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Photo credit: Ji-Elle
圖片引自： Ji-Elle
6、Nok Civilization
諾克文明
Named after the area in Nigeria in which artifacts of their culture were first discovered, the Nok civilization flourished during the first millennium B.C.before fading into obscurity in the second century A.D. Some theories posit that the overexploitation of natural resources played a large role in the population’s decline. Whatever the case, scholars believe that they played an important role in the development of other cultures in the area, such as the Yoruba and Benin peoples.
以該文化的手工制品首先發現之地，尼日利亞某地的名字命名。諾克文明在公元前的第一個千年里持續繁榮，在公元2世紀逐漸沒落、消失。一些理論假定，對自然資源的過度利用是導致其人口衰減的一個重要原因。無論如何，學者們認為該文明對這一地區的其他文化，如約魯巴（Yoruba）和貝寧（Benin）的發展，起到了重要的作用，
Perhaps the best-known examples of their artistic nature are the terra-cotta figures which have been found throughout the area. They were also the earliest known Africans to have smelted iron, though it’s believed that it was introduced to them through another culture, perhaps the Carthaginians. The reason for this assumption is that no evidence for copper smelting has ever been found, which was a precursor to an iron age in nearly every other civilization. Although they’re believed to be one of the earliest African civilizations, evidence of their existence has been slow to come to light because modern-day Nigeria is a notoriously difficult place to study.
在該地區普遍發現的赤土陶俑（terra-cotta figures），或許是其藝術本質最為著名的示例。他們也是非洲人中已知最早可以煉鐵的民族，雖然據信這是經由另一文化，或許是迦太基人（Carthaginians）所傳授的。這一假定的原因是并沒有發現過有關煉銅的證據，而后者在幾乎其他所有的文明里都是鐵器時代的先導。雖然諾克被認為是非洲最早的文明，但是關于其存在證據的發現則是十分緩慢的，因為當今的尼日利亞是一個聲名狼藉的，難以開展研究的地方。
