:

Brad (43:47): "There is a lot of evidence that pottery is a very localized production. However, very interestingly, the statues or statuettes seem to be made of very similar clays."

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Decline of the Nok Culture

The Nok culture experienced a gradual decline between 300 BC and the first century AD, with radiocarbon dating indicating a significant reduction in settlement activity post-300 BC. The reasons for this decline remain unclear, with hypotheses ranging from environmental changes and resource depletion to conflict or societal collapse. Post-decline, the Nok left little to no direct material legacy, with emerging cultures exhibiting distinctly different pottery traditions (54:23).

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Legacy and Influence on Later Cultures

Despite the long gap between the Nok and later sophisticated African civilizations like Ife and Benin, the Nok set foundational precedents in artistic and metallurgical practices. These later cultures inherited and expanded upon the Nok's technological innovations, evident in the naturalistic sculptures and advanced metallurgy of Ife and the intricate bronze work of Benin (54:23).

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Comparative Analysis: Mortuary Practices

Dr. MacDonald draws parallels between Nok mortuary practices and those of other African cultures, such as the Senufu of Mali, where objects associated with the deceased are deliberately broken and buried to prevent their spiritual power from lingering. This practice underscores the Nok belief in the potency and potential danger of inanimate objects once their associated individuals have passed (37:07; 40:35; 42:03).

Notable Quote:

Brad (37:07): "There are all sorts of things one can invoke. You could say there could be conflict, there could be environmental conflicts, collapse. I mean, these are all the sort of things we tend to use explanations, but there is no good evidence yet to explain that collapse."

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Conclusion

The Nok culture represents a pivotal yet enigmatic chapter in African history, marked by extraordinary artistic achievements and early metallurgical advancements. Despite its eventual decline, the Nok laid the groundwork for subsequent African civilizations, showcasing the region's longstanding contributions to technological and artistic innovation. Ongoing and future archaeological research promises to further illuminate the complexities and legacy of this ancient civilization.

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Notable Quotes:

• Tristan Hughes (03:31): "Rarely does the Nok get the attention it deserves."
• Brad (10:16): "We're dealing with very advanced things for their time. Real artistic pioneers in Africa and also potentially metallurgical pioneers as well."
• Dr. Kevin MacDonald (40:05): "Smiths are almost like sorcerers."

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Timestamps Reference:

• 03:31 – Introduction of Dr. Kevin MacDonald.
• 03:34 – Discussion on the uniqueness of the Nok culture.
• 05:31 – Archaeological discoveries and the German-Nigerian program.
• 06:31 – Expansion of settlement sites.
• 09:52 – Environmental conditions and agriculture.
• 10:16 – Description of Nok settlements and agriculture.
• 16:26 – Clay diversity and production techniques.
• 22:54 – Construction and fragility of figurines.
• 23:35 – Further discussion on figurine hollowing.
• 25:27 – Trade networks and carnelian sources.
• 31:28 – Speculation on ivory and precious wood trade.
• 33:11 – Designs depicted in terracottas.
• 37:07 – Mortuary practices and figurine fragmentation.
• 40:05 – Hypothesis on smiths as sorcerers.
• 43:10 – Social specialization in Nok society.
• 43:47 – Clay production and centralized manufacturing.
• 46:52 – Iron metallurgy advancements.
• 54:23 – Decline of the Nok culture and legacy.
• 58:26 – Closing remarks by Tristan Hughes.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of "The Ancients" provides a comprehensive exploration of the Nok culture, highlighting its artistic brilliance, technological prowess, and the mysteries surrounding its decline. Through the expertise of Dr. Kevin MacDonald, listeners gain valuable insights into one of Africa's most intriguing ancient civilizations, underscoring the richness and complexity of prehistoric societies in Nigeria.

For more detailed discussions and future episodes, follow "The Ancients" on Spotify or your preferred podcast platform. Support the podcast by subscribing to History Hit for ad-free listening and access to exclusive documentaries.

Transcript

[Tristan Hughes]

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[Brad]

Let's go.

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[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Foreign.

[Tristan Hughes]

It'S the ancients on History hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Today we're covering another of those mysterious, too often overlooked ancient civilizations. A people who lived in ancient Nigeria known today solely through archaeology, symbolized by extraordinary terracotta figurines, the Nok Culture. Search Nok Culture in your browser today and straightaway images of these striking statuettes appear. They are some of the most eye catching examples of ancient art so far found anywhere in Africa, depicting all sorts of subjects. And unsurprisingly, they will feature heavily in today's conversation. So who were the Nok, whereabouts in Africa, did they live? And what has archaeology so far revealed about this mysterious Iron Age culture? Well, joining me to explain all is Dr. Kevin MacDonald, a professor of African archaeology at University College London. Kevin dialled in to join us for this chat and I'm really grateful for Kevin's time to talk all things the Nok culture. Rarely does the Nok get the attention it deserves, so enjoy as we delve into its mysterious story.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Kevin, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

[Brad]

Thank you.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Glad to be here to talk about the Nok culture. And it's about time we explored more of these extraordinary ancient African civilizations or cultures. But with the Nok, Kevin, is this a culture that we know of exclusively from archaeology?

