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Nigeria EARLY HISTORY
All evidence suggests the early settlement of Nigeria
millennia before the spread of agriculture 3,000 years
ago, and
one day it probably will be possible to reconstruct the
high
points of this early history. Although archaeological
research
has made great strides in identifying some major
developments,
comparatively little archaeological work has been
undertaken.
Consequently, it is possible only to outline some of the
early
history of Nigeria.
The earliest known example of a fossil skeleton with
negroid
features, perhaps 10,000 years old, was found at Iii Ileru
in
western Nigeria and attests to the antiquity of habitation
in the
region. Stone tools, indicating human settlement, date
back
another 2,000 years. Microlithic and ceramic industries
were
developed by pastoralists in the savanna from at least the
fourth
millennium B.C. and were continued by grain farmers in the
stable
agricultural communities that subsequently evolved there.
To the
south, hunting and gathering gradually gave way to
subsistence
farming on the fringe of the forest in the first
millennium B.C.
The cultivation of staple foods, such as yams, later was
introduced into forest clearings. The stone ax heads,
imported in
great quantities from the north and used in opening the
forest
for agricultural development, were venerated by the Yoruba
descendants of neolithic pioneers as "thunderbolts" hurled
to
earth by the gods.
The primitive iron-smelting furnaces at Taruga dating
from
the fourth century B.C. provide the oldest evidence of
metalworking in West Africa, while excavations for the
Kainji Dam
revealed the presence of ironworking there by the second
century
B.C. The transition from Neolithic times to the Iron Age
apparently was achieved without intermediate bronze
production.
Some scholars speculate that knowledge of the smelting
process
may have been transmitted from the Mediterranean by
Berbers who
ventured south. Others suggest that the technology moved
westward
across the
Sudan (see Glossary)
from the Nile Valley,
although
the arrival of the Iron Age in the Niger River valley and
the
forest region appears to have predated the introduction of
metallurgy in the upper savanna by more than 800 years.
The
usefulness of iron tools was demonstrated in the south for
bush
cutting and in the north for well digging and the
construction of
irrigation works, contributing in both regions to the
expansion
of agriculture.
The earliest culture in Nigeria to be identified by its
distinctive artifacts is that of the Nok people. These
skilled
artisans and ironworkers were associated with Taruga and
flourished between the fourth century B.C. and the second
century
A.D. in a large area above the confluence of the Niger and
Benue
rivers on the Jos Plateau. The Nok achieved a level of
material
development not repeated in the region for nearly 1,000
years.
Their terra-cotta sculpture, abstractly stylized and
geometric in
conception, is admired both for its artistic expression
and for
the high technical standards of its production.
Information is lacking from the "silent millennium"
(first
millennium A.D.) that followed the Nok ascendancy, apart
from
evidence of iron smelting on Dala Hill in Kano from about
600 to
700 A.D. It is assumed, however, that trade linking the
Niger
region with North Africa played a key role in the
continuing
development of the area. Certainly by the beginning of the
second
millennium A.D., there was an active trade along a
north-south
axis from North Africa through the Sahara to the forest,
with the
savanna people acting as intermediaries in exchanges that
involved slaves, ivory, salt, glass beads, coral, cloth,
weapons,
brass rods, and other goods.
Data as of June 1991
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