Nok village’s 500BC terracotta heads

[Mirror]

Mysteriously the people of the village vanished in about 200 AD. These people were known for their extremely advanced social system and were the earliest producers of life-sized Terracotta in the Sub-Sahara. Hugely historical, archaeologists have found human skeletons, stone tools and rock paintings around this area, not to mention the main act. The inhabitants of what is now called Nok Village, were known to make some of the oldest and culturally intriguing sculptures found in Africa.

This led to discoveries that the ancient culture of Nok has been around for some 2500 years. When strolling through the village your senses will be delighted to rediscover an amazing group of people culturally and socially. Not much is known about the purposes of these popular sculptures but some theories have suggested they were used as charms to prevent crop failure, illness and infertility. You'll really feel as if you've had the best history lesson of your life.

Weapons of war, terracotta heads of man and animals are abundant as you realise your dream is actually a reality. The Nok culture which dates back over 2,500 years old is no doubt one of the greatest and best known cultures in the world.

Although it was Benard Fagg an archeologist who originally began the collection of the Nok Terracotta heads discovered by tin miners in 1943 at the Nok site, when carbon-dated, these masterpieces made of clay were discovered to have been created around 500 BC.

Many new findings however indicate that some of the works can be dated much earlier than this. What makes Nok terracotta enigmatic is because of the fact that the three hollows represent eyes and mouth without ears which continue to dumbfound curators all over the world. At the entrance of the village are artworks depicting the creativity of a culture beyond human imagination. Site of the famous Nok terracotta Within the Nok village is an excavation site originally gored by tin miners in 1943.

It is in the process of mining tin in this historic site that the miners discovered the ancient terracotta works. Being a highly superstitious people, they believed that these excavated clay heads were harbingers of bad luck and evil and went on to destroy them.

This trend continues until information got to Benard Fagg a colonial archaeologist working in Northern Nigeria at the time, who quickly arranged for the transfer and preservation of the remaining excavated works. His later carbon-dating of the finds, revealed that the works were created around the year 500BC. Because of the significance of this find and the Project, Benard Fagg decided to make his home in the area and ended up with a large collection of the Nok terracotta, some of which he deposited at the newly created Department of Antiquity in Jos. The Nok people History of the Nok culture is history of a people who left a village called Ham in Egypt many millennia ago.

On arriving at this virgin land, according to legend, they discovered that the land is bordered by impenetrable mountains and forests infested with deadly reptiles and loose sand dunes that would easily swallow the unwary and to keep invaders at bay.

On finding this land, the people took shelter in the caves and the natural rock shelters abound in the new settlement. This provided them shelter from warring tribes around the area until the European adventure and subsequent pacification that followed their coming, which brought the period of intercommunal warfare to an end. Though secluded from others by the mountains, the Nok people over time developed a system of administration that ensured the maintenance of law and order in their place of abode. They built what became known as the city of Nok at the foot of the hills. The basic understanding of the Nok culture can be glanced through their judicial system or mode of inheritance.

It is a known fact that the Nok's judicial system pre-dates the western judicial system. The Nok people created classes of courts used in adjudicating on cases from minor to criminal ones. There are the traditional open courts, area courts, high courts and the appeal courts. According to Mang Gang Chai, the curator of Nok antiquity, these courts were used in investigating and to uncover the truth in both minor and major crimes. The people strongly believe that every crime attracts a curse which was capable of destroying whole family and must be uncovered to avoid the consequences.

Source: Nok village's 500BC terracotta heads