[Brad]

Yes. There is no textual record referring to it. And indeed even the word Nok is almost by chance. It comes from the old archaeological custom of naming so called cultures or traditions or what have you after the first site where they were discovered or defined. So it's not referring to a people or a language group or anything like that. It is purely an archaeological entity.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

When are we talking about and where are we talking about with the Nook?

[Brad]

We're looking at central Nigeria in an area running north and south of the Jos Plateau. So one of the larger modern towns would be the capital, Abuja. So its radius is being continually redefined by archaeological work. But effectively, if you imagine Nigeria, it's directly in the middle of the modern country.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

And how big a period of time in ancient history are we talking about with the Nok?

[Brad]

It used to be, when archaeologists were first working on it, that they're imagining something beginning around 500 BC and then running on for a few hundred years after that. As more work has gone on, particularly in the past 20 years, it's become evident that we're dealing with something which has a much longer duration, starting around 1500 BC and then continuing really on to maybe the first century AD and.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

You mentioned there archaeological work on the Nok. I mean, how long has archaeological work been going on? I mean, how long has it been since the Nok have been rediscovered?

[Brad]

The initial discoveries were these, of course, rather remarkable terracottas which are associated with with this archaeological entity. And they were first discovered in 1928 during tin mining, open cast tin mining on the Jos Plateau. And there were frequent finds from tin mining. And this led to at the beginning of the formation of the Nigerian Antiquity Service, them being summoned out to these sites to try and better understand the context of these statues, statuettes, figurines being found.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

And do we know by now, let's say almost 100 years later, as you said, if that was the earlier site that became Nok, associated with this archaeological entity. Do we have quite a number of sites today in that area of Nigeria that seems to be linked together with similar sorts of artifacts? Do we have a wider range of archaeological sites today?

[Brad]

Yes, again, thanks to this cooperative German Nigerian program which has been going on since I think around 2006 and then went on up until 2017. There was a great number of settlement sites found. So, you know, well over a hundred sites now. But the, in the beginning, these were sort of isolated find spots. And I, I should rush to outline if anybody looks on online and sees some of the pictures of these open cast tin mining sites on the Jost Plateau, they'll think, how is this possible? You know, you're finding these sort of, you know, statuettes tens of meters deep. You know, what sort of timescale are we working at here? There's a lot of. This is these, these finds are not being found in context. These aren't village remains of these initial finds. These are finds that have been part of slope erosion in these areas and carried down due to rains into valley areas and therefore are being found for that reason. So they're not really, in an archaeological sense, tens of meters beneath the surface. Most of the sites where these are found in better context are just, you know, you're probably finding things a meter below the surface or, you know, not too much more than that if they're in pits maybe a couple of meters beneath the surface. So you have these fine spots where what had been settlement landscapes are just being eroded down a slope. I mean, imagine the various cliff shears we have in Norfolk or Suffolk or elsewhere and things being carried down. That's the sort of thing we're talking about. So sort of erosion, large scale erosion of soil and things being tumbled down much lower. That's where these have come from. These are from essentially disintegrated villages that have been lost off the edges of cliff erosion. So it's in context they're in village sites or cemetery sites which are not really very far beneath the surface at all.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

And you mentioned that. So central Nigeria. But do we have much idea about what the landscape would have looked like in which these settlements were. Well, in which they had their settlements more than 2,000 years ago, or roughly 2,000 years ago, it would have been.

[Brad]

Greener than today, no doubt. But even today, even though this is sort of a semi desertic area, in parts desertic is too strong, let's say arid area today. You know, you have scattered trees and grasslands today. I expect the patches of forested areas would have been higher, but this would not by any means have been a forested zone at that time. What's interesting, of course, environmentally, and this might be getting a little bit ahead of things, but the primary crop associated with narc is millet. And this was a surprise because people were thinking this is too far south for millet. So what it is showing is that this is an area which didn't have too much rainfall. Too much rain doesn't work for millet. This is an area which is not much off of where the area is today. Environmentally, probably a bit more tree cover, but it's still largely grassland.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Well, Kevin, you can never get too far ahead of yourself on the ancients, so don't you worry. And in that case, we'll explore the wider story of how they lived first, and then we'll delve into the almost the poster piece of the nok, which are their figurines. So if they're farming millet, do we know much about their society, how they lived in these villages? Should we be imagining small farming communities?

