JSS 3 HISTORY NOTES WITH ASSIGNMENT

All Saints Secondary School Oyigbo, Rivers State.

History Department.

JSS 3

Week Six Topic; Historical Sites in Nigeria.

( Nok culture and civilization)

Nok Culture and Civilization.

Civilization can be defined as an advanced stage in social development. Such development could be seen in people’s culture, political development, their building, works of arts, literature, songs and poetry.

Culture can be simply defined as a way of life.

Location of Nok on the map of Nigeria

Nok is a village in Jaba LGA of kaduna state. Nok civilization is the oldest civilization in West Africa.

Nok culture and civilization flourished between 900 Bc and 200 AD in Taruga Jos, Plateau state.

The Nok People, Culture And Artifacts

The oldest sculptures found in Nigeria, even in the whole of black Africa are terra cottas from the Nok culture.

The Nok culture is an early iron age population whose material remains were named after the Ham village of Nok in Kaduna state, where their Terra cotta sculptures were first discovered in 1928.

The Nok People were smelters of iron and also agriculturists. Iron used in smelting and forging tools, appears in Nok culture by at least 550 BC and possibly a few centuries earlier.

Significance/ importance of Nok culture in the Nigerian history

Nok culture influenced later cultures in the Niger River forest areas. Notably , Igbo- ukwa and Ife.
Nok culture provides the earliest example of iron smelting technology in sub Saharan Africa.
The Nok culture bears evidence of the vitality of Nigerian’s cultural experience and achievements and of the possibility that all these remnants of its past must have been the work of its indigenous peoples .
Nok culture and civilization exposed the wrong assertion by European writers about Nigerian history.

Africans has been presented by many European writers as ” a race without a past” ‘ a people who never evolved a civilization of their own and contributed nothing to human progress.

The discovery discovery of the fine artworks produced by the Nok culture provided a helpful precedent that convinced any lingering doubters that the works of those later cultures were indeed that of indigenous black Africans.