By 1000 BCE · Africanapproximate
Behind the Nok terracottas stood a state that controlled metal
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The evidence is indirect and it points to small states in Aïr, in West Africa, by 1000 BCE or earlier. The Nok region of Nigeria appears to have held an early strong state during the first millennium BCE, and its wealth most likely came from trading the metals found in its territory. Nok is famous for something else. Its terracotta heads and figures are among the earliest known figurative sculpture in West Africa and they sit in museums around the world, captioned as art and nothing more. The political economy behind the workshops goes unmentioned. Sculpture of that quality in that quantity implies patrons, and the patrons were living off control of metal and the trade in it. Together with Aïr, the finding puts political complexity in the Sudan belt at 1000 BCE or earlier. That is contemporary with the first Iron Age states around the African Great Lakes, and centuries before the gold trade that made Ghana, Mali and Songhay rich.
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