[Brad]

Yes. To give credit to Peter Brunig and his team, who worked for a decade or so in this area, they completely revolutionized our understanding of the settlement landscape. And we're looking at relatively small villages, nothing much greater than what would be 100 by 100 meters a hectare. I mean, so we're dealing with what would be, by archaeological definition, small villages or hamlets. Nothing any larger than that, spaced out relatively evenly on the landscape. And you have the use, particularly of pearl millet, but also as a protein. You have cowpeas being cultivated as well. You have canarium trees being exploited. And interestingly, oil palm, which is in use in the area today, does not appear to have been exploited at the time of noc. We have a problem archaeologically in that there is very poor bone preservation in this area because of acidic soils. So it's very hard to tell what was being exploited in terms of livestock or hunted game. We can make assumptions. We can suppose that there might be, you know, because there was elsewhere at this time in this part of Africa, if we go particularly towards, say, Ghana to the west at this time, you would have had cattle and you would have also had sheep and goat. So we Sort of assumed that there would be cattle and sheep and goat, probably of dwarf breeds or smaller breeds, because they need that. They need to be. So in order to be able to survive in more southerly areas like this, where you have a lot of tsetse. So you need these breeds which are what we call Trypano tolerant breeds that can live in these more southerly tropical climes. And the native cattle of Africa and the imported sheep and goat which came into Africa in order to be able to survive the genetic change which takes place in them as a sort of consequent effect of dwarfism. So you have size reduction and these. So you have cattle which are sort of just about waist height.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Wow.

[Brad]

And the sort of sheep and goats which you find in petting zoos and things like that, you know, the really dinky ones, those are also coming out of this sort of dwarfing due to adaptation to various disease vectors to be able to survive these disease factors. And so probably you had this sort of livestock, certainly you had. They would have been hunting whatever game was available. And. But yes, we're looking at small farming communities, but which are doing very advanced things for their time. Real artistic pioneers in Africa and also potentially pyrotechnological or metallurgical pioneers as well.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

So probably livestock, certainly agriculture. One more question on the settlements themselves, Kevin. It sounds like though, from the area of the world that the archaeology is being done, do you therefore have quite a lot of the organic material? It doesn't survive like the houses that they were probably living in in these villages. It's very difficult to find the remains of those. The traces that they leave. Is they quite scant.

[Brad]

What you have, and this is often the case in this time period in various parts of West Africa, is you have the chance encounter of buildings with fire. So whether from hearths or whether from actual full scale conflagrations, you have the fact that buildings get burned and you have some very clear burnt wattle and daub remains. So in other words, clay fragments which have stick marks in them or pole marks on them, which give us a clear idea that you have sort of the latticework of some sort of wood being overlain with a mud plaster. There are also some remains of stone foundations for structures at some sites where stone was more readily available. So you're probably looking at circular structures, maybe even conical sort of structures, but effectively wooden earthen structures. And of course there would be many of these in any given settlement.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Well, you mentioned in passing the clay, Kevin, and was clay the greatest non metallic material that they had or the material that they had that they were able to create this extraordinary, very sophisticated artwork from.

[Brad]

Yes, clay was the thing. But again, there have been some very interesting studies done recently on all of the clay from the pottery and these statues at the Knox sites. And what's been found is that the clay which is being used for pottery is very diverse, that every settlement was obviously making pottery from clay sources which were near to them. And so there's, you know, there's every evidence that pottery is a very localized production. However, very interestingly, the statues or statuettes of Knock seem to be made of very similar clays, which would imply a more standardized production for them or a more centralized production for them across this rather vast landscape. I mean, Knock is, you know, is covering an area which is, you know, almost the size of England. So it's a good sized place, you know, where all these different sites are distributed. But you know, the statuettes are always the same and the pottery is always different.

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[Brad]

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[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

What do we think was the process then? Okay, they've got their clay sources. They're going to make these figurines, these remarkable statuettes. Do we know much about the whole process of how they made these quite complex artworks?

[Brad]

Well, one thing which is rather confounding about them, and particularly when we look at a lot of the statues which are statuettes, which are in the world's museums, virtually none of these statues have come from archaeological context in world museums. Virtually every one of these have been looted or come out of looting. And something else which is apparent from the actual archaeological excavations which have taken place is that if you do, you know, CAT scans of many of these statues in world museums, it's evident that they are a kind of a hodgepodge of fragments of statuettes and that they've been refinished or re, sort of plastered to give their surface a smoother appearance because, and again, getting ahead of myself a bit, it appears that most of these great works of art were smashed up before they were deposited in the ground. So it's very rare to find an entirely intact one. So the objects that are often in museums were dug up by, and there's been an enormous amount of looting associated with noc, probably, you know, per cubic meter more than any other comparable tradition in Africa. And so people have quite industrially mined the remains of these, which were produced quite frequently by the Nok culture and then improved them. If you look at the ones that, you know, in the monograph produced by the German Nigerian team recently, you'll see that these are all fragmentary. You're missing heads, you're missing bodies or what have you. If you look at the ones in various world art museums, you'll find they're perfectly intact. So either There is some source for intact statues without abraded surfaces somewhere that the archaeologists are missing, or as CAT scans have shown, these are restored, shall we say. That's probably the most generous term. They have been restored. There's no doubt that they are complex. There's no doubt that they're every bit as amazing, whether fragmentary or not. I mean, these restorations are very much true to reimagining the tradition as it's attested to by these objects. But, you know, I suspect, you know, if you have a perfect and complete terracotta, that some restoration has taken place because the actual paste, I mean, I've seen and handled a good number of not terracottas myself over the years. And the paste is very gritty. In order to get the smooth look that you see on a lot of the published museum pieces, they have to be sort of refinished and burnished. Now, I imagine some coming out with, well, I don't have too much. I know that some are coming out of the ground in better condition than others, but yes. So you can't take the museum displayed objects always at face value.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

That's not the context for, as you say, that originally they are deposited by the NOx from 2000 years ago.

