Posted on 08/22/2009 11:10:05 AM PDT by BGHater
Some 2,500 years ago, a mysterious culture emerged in Nigeria. The Nok people left behind bizarre terracotta statues -- and little else. German archaeologists are now looking for more clues to explain this obscure culture.
Half a ton of pottery shards is piled on the tables in Peter Breunig's workroom on the sixth floor of the University of Frankfurt am Main. There are broken pots, other storage vessels, a clay lizard and fragments of clay faces with immense nostrils.
The chipped head of a statue depicts an African man with a moustache, a fixed glare and hair piled high up on his head. He looks gloomy, almost sinister. Just a few days ago, the ceramics traveled 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) by sea from Nigeria, where they were unearthed.
Breunig runs an excavation near the Nigerian highlands of Jos, where the mysterious Nok culture once blossomed. Spanning more than 80,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles), the tropical region they lived in was larger than Ireland. Its inhabitants lived in wooden huts and ate porridge made from pearl millet. Some women subjected themselves to bloody "scar ornaments" scratched into their breasts with knives.
The mysterious Nok culture lived in a large area of modern-day Nigeria around 2,500 years ago. Peter Breunig, an archaeologist from the University of Frankfurt am Main, is trying to unearth the secrets of their culture.
Exploring the culture is difficult: The Nok left no writings, and almost all traces of their culture have disappeared.
All that remains are thousands of pottery shards and clay figures. The sculptures have become extremely popular in the art world -- and business has boomed for treasure hunters and illicit traders.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Not a birth certificate ping.
“Nok Nok!”
Who’s there?
Gods Graves & Glyphs interest.
Hey there, stop knocking the Nok.
Well no wonder their civilisation disappeared, if all they did was make bizarre terracotta figurines....
Ya beat me!
----------------------------------------------------
I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She's coming in 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do whats right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what's deep inside
Frightened of this thing that I've become
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
Hurry boy, she's waiting there for you
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
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Thank you for the link! I've never seen that and that's very, very cool. |
The first head looks like Homer Simpson!
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Gods |
Thanks BGHater and Ciexyz. That reminds me, I haven't listened to the Spike Jones anthology in a while... |
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Thanks for the ping.
My guess as to why they disappeared...
Some of their tribe became enamored with certain philosophies and ideologies of a distant tribe. The underlying principles of those philosophies and ideologies was that the Nok did not deserve to live and that the Nok were the source of all evil in the world.
Now, the Nok prided themselves on being reasonable folk and had adopted a rather silly mindset that all opinions were equal in value.
So, the Nok had no ability to defend themselves from this attack that came from among their own and they ended up being “death counseled” into non existence.
:’) Maybe they wound up converted to Islam (or dead if they refused).
Seated Dignitary, c. 250 B.C. Nok People, Africa, Eastern Nigeria, Nok Plateau Fired Clay; H. 36 1/4 x W. 10 7/8 x D.14 in. The John R. Van Derlip Fund The Minneapolis Institute of Arts www.artsMIA.org
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