Dominican Please!!! You need to face the fact no good looking I mean no Good Dominican woman wants anything to do with a sore loser like you! So you go on pretending you like white chicks.... Please keep on walking! Your ignorance is no good here!

ForWhiteWomen, i see where you allude to "your future children" ever considered a vasectomy as a public service to the human race.? now run along to wikipedia for the definition, so you can get the point.

Nok culture


The Nok civilization appeared in Nigeria around 500 B.C. and mysteriously vanished around 200 AD. The civilization’s social system was highly advanced. The Nok civilization was considered to be the earliest sub-Saharan producer of life-sized Terracotta. Nok culture terracottas are heralded as the prime evidence of the refinement of African civilizations, and it is suggested that the society eventually evolved into the later Jos Plateau community. The refinement of this civilization is attested to by the image of a Nok dignitary at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The dignitary is portrayed wearing a "shepherds crook" affixed with an elastic material to the right arm ([3], [4]). The dignitary is also portrayed sitting with flared nostrils, and an open mouth suggesting performance. According to some accounts, based on artistic similarities between early Yoruba art forms and Nok forms, there may be connections between Nok culture and contemporary Jos Plateau people. Later brass and terracotta sculptures of the Ife and Benin cultures show significant similarities with those found at Nok.

Iron use, in smelting and forging for tools, appears in Nok civilization in Africa by 500 BC.

Sculptures

Nok rider and horse
53 cm tall
Age: 1,400 to 2,000 years

Nok sculptures also depict animals and humans. Their function is still unknown, since scientific field work is still missing. For the most part, the terracotta is preserved in the form of scattered fragments. That is why Nok art is well known today only for the heads, both male and female, whose hairstyles are particularly detailed and refined. The statues are in fragments because the discoveries are usually made from alluvial mud, in terrain made by the erosion of water. The terracotta statues found there are hidden, rolled, polished, and broken. Rarely are works of great size conserved intact making them highly valued on the international art market.

The terracotta figures are hollow, coil built, nearly life sized human heads and bodies that are depicted with highly stylized features, abundant jewellery, and varied postures. Some artifacts have been found illustrating a plethora of physical ailments, including debilitating disease and facial paralysis. Other associated pieces include plant and animal motifs.

Little is known of the original function of the pieces, but theories include ancestor portrayal, grave markers, and charms to prevent crop failure, infertility, and illness. Also, based on the dome-shaped bases found on several figures, they could have been used as finials for the roofs of ancient structures.

Margaret Young-Sanchez, Associate Curator of Art of the Americas, Africa, and Oceania in The Cleveland Museum of Art, explains that most Nok ceramics were shaped by hand from coarse-grained clay and subtractively sculpted in a manner that suggests an influence from wood carving. After some drying, the sculptures were covered with slip and burnished to produce a smooth, glossy surface. The figures are hollow, with several openings to facilitate thorough drying and firing. The firing process most likely resembled that used today in Nigeria, in which the pieces are covered with grass, twigs, and leaves and burned for several hours.

In 1928, the first find was accidentally unearthed at a level of 24 feet in an alluvial tin mine in the vicinity of the village of Nok near the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria (Folorunso 32). As a result of natural erosion and deposition, Nok terracottas were scattered at various depths throughout the Sudan grasslands, causing difficulty in the dating and classification of the mysterious artifacts.

Luckily, two archaeological sites, Samun Dukiya and Taruga, were found containing Nok art that had remained unmoved. Radiocarbon and thermo-luminescence tests narrowed the sculptures’ age down to between 2000 and 2500 years ago, making them some of the oldest in Southern Africa.

Because of the similarities between the two sites, archaeologist Graham Connah believes that "Nok artwork represents a style that was adopted by a range of iron-using farming societies of varying cultures, rather than being the diagnostic feature of a particular human group as has often been claimed."


Female Statue

48 cm tall
Age: 900 to 1,500 years


Discovery
The Nok civilization was discovered in 1928 on the Jos Plateau during tin mining.