[Brad]

But that said, just to add something here, we do know that they are being built in some senses, like pottery, they're being coil built. So just like this isn't the case with every pottery tradition, a lot of pottery traditions use molded, particularly bases for their pottery and so on. But if you or I or anyone were learning pottery making in some class, you'd probably start by making these sort of snakes or these coils of pottery and building them up.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Oh, right, okay.

[Brad]

Shaping them. And that's what's happening. You have what? If you look inside or again use some sort of CAT scan on these statues, what you find is that they're hollow in the interior. So in some senses this is statuary meeting pottery technology. Once built up into some more tubular form, they're then worked and perhaps also added to like pottery would be added to, you know, with, with pottery, you, you have things you might add to them that are called, at least archaeologically, nubbins or fillets or pieces of clay that you cut out and then stick on. That's also happening.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

But if they're, if you mentioned that, that they are hollow, I mean, surely that adds to. That must makes them even more brittle. Surely it makes them much more easy to break.

[Brad]

Yes, but I mean, if you had to say this is being very rough, but of their structure, I would say no more than 50% is hollow, so they're not very quite thick. But, you know, I would say about half of their interior is just 2D space.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Fair enough. Before we explore what they actually depict, just so that we can get a really clear idea of their size. Because you've also. We've used words like statuette, too. I mean, Kevin, should we not be imagining very, very big statues? What are we thinking, 30 centimeters high, roughly, or what should we be imagining?

[Brad]

Yes, I mean, bigger statues, you know, pushing towards a meter. Wow. Yeah. So that's why, I mean, you know, they're much what I'm. I'm much more used to, because my. My own work has largely been in the Niger river basin. I'm much more used to the. The genetic terracotta tradition. So these are, you know, double, three times, four times the size of Geneta terracottas. So they're quite substantial. Yeah. I mean, and they come in different size ranges, but, yeah, I mean, when I think of them, you know, I think probably you're looking, you know, more like 40 to 60 centimeters or in some cases larger.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

And just so we know, Kevin, I mean, how far away is the Niger river to the NOC that we're talking about?

[Brad]

It's all. I mean, the NOC tradition is if it straddles one river, it straddles the Bennu, it doesn't straddle the Niger. So maybe, maybe 100km, 200km away from the Niger River.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

It's just asking potentially, you know, because I know it's a large areas, but potentially is that, you know, trade and contact between them, so passing of pottery ideas there and back. So, yes, although the ones in the Niger river are bigger. Could there have been contact and influence between the two?

[Brad]

