# The Nok Civilization

> The Nok culture was an Iron Age society centred on Nigeria's Jos Plateau, known for producing sub-Saharan Africa's oldest large-scale terracotta sculpture and among its earliest evidence of iron smelting. Named for the village where a figurine surfaced in 1928, its terracottas and furnaces span roughly 1500 BCE to 1 CE, though the culture's language, social structure, and reasons for decline remain largely unknown.

**Category:** History · **Updated:** 2026-07-23 00:55:07 · **Canonical:** https://nigeriastuff.org/a/nok-civilization

## Key facts
- **Core region:** Jos Plateau area, central Nigeria (Kaduna, Plateau, Nasarawa states)
- **Time span:** c. 1500 BCE – c. 1 CE (terracotta tradition concentrated c. 900–300 BCE)
- **First discovery:** 1928, Nok village tin mine; systematically studied from 1943 by Bernard Fagg
- **Best-known artefacts:** Terracotta heads and figures with elliptical/triangular eyes
- **Iron smelting evidence:** Taruga furnace site, radiocarbon dated to as early as c. 280 BCE
- **Area of finds:** Roughly 78,000–80,000 km² of scatter sites
- **Status:** Precursor culture; no confirmed political or linguistic link to a named successor state

## Sources
- The Nok Culture — National Geographic Education (https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/nok-culture/)
- Restitution of a cultural property of the Nok civilization — UNESCO (https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/restitution-cultural-property-nok-civilization)
- The Significance of Nok Culture Sculptures in Nigerian Prehistory (Professor Peter Breunig) — Scientia (https://www.scientia.global/professor-peter-breunig-the-significance-of-nok-culture-sculptures-in-nigerian-prehistory/)
- The Nok of Nigeria — Archaeology Magazine (Archaeological Institute of America) (https://archive.archaeology.org/1107/features/nok_nigeria_africa_terracotta.html)

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