Lt-Colonel John Dent-Young, an Englishman, was leading mining operations in the Nigerian village of Nok. During these operations, one of the miners found a small terracotta of a monkey head. Other finds included a terracotta human head and a foot. The colonel, at a later date, had these artifacts placed in a museum in Jos.

In 1932, a group of 11 statues in perfect condition were discovered near the city of Sokoto. Since that time, statues coming from the city of Katsina were brought to light. Although there are similarities to the classical Nok style, the connection between them is not clear yet.

Later still, in 1943, near the village of Nok, in the center of Nigeria, a new series of clay figurines were discovered by accident while mining tin. A worker had found a head and had taken it back to his home for use as a scarecrow, a role that it filled (successfully) for a year in a yam field. It then drew the attention of the director of the mine who bought it. He brought it to the city of Jos and showed it to the trainee civil administrator, Bernard Fagg, an archaeologist who immediately understood its importance. He asked all of the miners to inform him of all of their discoveries and was able to amass more than 150 pieces. Afterwards, Bernard and Angela Fagg ordered systematic excavations that revealed many more profitable lucky finds dispersed over a vast area, much larger than the original site. In 1977, the number of terra cotta objects discovered in the course of the mining excavation amounted to 153 units, mostly from secondary deposits (the statuettes had been carted by floods near the valleys) situated in dried-up riverbeds in savannahs in Northern and Central Nigeria (the Southwestern portion of the Jos Plateau).



Later, new discoveries had been found in an increasingly larger area, including the Middle Niger Valley and the Lower Benue Valley. the parts that could have exploded when fired.

From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nok





The Nok Art




Nok mask -----------...............................----- Large Male Statue 150 B.C.








The Nok Art

Mémoire d'Afrique - Nok - Public gallery

The Nok civilization began to exist in Neolithic Africa perharps as many as 3000 years ago. It developed through the Bronze Age and then the Iron Age.
http://www.memoiredafrique.com/en/nok/galerie.php

God bless you for this information. I had plans to go back to the DR in August to do some research in Samana. Many of my ancestors also arrived to in the DR through its port. He settled in Sanchez at a time when hundreds of english speaking people were arriving there from the english speaking Caribbean. My ancestor came from St. Thomas, USVI, formerly the Danish West Indies. Many of these immigrants were actually very educated. Did not all go there to cut sugar cane. I actually wanted to do a documentary on that aspect of these immigrants because that story is seldom told.

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of that documentary? I'm sure it contains information I would find very useful.

thank you for your kind words.... unfortunately the documentary is not for sale.

During the reception, Reverend Jones affirmed that he is a fourth-generation Dominican of full African American descent: “My ancestors came from the United States 182 years ago, twenty years before the founding of the Dominican Republic in 1844; they were among over 6,000 freed African American slaves who settled in Samaná between 1824 and 1825.”
A documentary video entitled The African Americans of Samaná was shown at the reception. This video is a chapter of Dominican Identity and Migrations to Hispaniola, a study abroad research series produced by Néstor Montilla, Director of Public Relations at Hostos, and narrated by Dr. Irma Nicasio, a Professor at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD). The research


I was completely surprised when I read this post. Can anyone tell me what was the population of Semana when all these former slaves immigrated from the U.S.?

it remains to be seen if our allegedly brasilian friend is hear to share history or to bait people.

I do have to say it is a shame the Taino thread is on the way to 400 comments, but we have not cultivated this one to the same extent. on that note another thanks to yumnuk who has always been a diligent member of the forum when it comes to sharing history.



brasilia I may be able to dig the numbers up for you when I get home tonight, but as I said I'll wait and see if you really care or are here to bait people for fun.

HAVE THERE BEEN SIMILAR FINDINGS OF THIS KIND IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC?

just dig the numbers up. I'm here in Semana now and I am simply amazed of the people I see. They are all Dominicans. I talked to one, she's 82 years old and clearly she is not Haitian. Actually got mad at me when I asked her the question. I'm on a fact finding mission and I want to know all the places I need to visit to complete what I'm doing.

I'll be here until September 3rd, so I have plenty of time and money.