Well, what's curious is, archaeologically speaking, there's not a very visible archeological tradition prior to Knock in this area. I think ultimately, with more work it will be found, because the thing we would expect prior to this sort of tradition in this part of the world would be some sort of microlithic tradition, perhaps using quartz microliths that might use relatively little pottery, so they might be much less visible in the landscape. The Bruning team say that they're not finding anything earlier and that effectively this demonstrates that Knock are migrants because of the millet and because of the type of pottery they have, which is mainly sort of decorated with tools of impression, like potter's combs or styluses or what have you. They're thinking, you know, this is coming out of the southern Sahara, or what would be called the Sahel, the shore of the Sahara, farther to the north, where we know that millet was independently domesticated. So when we're looking at millet domestication, we're looking at sort of Mali and Mauritania and that sort of zone, and then that this millet is making its way down with agricultural populations which are expanding at that time. So these are people already back in 1500 BC, which is before they're producing any statues or before they're producing iron, that these are food producing, farming, agro, pastoral peoples coming down from the north, settling an area which probably only has mobile hunter gatherers in it, who aren't occupying the landscape in any density. So they push in and start making their many small settlements, small farming settlements. And so initially what they're bringing in is coming from the north. But as knock goes on, we know that they are bringing in some things from the outside. And this is most notably carnelian, which they seem to have been very fond of. I mean, many people were fond of carnelian, the Romans were very fond of carnelian. And of course there are several different potential sources for carneon, which is a red, semi opaque stone that can be quite vivid. And so you're making these beads in nox case. They can be both relatively flat, distance shaped, but they can also be tubular, which are much more complicated to make because you imagine you're having to, you know, they could be a couple of centimeters thick and you're having to drill this out all the way through. So you're having to use quartz drills to get through this to make these beads. You know, at the time, this is quite a process and obviously they would have quite a lot of status attached to them. But where from? And we know that there are carnelian sources in the Saharan highlands. We know that there are carnelian sources in the eastern desert of Egypt. Of course, probably some of the finest carnelian, which you begin to see a lot in more recent sort of medieval periods, is this carnelian coming from Gujarat in India. So those here great sources of carnelian. I rather suspect that this stuff also, just from the look of it, although chemical studies need to be done, is coming either from the Saharan highlands or from Egypt. Of course it doesn't mean direct, but it does mean it's being traded hand in hand and getting down, and it's getting down in enough numbers that you can make these enormous necklaces out of it. I mean, this comes from the mortuary Archaeology of knock from graves. We also have statues that are just festooned with beads, which from their shape and size look to be carnelian. So we're looking at large scale carnelian trade coming down. Now, whether that is being made in what would be in the Sahara, it would be, you know, northern Mali or maybe southern Libya, southern Algeria, that area, or whether it's coming from the eastern desert of Egypt, it's still coming a substantial way and in quantity. And then of course, you have to ask, well, what is Nok passing up in return for this? Especially since this is before a lot of the mining of metals other than iron in this area, notionally. So you think, well, one possibility is always ivory. Because we forget these days we look at, at Africa and you know, you see there are all of these elephant herds in East Africa and southern Africa and so forth. So you tend to think, oh, that's where the elephants are. But there used to be enormous elephant herds in West Africa. And one of the reasons they have very few elephants, they're not entirely gone. I mean, there's one large active herd between Burkina Faso and Mali that goes up and down in that area every year in which I've visited years ago myself. But it was, you know, the transatlantic slave trade and the enormous importation of firearms into West Africa. So in the 18th century there was a huge import of gunpowder, lead and firearms all along the West African coast. And that led to a kind of animal wipeout, wild game wipeout across West Africa. Firearms hadn't come into these areas for so long and in such quantities in eastern and southern Africa. So that's why you have these very well preserved parks of wildlife in those areas. In West Africa, much of its indigenous fauna was wiped out in the 18th century and 19th century by hunting with muskets.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

That's interesting, isn't it? I hadn't thought of ivory at all when thinking about artifacts. And also you made an interesting point. If we go back to the, to the statues of how sometimes it sounds like it's not just the statues, they are, they have decorations on them too. I mean, do we have many ivory artifacts as decoration from within the not culture, or is this just a theory based on what we know about elephants in antiquity?

[Brad]

Yeah, it's a theory because, you know, just trying to think, well, what is their offer in terms of trade? And I mean, it could also be precious woods, like types of, I don't know, ironwood or ebony or things like that. That's possible. But a lot of elements of later Trade simply were not there yet. There was no gold trade, we think, at that time, for example, which was a big driving force earlier on. Of course, the ivory wouldn't preserve at knock just because of the soil conditions. So I wouldn't be able to say. I can't remember seeing much in the way of referencing ivory in the statuettes themselves. So that was just sort of a spontaneous speculation on my part. But they had to have something that would have been enough to allow them to get large quantities of carnelian in exchange. So, yeah, it's a question of what that was.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Well, it was good to talk about trade as well, because you pre empted a part of the chat which was kind of the wider world that they lived in. So thank you for highlighting that. If we go back to the statues, the figurines you've highlighted, how many of them fragmented? Very complex designs too. But if we actually focus on the designs, what do they show? What things do these terracottas show?

[Brad]

Well, the statues themselves are both anthropomorphic or depicting humans or human like forms. And they're also zoomorphic. So, you know, there's one I remember which is a serpent coiled around a tree and things like that. So you have a wide range of things being depicted. What's incredible is, in terms of the human forms is how individual they are. I mean, it seems like they're showing individual personalities. They have different sorts of hairstyles. They have. Some have facial hair, some don't. You can have individuals that just have goatees. You can have individuals which have sort of more a fuller beard with a mustache as well. Again, you have the idiosyncrasies of individuals who are wearing their hair in a particular way, who are wearing different sorts of adornments in an individual way, who are being presented as, you know, there's not. I've never seen two that are quite alike. But additionally you have statues which combine human and animal forms.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Interesting.

[Brad]

So. So for example, you have sort of a genre where you have depictions of people with bird beaks. So he's, you know, sort of combining these, these, these aspects and. But I would say the majority are, are depictions of human beings and individuals. And so the question then is, are these human beings of this earth or are they imagined more sort of godlike or ancestral figures and what are they being used for? And the old idea so that the first archaeologist to work on the Nactarcados and publish a book on them was Bernard Fagg. One of his hypotheses was that these might have been because they're sort of tubular and they're hollow. Right? I mean, any. I mean, they're not. They do a lot to disguise the tubular nature. But he was saying they could be used as finials at the entrances of houses. So almost like house markers, you know, where you'd have them stuck up outside your front door. And that's also, you know, to explain why there's so many of them, if every house has one, then that sort of. I mean, in terms of the number of finds and the likelihood of finding such objects, much greater for knock than, say, the comparable terracotta tradition, which is the Chennai terracotta tradition in Mali, or indeed other traditions in Niger, and so on. So this is, of course, where this new research project in the 2000s really moved things along, because it began excavating noxites and fine spots in quantity. And this is where it becomes clear that you have. These statues are fragmentary. Say you find a pit and you're excavating a pit and you start finding terracotta fragments in it, and then you get them all out, or you do a block lift, as you might do here or anywhere else. You do a block lift of all the stuff and then excavate them in the lab. And you find out that you've got no single intact statue. You have not even one that's broken up. You have several that have been broken up, incomplete, and put into a pit, and again and again, not finding intact ones. And why are they going into these special disposal pits? And then as the project continued, it became apparent that a lot of these pits, and perhaps one ultimately might find all of these pits are in proximity of cemeteries.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Oh, okay.

[Brad]

So there's a mortuary tradition going along with this. And then you have to come up with an explanation of why aren't these going into graves intact? Why are they being broken? Why are they being broken in multiple ways and mixed up? You know, is there someplace where they're intact? We're not finding them. You know, are they being used as. Like Bernard Fanck said, are they being used as finials on houses? And then, you know, when that person dies, you take them down and break them. It does make me think, I mean, there are several traditions like this, but in terms of ones that I'm personally familiar with, you have this process amongst the Senufu of Mali, and then in an area south of Mali as well. But where I've seen this is in Mali, where there is the disposal of the things of the dead. And, I mean, you can See this elsewhere in the world. I mean, you can see this possibly with things like the Hopewell culture in America.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

North America.

[Brad]

Yeah, yeah. Where you have these, you know, lots of grave goods or lots of objects deposited after someone's dead. And, you know, the hypothesis is this is like a radioactive waste containment chamber sort of notion that these objects have power, or as one would say in the mandate world, Nyama. So they have power and they're associated with certain individuals. And in order to keep those individuals from still acting in this world after their death, you need to contain those objects, you need to smash them so they're no longer intact, you need to mix them up and you need to bury them when you're burying the dead. So in the Senufu areas that I'm familiar with, you have a situation whereby when someone dies, if the last water glass they were drinking from, you're going to dispose of that. If it was a woman and she had her heart stones, you're going to dispose of them. If you have pots or other objects that someone was using, particularly in the last couple of months before their death, you're going to take these all to an area near the cemetery and you're going to smash them and mix them up so that they cannot return and act through those objects. And I'm not saying, you know, this is not, I'm not saying this is the same thing, but I'm saying it's a model of some reasons that, you know, these are objects which could have been very actively used during an individual's lifetime, but then after their death they become dangerous and so you have to smash them up. And again, that's, you know, in terms of coming up with explanations, that's an explanation for why they're quite consciously not allowing a statue to go entire, even if broken up into a pit.

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[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

It'S almost, I'm just trying to think of a parallel, I think, isn't it an ancient Egyptian culture or ancient Kushite culture where sometimes they'll depict certain animals or in hieroglyph with a tomb, but usually they'll depict if it's a ferocious animal like a crocodile or something like that with some sort of injury or they're not fully whole so they're not as dangerous as they would have otherwise been. With that fear that I, I think it's with the hieroglyphs as well that you, they have that kind of magical element that they could come out of the, of the wall and actually become real things. It feels almost a bit of a similar thing that you. There's that worry about inanimate objects or things that the humans have made becoming real, you know, in the afterlife and trying to prevent that from happening.

[Brad]

Yes, and building in some kind of flaw is definitely one way to do that. But one hopes, you know, that research will continue in the broad knock culture area and that eventually we might find for some reason these objects intact. But there's something similar working on various tell sites associated with the empire of Ghana and the empire of Mali. Is that when you have abandonment layers in these tel sites which have layer upon layer of houses and, and you're consciously abandoning one probably because of a death or some tragedy, and you're leaving objects say that were in a house within the house, oftentimes you'll break out the bottoms of the pots so you're sort of killing the pots. And again it's the same sort of thing that intact objects have power and so you break things to, to drain the nyama out of them as it were, to get rid of the spiritual power from these objects.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Imsa feels like maybe this is one that we can't answer yet, but I must just before we go on to metals is given that there are so many of these terracottas created and given that these people are living in small villages, do we think it's possible that almost part of their society was to learn to kind of create these objects? Or would there have been a specialized person, you know, who would have been involved in getting the clay, fire hardening the clay, then making the terracotta or then fire hardening it. There were specific people who knew the craft, were guest professionals, or that everyone. Everyone had to kind of learn how to make these.

[Brad]

Okay, well, yes, your question makes me think of a lot of different things. One, of course, is that from the clay studies which have been done, these are being made out of a singular chosen clay source, which means that the actual place of manufacture is probably quite concentrated. Also, since we're looking at a people who become blacksmiths in quantity, of course, in many parts of Africa, blacksmith lineages are quite isolated. They marry into themselves, they keep themselves themselves because they have this transformative power. So one would imagine that the same people who might be considered the most powerful blacksmiths might be the people who are making these objects. But another thing which comes to mind is the degree, because, again, part of knock is on the Bennu, although it doesn't run quite right to allow things to flow through the area. But it's remarkable the degree to which different areas of production can be concentrated. So years ago, I worked in a very ancient town in Mali called Dia. And in Dia, there were a group of potters who had become specialists in making these particular sort of water pots called jidaga. And jiidaga are really indispensable in the cell, they cool your water. They're the sort of a central point of any household is having a couple of really good gidagas. And they are a very typical wedding gift. So, you know, if you're newly wed, they get jidagas, but they get jidagas from these people in Dhya. And so every day, it would seem a letter would travel upriver or downriver to these potters, and they would say, this is what we want on the pots, because they'd put, like, the people's names and we need it delivered by this date. And then every day there would be pirogues of these water pots all stuck up, which would go downriver and sort of deliver them all the way along. So for more than 100km in both directions, custom water pots were being distributed. So you can imagine a situation with knock. And we do. I mean, there is remarkably one knock terracotta of two people in a boat. So they definitely were using boats. But you do think that people are commissioning thieves. I mean, maybe, you know, while you're alive, if you're a family leader, you go to this making area and they sort of do a portrait of you or some sort of caricature of you that they then supply to you. Maybe it's, you know, maybe if it's a point of pilgrimage or something, you know, you have to. It's someplace you have to go to. It's like going to the big city. You go down there, instead of getting your photograph made or your portrait painted or whatever, you get on and you have a terracotta made of you. If you're important and you bring it home and then you put it somewhere outside of your house, or you use it in some sorts of ceremonies. But when you die, then it's so associated with you. It has to be. At some point, it has to be broken.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

This is just me hypothesizing mad, but it's very. It's so interesting nonetheless, and especially for such a mysterious culture. I mean, Kevin, I could ask so much more about that, but as we're nearing the end, we got to also talk about iron, because talk to me a bit about their expertise, their proficience with iron and how they become blacksmiths, because this also seems a really important part of the Nox story.

[Brad]

Right? So if you're looking at Noch chronology, so they're coming into the area with polished stone and napstone artifacts and pottery around 1500 B.C. and then somewhere around 800 B.C. the terracotta production begins, and iron production begins more or less the same time. I'm sure they don't map neatly onto each other, but at the level of resolution we have, that's what it looks like. And also what's interesting is in terms of looking at the connections between the terracottas and the iron. Recent excavations at Janjala find a fragmentary terracotta as an offering in each decommissioned iron furnace. So, just underlining the link, but. So iron smelting at 800 BC, what does it mean? Well, the problem. There's been a ongoing research dispute in Africa over whether or not iron metallurgy is indigenous or not. And this has been going on since the 1970s. Knock has played a role in this. There was one for a long time. One of the earliest African iron smelting sites was Tarugu, which was a Knock site. Since then, we know that there are definite areas of older iron smelting, particularly in Senegal, perhaps in Rwanda, areas where you're pushing perhaps above 800 B.C. there's a problem in that 800 B.C. is around a point where there's a flattening in the radiocarbon curve because of solar radiation, where everything between about 800 and 500 BC, technically dates the same. It's like everything is neutralized in that band. So if you get something at dates 600, it could mean 800. If you get something dates 800, it could mean 500. So this is a really unfortunate place for iron to be invented in Africa. What you need are things that are dating to around a thousand outside of this flattening in the curve. And then, you know, we're over that particular hump. There are some dates, which I believe, and of course it's also always a matter, you know, there's always. People are always debating the rightness or wrongness of dates. But, you know, Senegal, around 900 BC to a thousand, I think it's possible, but it's, you know, I'm not one of the metallurgical specialists, and they tend to defend their ability to make these sorts of declarations. So everything remains up in the air. The difficulty is that Africa has not yet been shown to have what would be called a Bronze Age or a Copper Age elsewhere in the world. And the idea is, in terms of the steps of technology, you need to understand how to smelt copper or to make bronze before you can go to iron, because iron making is more tricky than those other things. There is some argument that you could go straight to iron, but nobody's ever really been very happy with that. It would require a lot of coincidences. So we might not see it in my lifetime, but personally, I believe we will eventually find that there is a Copper Age in Mauritania and that this leads to. To an indigenous creation of iron technology in Africa, probably in the area of Mauritania, Senegal, something like that. That's my own. I'm putting it out there. A lot of people might disagree, but that's my instinct. We can see in about 50 years time if I'm right or not, if this recording is preserved, we shall see. That is my prediction. But so whether, you know, this is definitely early, it's not quite old enough to be the point of the creation of this technology, but it's very early. And so we know that they're making both absolutely critical tools like axes, so for forest clearance, for working wood and everything. So axes and adzes are being made out of iron, but also bits of personal adornment. So iron rings, whether bracelets and necklaces are being made also. So it's both functional and prestige oriented at the same time. And the sorts of furnaces are distinctive. They're what we would call low furnaces, and they're bellows driven so, you know, with the bags on the pipes, which are called tuyeres, which are being used to control the process and, and the atmosphere inside the chamber and so forth. And a good number of intact furnace bases have been found. So these are relatively small diameter furnaces, maybe a meter meter 20 in diameter, anywhere from 80cm to meter 20. And as is often the case with such furnaces, you have sometimes dedicatory offerings which are beneath the furnace. And then when you close the furnace, you also do something close the furnace. Sometimes you might find a pot. I'm not talking so much about knock as more broadly in Africa you might find a pot or you might have certain medicines buried beneath. But the making of iron is a sacred process. It's an ideological process. It's giving birth to something which was not there before. And so in a sense, smiths are almost like sorcerers. And also, therefore that makes it to me all the more probable that smiths are also linked to the making of these statues. If we look at much more historic situations again in the Mandate world, so particularly in Mali, and there's a Great book by MacNaughton on the mandate blacksmiths, which is worth looking at because it gives a lot of the historical context of blacksmiths in this area. You know, blacksmiths are a caste in and of it themselves. They're part of what's called the nyama kala, those who shape nyama. And generally speaking, in the Mande world, within blacksmith families, the men can make sort of magical earthen objects. They also obviously do all the metalworking and the metal smelting and the creation of the metal objects. But the women within the blacksmith caste, which is referred to as the numu, they do the pottery making. So, you know, and that's not just in the Mande world, it's in other parts of Africa as well that you have casted blacksmiths. So this is very, you know, early on Noc and as before, generally people want to talk about there being castes in Africa, but, you know, this is a group that's doing absolutely amazing things with terracotta at the same time as they're doing absolutely pioneering things with ironworking. Yes.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Do we know what happens to the Nok culture? They seem to last for quite a long time. Do we know what follows them almost.

[Brad]

Well, this is what's peculiar because Nok just kind of fizzles between 300 B.C. and the first century A.D. date wise, because, you know, we tend to grade the intensity of occupation on a landscape by, by total numbers of radiocarbon dates for a Period, because we're trying to date as many things as we can. And so there's like a steep clip, a fall off in our numbers of radiocarbon dates after 300 BC. They don't just go away entirely, but they fade. And then we have nothing after the beginning of the first century AD that we can ascribe materially to knock. And there are other things which come into the area that look very different, very different pottery traditions and so forth. Sanokh just kind of disappears. There's this sort of peak intensity between 800 or at best 900 BC. You might have the earliest terracottas by then, but more certainly from 800 B.C. 300 B.C. it's just a cliff edge drop off. So something happens then there are all sorts of things one can invoke. You could say there could be conflict, there could be environmental conflicts, collapse. I mean, these are all the sort of things we tend to use explanations, but there is no good evidence yet to explain that collapse. And then, you know, there is nothing very special in the area for a while after that. That said, Nigeria remains one of the peak areas in Africa for technological sophistication. So, you know, it's centuries later. But farther south in the Ibo area, you have sites like Ibo Uku, which has some of the most fantastic bronze artwork ever created. I mean, globally amazing work and technology. So you know, that's happening from maybe 800 at the earliest, probably closer to 900 or 1000 A.D. you have at Ife and you know, not to mention Benin, but at Ife, yes, you have these fantastic naturalistic sculptures of rulers and high casted people, you know, sort of nobility or whatever, which are, you know, utterly naturalistic, amazing sculptures. And then also at Ife, the work of Tunde Babalola, it's clear that there is early glass making, an extensive and very sophisticated glass making at Ife. So you know, there is sort of a gap, you know, of maybe a thousand years between Nak and, and what comes later in terms of high technology artwork. But it does come and so it's almost a foreshadowing. But the other thing I would just bear in mind in all of this, and I always say this, this is what we can see. What we can see is all of the wooden sculptural traditions. I mean, there's very little wood artistry in Africa, which for obvious, you know, environmental and preservation reasons, you know, we can maybe look back a few hundred years at best. But probably before there was Nok terracotta statuary, there was wooden statuary. And running along with all of these different traditions, there's probably highly artistic woodworking. We see the sort of tools that they would have been used. This, you know, we have small woodworking tools even from, you know, 2000 BC, 1000 BC. So what we can't see are the wooden sculpture traditions which have now largely vanished. But we get some idea about what survived and what was documented in the 19th century, in the early 20th century.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Well, Kevin, I mean, this has been absolutely fantastic. You have to come back on in the future to talk more about this area of the world and its extraordinary prehistory and thousands of years ago and the legacy it has on more recent cultures as well. We've covered quite a lot of ground, but we've got to wrap it up there. And it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

[Brad]

Very welcome. It's been a pleasure.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, there you go. There was Professor Kevin McDonald introducing you to the extraordinary yet very mysterious Nok.

[Dr. Kevin MacDonald]

Culture of ancient Nigeria.

[Tristan Hughes]

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow the ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Now don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you [e-mail] subscribe. Lastly, if you want more ancient history videos and clips, then be sure to follow me on Instagram ncientristen. That's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode.

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